Queer contestation of neoliberal and heteronormative moral geographies during #occupygezi

Abstract

During the summer of 2013, Turkey witnessed the largest protest movement in the history of the republic. The protests began with environmentalist concerns to save a public park in central Istanbul, Gezi Park, from becoming a shopping mall. However, in a matter of days, the protests turned into a reaction against what many protestors perceived to be the authoritarian rule of the prime minister at the time. While the mainstream protest discourses focused on reacting against such perceptions, which produced sexist and heterosexist discourses, queer discourses were centered on celebrating coexistence and diversity through resistance. Drawing on literatures of queer theory that focus on queer space and moral geography, this article builds on Foucault’s notion of heterotopic space. Using queer linguistics to investigate blog posts that were written at the time of the protest by queer individuals who were taking part in protest, this article investigates the ways in which queer discourses construct the moral geography of the Gezi Park and at the same time challenge neoliberal and heteronormative moral geographies.