Against austerity and repression: Historical and contemporary manifestations of progressive politicisation in Turkey

Abstract

This paper aims to explore the growing and deepening trend of politics of repression coupled with prolonged crisis and austerity politics, reflecting on the potentials as well as limitations of progressive politics in such a constrained context. Austerity policies continue pushing for anti-labour and reactionary politics in a variety of forms reflecting the unresolved crisis conditions of contemporary capitalism. While the liberal democratic state-form remains relatively intact in particular contexts, in others, it gradually evolves into repressive forms. The growing repression risks conceiving the anti-authoritarian struggles and the anti-capitalist and labour movements separate and/or mutually exclusive. This review article draws on the recent insights of (de)politicization, labour geography and history and political economy scholarships with specific reference to the case of Turkey while cautioning against the binary thinking of ‘success’ and ‘failure’ in leftist and labour mobilisations. It proposes a historical perspective in order to appreciate the diversity and multiplicity of struggles against the intersecting nodes of austerity, capitalism and repression in the complex geographies of periphery.

Introduction: Anti-politics, austerity and spaces of politicisation

“…Karaliotas’s account suggests, then, the importance of thinking about the locatedness of forms of politicisation, and, through drawing on Rancière, the ways in which forms of politicisation can rework existing forms of spatialisation and politics. Pinar Dönmez's paper on ‘progressive politicisation in Turkey engages in important ways with the spatial and temporal articulations of resistance to austerity in what she describes as countries on the ‘peripheries of capitalism’ (Dönmez, 2021: 513). Dönmez’s considers the ‘multiplicity and diversity’ of struggles on the Turkish left against successive ‘waves of austerity’ in the country.…”

“…As Ana Drago notes in her afterword here it is important to recall that ‘the political and spatial consensus of liberal democracies and neoliberal globalization’ such formations were characterised by have ‘been continuously challenged over the last two decades’ in different ways both by figures on the political left and by elements of the far-right. In this respect we close by seeking to draw out a set of reflections on sources of what Pinar Dönmez in her contribution refers to as ‘progressive forms of politicisation’ which might signal some hope in these difficult times (Dönmez, 2021: 516).…”

“…In this introduction we first set out an engagement with the interconnections between forms of anti-politics and spaces of politicization and then detail the ways the papers in the special issue examine questions of depoliticization and politicization of austerity. The final section briefly outlines some key ways in which we envision emergent lines of progressive politicization (Dönmez, 2021) emerging from the left.…”

Afterword: They say the Centre cannot hold: Austerity, crisis, and the rise of anti-politics

“…Beverigde and Koch (2019) show how spatial practices entrenched in urban everyday challenge local state apparatus and privatization policies; Habermehl (2021) shows us how situated autogestion politics emerge during austerity in Buenos Aires, allowing everyday antagonist practices to settle in; Förtner et al. (2021) point to the revival of the politicization of the urban-rural divide which, as the future, is not what it used to be; Featherstone (2019) discusses the entanglement of the spatial forms of austerity and the geographical imaginations of resistance, pointing to the relevance of the struggles of nations against multi-national states within the framework of an uneven geographical deployment of austerity; Dönmez (2021) point to how austerity became authoritarian within the “borderlands” of Europe, rendering visible the core contradictions between capitalism and the liberal state and leading to a situated cycle of radical struggles; Karaliotas (2021) takes us through the squares’ movement in Greece as form/moment of the political to emerge, aiming to represent a multitude that constitutes the nation against crippling austerity imposed by transnational institutions. Taken together, these analysis provide an analytical path for reading anti-systemic conflict as it is being remade through spatial-geographical categories: North versus South in the European Debt crisis; situated spaces of everyday antagonism; urban versus rural (the far-right rise); urban politicized sociability against the local state; “austeritarian” governance deployed in the borderlands of liberal Europe; deindustrialized regions against service/financialized metropoles (Brexit); squares versus parliaments and/or transnational institutions (Greece, Portugal or the Spanish 15 M).…”

Colours of democracy: Trade union banners and the contested articulations of democratic spatial practices

“…Trade unions, however, remain largely marginal to both contemporary (and historical) debates on democracy. This is despite their being some of the most significant mass movements based on democratic principles and practices in many parts of the world and having been central to various processes of democratisation (Bezuidenhout & Tshoaedi, 2017; Dönmez, 2021; Harcourt & Wood, 2006). Reciprocally, as Doucette and Kang have recently demonstrated, engaging with the ways in which the ‘egalitarian promise of democratisation’ is undermined by the strategies of employers and governments offers new research agendas for labour geographers (Doucette & Kang, 2018, p. 7).…”