ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the spectacular Gezi protests of 2013, which represents the revolution of the urban, a predicament of the urban revolution of new Islamism in Turkey. Urban megaprojects have become a global phenomenon with examples found in various parts of the world; they are a direct outcome of the transformation of urban governance from managerialism to entrepreneurialism. Although mass rallies in major cities have been common in Turkey, the peculiarity of the TEKEL Resistance was the establishment of a protest camp in downtown Ankara, which introduced a new form of public space that would be reproduced in the Gezi protests. It is crucial to move on to the architecture of resistance through comparisons with the earlier TEKEL encampment. The resistance tents of the workers quickly became a symbol of class politics and formed an alternative to the fruitless conflict between secularism and Islamism that has dominated the political sphere in Turkey since the late 1990s.
