The Aesthetics of Protest: Visual Culture and Communication in Turkey

Recent years have seen a large increase in the number of protests around the world which have challenged economic institutions and political practices, including the Arab Spring, Occupy movements, pro-democracy movements in Hong Kong, and anti-austerity movements across Europe.

This project focuses on the protests in Turkey, particularly in Gezi Park in Istanbul. It examines the aesthetics of protest, in particular, how protestors use social media to communicate their messages to the public and how they attempt to engage the public, politicians and fellow protestors.

Protestors have a range of options open to them in order to have their voice heard and increasingly protestors use aesthetics in order to communicate their ideas. Researchers looked at protest aesthetics, which they consider to be the visual, material, textual and performative elements of protest, such as images, symbols, graffiti, clothes, art, but also to include other elements such as forms of rhetoric, slang, humour, slogans, as well as the choreography of protest actions in public spaces.

Through the use of social media, protestors have been able to create an alternative space for people to engage with politics that is more inclusive and participatory than traditional politics. The use of social media allows people to share ideas on protest activity and deliberate with one another in an online environment. What was significant about the protests in Turkey was how images were shared across social media platforms in order to communicate the messages of the protestors, to unite the public and to challenge the unpopular policies of the government which had provoked the protests in the first place.

The Aesthetics of Protest: Visual Culture and Communication in Turkey explored how the public and politicians in Turkey interpreted protest aesthetics and if they attached any significance to particular protest aesthetics, and whether these had changed since 2013, particularly in light of the electoral defeat of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) in the national elections in June 2015.

The protests in Turkey were notable because protestors inhabited public spaces in urban areas and used public spaces to communicate their ideas, emotions, and interests to the public in order to foster support and raise political awareness of issues. However, the power of the protestors was strengthened by social media platforms where members of the public, who were sympathetic with the protestors or lived in a different part of the country or beyond, did not have to occupy the same physical public space, but could engage and deliberate with one another through social networking sites and blogs.

Social media platforms are increasingly an interactive space which form part of the political world where people can engage with one another and potentially become powerful. Drawing on Aidan McGarry's research on marginalised voices in politics and his work on identities and social movements, this research provided new insights into how protestors come together and make the choices they do.

The Aesthetics of Protest: Visual Culture and Communication in Turkey curated an exhibition on protest aesthetics in Studio X in Istanbul, and it commissioned digital galleries on protest aesthetics from around the world. The work included an academic workshop in Istanbul on social media and digital humanities, and a design salon at the V&A Museum in London.

The researchers explored how protestors use visual images/culture to communicate with one another and the public. They compared how different social media platforms have been used by protestors, examining how mobilisation is negotiated across digital and material spaces.

They developed the concept of protest aesthetics to capture the performativity of protest through bodies, colour, humour, to promote solidarity and to communicate ideas of hope and freedom. Social media was discovered to be regularly used by protestors in very humdrum or ordinary ways but that this is potentially politically significant too as protestors communicate everyday activities to project the kind of society they want to live in.

The research not only evidenced emerging new forms of visual rhetoric and modes of protest against state suppression but also identified how the movement aimed for social transformation via prefigurative enactments of new ways of relating to others in society. 

These practices were documented and disseminated in visual forms and activist artists were commissioned by the project to respond to the research findings by exploring collective modes of protest, being and ways of life. This mobilised the artists’ collective to solidify their identity in art practice providing an enduring mode of visual and other forms of political expression beyond protest action and artist collectives continue to have particular significance in contemporary Turkey.

These groups of artists challenged the notion of individualism, and explored cultural forms linked to the ‘Gezi spirit’ - the communal and pluralist ethos of the social movement - beyond the effervescent uprising of protest, and were able to gain a foothold in the national art festival scene that they hadn’t previously held.

The key finding from the edited volume that the project produced is that the aesthetics are not just matters of taste and style but are performative and communicative.

McGarry A. et al (2019) The Aesthetics of Global Protest - Visual Culture and Communication
Jenzen O (2020) 'The symbol of social media in contemporary protest: Twitter and the Gezi Park movement' in Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies.
Korkut U (2021) 'Looking for truth in absurdity: Humour as community-building and dissidence against authoritarianism' in International Political Science Review
McGarry A (2019) 'Beyond the iconic protest images: the performance of 'everyday life' on social media during Gezi Park' in Social Movement Studies