Football fans and contentious politics: The role of Çarşı in the Gezi Park protests

Abstract

This article problematizes the role played by a football fan club—Çarşı—in one of the largest social movements in Turkish political history, the Gezi Park protests of June 2013. The authors suggest that as “unusual suspects” in social movements, Çarşı’s role in the Gezi Park protests can be understood with the conceptual toolbox provided by theories of contentious politics. Since action repertoires, or “known sequences for acting together,” are key to contentious politics and social movements, Çarşı’s organized and effective performance during the Gezi Park protests shows how previous encounters with the police can be decisive in terms of social upheavals. This study suggests that Çarşı members, who were already accustomed to making ethical judgments on a variety of issues both political and non-political, should be taken as a prominent example of how supporters on terraces and fan clubs facilitate the framing processes described by the social movement literature.

Fight ‘acceptable’ with ‘acceptable:’ football, cultural battle in Turkey and the story of two ‘doxas’ over an old military song

“…While the role that the football chants play in the political protests is established by several researchers (Turan and Özçetin, 2019;Eder and Öz, 2017;Battini and Koşulu, 2017 among others), chanting and its socio-political roots in Turkey have rarely been the centrepiece of a research. In one of the few exceptions, Nuhrat (2017, 26-27) shows the gendered nature of chanting in stands in Turkey, claiming the chants are used to present masculine gendering of positive characteristics, like fairness.…”

Doing Tolerance

“…For the role of Beşiktaş fans during the Gezi Park protests, see (Turan and Özçetin 2019). main demands on the five-item list prepared by Taksim Solidarity.…”