Picturing Contentious Politics: Visual Analysis of 2013 Gezi Protests

One of the results of the amplified visuality of social movements in the last decade has been the increased use of illustrations by protestors. Although understudied both in art history and social sciences, illustration has always been used by social movement actors; and has the potential to reveal various dynamics of contentious politics. The recent literature on social movement visual analyses shows that protest graphics can undercover the protesters' profiles, motivations, emotions and cognitive experiences. With a particularly intense use of visual expressions by protestors, the 2013 Gezi Protests in Turkey was one of the first events in Turkey’s history where protestors individually created illustrations and shared them on social media as a way of showing support. Although these illustrations have not been ignored by scholars, they have not been the focus of a systematic analysis either.

This paper will analyze the visual expression of Gezi Protests in the illustrations, focusing on protestor figures and visual narrative. It will employ the innovative three-step visual analysis and contextualization method. While the illustrations will be analyzed through a visual content analysis based on political iconography, the findings will be contextualized through in-depth interviews with illustrators, survey reports, and literature review. The undertheorized category of illustration will be discussed and conceptualized with the introduction of Illustration Studies. By doing so the paper firstly aims to contribute to the recent visual analyses of social movements literature by bringing together sociology, political science and illustration research. Secondly, to further develop the emerging three-step methodology by introducing conceptualization, insights and methods unique to illustration practice as art-based research. Thirdly, by comparing the visual language with previous progressive social movements in Turkey, it aims to contribute to the wider discussion regarding the visual expression of social movements in the context of Turkey.