Resistance through Knowledge Production: The Case of Two Ecological Collectives in Authoritarian Turkey.

Nowadays, social movements can be seen as key players in the production of knowledge, and even more so in authoritarian regimes. A fundamental role of ecological collectives in producing and disseminating critical knowledge has been played in Turkey since 2002 under the repressive rule of the AKP (Justice and Development Party). This study explores how two generations of environmental activists, driven by a desire to produce and disseminate alternative, performative knowledge to government doxa, have challenged state disinformation and the modalities of living together imposed by the latter, regarded as contrary to the optimal conditions for thriving as a society with respect for each individual's dignity and the preservation of the environment as a common good share among the population.

Polen Ekoloji Kolektifi, a Marxist-ecologist collective made up mainly of generation X and Y activists, and Doğanın Çocukları Kollektifi, a generation Z anti-capitalist youth organization, share a common goal: to use knowledge production as a tool of resistance. As a result of their differing generational contexts and theoretical foundations, they bring distinctive renewed meanings to life in society, as emancipated from the neo-capitalist extractivist rule over nature and people in Turkey.

Our aim is to demonstrate how these movements reinvent the concept of dignity, justice, and democracy, through an intersectional approach of ecology and politics, by examining both their knowledge production activities and the corpora they produce - translations of foreign knowledge, seminars and workshops, and online publications.

The methodology involves analyzing thematically the texts published by these collectives and conducting in-depth semi-structured interviews with members involved in the production of knowledge. The purpose of this study is to shed light on how ecological social movements can provide a space for counter-power and the reconfiguration of essential values in the face of repressive political systems.