Mobilization in Times of Mobile Emergency: Protest Dynamics in Authoritarian Turkey (2015-2022)

This paper focuses on the relationship between emergency measures/situations as tools used by an autocratizing government and their effect on the protest scene, using Turkey as a case. Series of emergency situations/measures marked how Turkish government governed its citizens over the last decade. Before (and beyond) the two year-long state of emergency declared in 2016, the Turkish state resorted to regular and widespread use of what we elsewhere call “mobile emergency” measures (Arslanalp and Erkmen, 2020). This form of rule entailed the temporary and localized practice of suspending or limiting constitutional rights via administrative orders, using emergency language/justifications. It crystallized as Turkish regime turned authoritarian between 2010 and 2016, before the declaration of an official state of emergency in response to a failed coup attempt. Two years long state of emergency only paved the way to a bolstered regime of mobile emergency in 2019, which also became the main modality in which the regime had governed the pandemic. Suspension of protest rights and repression of protests in different forms has been some of the main outcomes of this shifting regime of emergencies. In this paper, using multiple original data-sets, we explore how movements navigated the ambivalent and everchanging landscape of rights created by mobile emergency rule as well as the state of emergency. What kind of repertoires have they developed to overcome these restrictions? What kind of tactical shifts did they respond with? Why were some more successful than others? We posit that this form of autocratization that relies on emergency measures might affect the protest arena through multiple pathways that might have conflicting effects. First, the use of emergency measures implies an intensification of repression as well as an increasingly ambivalent environment of political rights, both of which might undermine the protest scene. On the other hand, this process also creates new grievances that might push actors to resist. These grievances not only relate to the regime’s authoritarian turn, but also to various aspects of the hegemonic project that makes up the regime and their policy choices. Yet the degree to which these grievances resonate with the larger public vary; therefore, even under emergency circumstances, movements face different kinds of discursive opportunities shaping likelihood of repression thus mobilization. We draw on three original sources of data to advance these arguments: an original dataset of protest bans (2007-2019), an original dataset of protests events (2010-2020), and an original survey research conducted in Istanbul in 2020.