Assessing Gezi Park movement’s transformative dynamics : the women and the football fans.

This paper traces the Gezi Park protests in Istanbul and analyses the protests within the realm of what is referred to as ‘contentious politics’. In its examination of the protests it aims to contribute to contextualising contentious politics in Turkey, a country located on the cross-roads of Europe and Asia and along the heated region of the Middle East, which has been transformed radically through contentious politics since 2011. By assessing the Gezi Park movement within its historical and sociological context I aim to pursue a textual analysis of contentious politics in the form of the cries uttered and voices heard in Istanbul and beyond during this social protest