ABSTRACT
Just as with the top-down modernization and power centralization of the Kemalist era, the nature of social change under the Justice and Development Party (AKP) is sparking counter-hegemonic social movements from all corners of Turkish society. This contestation is consequently not laid against any singular policy change, nor at the ideology or culture of Islam. Rather, it is against the hegemonic state, in its current and former manifestation. Since the aesthetic festival of the Gezi protests, Turkey’s streets have become the theatre of discontent through which groups use cultural contestation, communicative political slogans, iconography and symbols, to challenge state power.
