Rhetoric, Symbolism and Gezi

Rhetoric remains one of the most interesting and debated aspect of political communication and in its turn the rhetoric that particular events generate becomes an important part of the political process. Since politics is a continual struggle over meanings and signification, understanding the political process requires an analysis of how the symbolic enters the political process, how political actors consciously or unconsciously manipulate symbols through rhetoric and how this relates to the material bases of power. Literature that explores political symbolism now propose that alongside analysis that centres on power and interests, consideration of political symbolism and rhetoric provides useful insights that evoke political recognition, promoting normative or positive ideas about politics. Political action of all types involves meanings for participants and observers irrespective of long term consequences or effects. The increased media exposure of those who exercise political power means that symbols, gestures, rhetoric and gimmicks are now symbolically constituted and examined.

Studies of political symbolism have traditionally argued that much of the mechanics of modern liberal democracy can be understood in terms of meanings it generates for the polity as much as the functions it fulfills. As such, the ritualistic aspects of voting are as important as the vote that is cast. While certain political actions, emblems and signs invoke meanings that can be delineated from a literal understanding of the signs involved, certain other actions and images, produce meanings that are both widely understood and evoke defined responses. Symbols, however, are not always uncontested and the ability of symbols to invoke different meanings or their multivocality has been the subject of analysis. Often there is contestation between those who evoke the symbols and those who are subject to them. In fact at times power has been derived from the control over a society’s symbols.

Rhetoric and symbolism are inter-woven and convenient ways to reach the target as they are routinely relayed by the press. The power of rhetoric resides principally in the power of metaphor. But rhetoric is also sometimes a term of abuse and can be made to refer to   disagreement. Along with symbolism and myths, rhetoric performs a key role in political communication and propaganda. While in most situations rhetoric is invoked for inclusion in some it performs the role of exclusion. This became evident during the incidents following the Gezi Park protests when a sharp differentiation was recognized, in the political rhetoric of the leadership among followers of the AKP (Adalet ve Kalkinma Partisi or Justice and Development Party) and those who had opposed its policies in the course of the protests. The events started when a small environmentalist group protested against the neoliberal “urban renewal” plan by the AKP and the then Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, in order to protect Gezi Park, one of the rare green areas in the Taksim area of Istanbul. In a purely symbolic act the protests started exactly a month after the suppression of the First of May demonstrations and took unprecedented proportion by converting itself into a massive social movement. While most activists have subsequently talked about the planning for a social movement that had been in place for some time, there is also a general agreement that Gezi provided a spontaneous and unexpected trigger.

The symbolism that Gezi Park produced was something that the political leadership found difficult to comprehend and the contradiction between qualifying the protests as “’concern for a few trees’’ and simultaneously an ‘’international plot’’ was reflective of this. The government however was not alone in the race to appropriate the symbolic value of the protests. Gezi Park also generated rhetoric from among the protestors who contributed their own subversive slogans and visual images. The Gezi Park protestors were exceedingly good at developing a discourse by using strong sense of humour, incorporating music into their power of opposition and employing the social media. The rhetoric of exclusion generated by the ruling establishment was countered by the rhetoric generated by the protestors who in a number of cases inverted the same rhetoric to their advantage.

Istikkal Cadessi still bears traces of the graphitti that was drawn during the summer of 2013 and occasionally one can still hear groups gathering to sing a few protest songs. Apart from curious tourists, always on the move along the one of Istanbul’s most fashionable shopping streets, no one stops to listen. The heritage tram that moves from the Taksim side of the street towards Gezi operates as usual blaring music. But in the course of a workshop on communication and social change, that takes place within the confines of the Swedish Research Institute, on the other end of the street from Gezi, there is a distinct impression that the protestors will wait for the next trigger to gather once again.

**Excerpts from Anita Sengupta, “The Politics of Exclusion: Rhetoric, Symbolism and Gezi Park”, in Priya Singh, Anita Sengupta and Suchandana Chatterjee (eds)  Protest and the State in Eurasia and West Asia, New Delhi, Knowledge World 2016.