Publication: On Which Gezi Gives Birth To: Turkey’s First Squat ‘Don Quixote House’
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Date
2015
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AESOP
Abstract
Every single marginal group belongs to what is called “subculture”. This marginality is due to their different sense in politics, sociality, music, arts, and fashion, which make them stand as an opponent of the mainstream: Mainstream media, mainstream fashion styles, popular music, dominant political ideology, accepted social gender, and so on. Henceforth, their opposing stand and antagonist position make them be „transgressive‟. Hereby, the spaces they use have the potential to be a space for crime, from the view of power holders. On the other hand, where they inherently express themselves are the „spaces for other‟ or the „heterotopias‟ in Foucauldian sense. These are the spaces where intersections, juxtapositions and superimpositions of many differences take place. Indeed, such urban spaces become a means of free expression, personal experience and collective memory. The other spaces of those marginals, therefore, are what Lefebvre called as „lived space‟, since they initiate a collective habitat by means of using, appropriating and reclaiming the urban space. Here, urban space becomes an effective tool to express oneself and such expression particularly manifested itself whereby a social movement, an uprising where small groups of marginals have a chance to act together. This paper analyzes „spaces for other‟ where marginal groups habit themselves and maintain an alternative daily life. The "Don Quixote House" in İstanbul which emerged as a "squat" is also an attempt to create an „other space‟, which initiated after Gezi Uprising. Therefore, this paper is for seeking how Gezi Uprising triggers marginals to create such "squat‟ as a communal habitat for public use.
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Book of proceedings: Annual AESOP Congress, Definite Space – Fuzzy Responsibility, Prague, 13-16th July, 2015
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