Tag Archives: turkey

Istanbul: Urban renewal as primitive accumulation

(Yuksel Arslan) Capitalism’s need for wealth extraction in an increasingly urbanised human space can only force it to turn upon itself, to consume itself, in gestures of commodity autophagia.  But if cannibalism could once serve as a mode of sacrificial … Continue reading

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Wars for the commons in turkey

While turkey’s president celebrates his new presidential palace, the White Palace in Ankara, of over one thousand rooms, constructed on more than 150,000 sq m, and costing over 600 million  dollars (BBC 14/11/2014), an okupied social social in the Kadiköy … Continue reading

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The dispossession of urban commons: Istanbul

(Photograph by Ufuk Akari) Don’t say it’s the necessary result of historical, social, and economic conditions – I know!  My head bows before the thing you mention.  But my heart doesn’t speak that language. Nazim Hikmet, The Epic of Sheik … Continue reading

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Impressions of autonomies: Istanbul

But hope is not enough for me.  I no longer want to listen – I want to sing songs … The scars of Istanbul’s self-inflicted wounds run deep and its self-mutilation appears to know no respite. The centre of the … Continue reading

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Gezi park and beyond: Resonances of rebellion

(Yüksel Arslan) From the Global Uprisings news/video collective, a new documentary on political protest in turkey, since the Gezi Park commune …

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Witnessing our times: Film from Gezi

I’m an eye. A mechanical eye. I, the machine, show you a world the way only I can see it. I free myself for today and forever from human immobility. I’m in constant movement. I approach and pull away from … Continue reading

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Not for bread alone: Berkin Elvan

… from a friend of Autonomies “We live under an occupation, under police occupation” The Coming Insurrection “À chaque instant de son existence, la police rappelle à l’État la violence, la trivialité et l’obscurité de son origine” Introduction à la … Continue reading

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Rule by murder: For Berkin Elvan

; The State and Capitalism do not kill by accident, consequence of inattention or moral failure.  The domination and appropriation of human creativity can only be violent, whether it be the violence of its law, institutionalised, or the violence of securing it. … Continue reading

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Okupying production: Kazova workers’ resistance

From Fatih Pinar, a video about the Kazova textile factory okupation in Istanbul, today a factory that continues to produce through workers' self-management.  Autonomy is constructed slowly, step by unpredictable step, in a movement in which the ends and the … Continue reading

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The Gezi-Taksim Utopia

(All the paintings in this post are by the turkish artist Yuksel Arslan) La poésie ouvre le vide à l’excès du désir. Georges Bataille For ten days, from the 1st to the 11th of June, Taksim became … a free … Continue reading

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