Unruly Practices: Gezi Protests and the Politics of Friendship

In 2013, Gezi Park housed perhaps the most significant democratic protest of the Turkish Republic’s history. The Gezi protests have drawn the attention of many democratic theorists since then. What is surprising about these theorists’ commentaries on Gezi is that in none of them is it possible to find an account of political practices that enabled actors with such different interests and worldviews to act in concert during this moment of popular action. This article argues that to attend fully to the unique features of events such as Gezi, we need to develop an alternative conceptualization of democratic action that brings to light such mediatory political practices. To develop that alternative, I turn to Aristotle and creatively appropriate his notion of “political friendship.” Interpreted as an ethico-political notion, which refers to a set of mediating practices, political friendship becomes a rich conceptual resource that lays bare the dynamics of democratic popular action.