ABSTRACT

Murat Arsel Introduction On 26 August 1997, 250 peasant men and women from the town of Bergama arrived in İstanbul and disembarked from their buses in the middle of the busy Bosphorus Bridge. They immediately set out to execute their meticulously choreographed protest demonstration. Journalist arriving at the scene found this ragtag army dressed in traditional colorful village attire, holding banners that read ‘We will fight “mining with cyanide” to the death!’ and ‘No cyanide-gold in Bergama!’ Some carried Turkish flags and portraits of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, while others tied themselves to the railings, both for dramatic effect and to prevent the police from dispersing their demonstration prematurely. After ensuring that the news media had accumulated enough material to bring their cause to newspapers and TV screens across the nation, they quickly got back on their buses and returned to their villages. The whole episode lasted less than an hour. Staged at the most symbolic location in İstanbul, a city that is itself a ‘symbolic presence on [an] ideological map’ (Keyder, 1999, p. 9), the demonstration marked a watershed in Turkish politics of environment and development.