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.