ArticlePDF Available

Cause lawyering when it really matters: how Istanbul lawyers reacted to events in Gezi

May 2016
International Journal of the Legal Profession 23(2):1-26

DOI:10.1080/09695958.2016.1176925

Authors:

London School of Economics and Political Science

This paper is about voluntary legal representation of detainees during the Gezi events in Istanbul in June 2013. By way of in-depth interviews conducted with attorneys who did the work, the paper seeks to understand the reasons for its emergence since there was government-funded legal aid in these matters. Another goal was to understand whether there were any ethical problems during its provision. Attorneys’ primary reason to volunteer seems to be that legal aid was not working. The second reason was their identification with the protesters. They therefore engaged in defensive cause lawyering and employed the law in creative and strategic ways to fight against a government crackdown. Cause lawyering was facilitated by an autonomous legal profession, legal aid, as well as a relatively independent prosecutorial service.

Content uploaded by Idil Elveris

Content may be subject to copyright.

Cause lawyering when it really matters: how Istanbul

lawyers reacted to events in Gezi

Idil Elveriş

Faculty of Law, Istanbul Bilgi University, Istanbul, Turkey

ABSTRACT

This paper is about voluntary legal representation of detainees during the Gezi events in

Istanbul in June 2013. By way of in-depth interviews conducted with attorneys who did

the work, the paper seeks to understand the reasons for its emergence since there was

government-funded legal aid in these matters. Another goal was to understand

whether there were any ethical problems during its provision. Attorneys’primary

reason to volunteer seems to be that legal aid was not working. The second reason

was their identiﬁcation with the protesters. They therefore engaged in defensive

cause lawyering and employed the law in creative and strategic ways to ﬁght against

a government crackdown. Cause lawyering was facilitated by an autonomous legal

profession, legal aid, as well as a relatively independent prosecutorial service.

1. Introduction

In June 2013, the attempted demolition of Gezi Park in Istanbul’s Taksim Square

and the brutal police response against dozens of demonstrators who erected

tents to prevent the demolition, triggered massive demonstrations. Fueled by

existing discontent with the government, a protest against the destruction of

green spaces in the city turned into what came to be known as ‘Gezi events’,

taking place in 79 of the 81 cities in the country with around 2.5 million

people participating.

The purpose of the demolition was to clear the area to

erect a shopping mall under the pretense of reviving the old military barracks

that stood there before the park. In the end, the plan was ﬁrst halted by the

people who occupied the park for over 18 days and was eventually struck

down by an administrative court. As a result of the events, nine people died

in various cities, thousands have been detained by the police,

thousands were

wounded and hundreds have been put into pretrial custody. Their cases are

still ongoing while some have never been charged or have already been acquitted

with their prosecutorial appeals pending.

A lot of individuals sympathized with the demonstrators especially the young,

the educated

and the urban (KONDA, 2014). This explains why demonstrators

running from tear gas were offered refuge in apartment buildings and hotels in

the area. It also explains why many professionals were among the demonstrators

CONTACT Idil Elverişidile@bilgi.edu.tr

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF THE LEGAL PROFESSION, 2016

VOL. 23, NO. 2, 131–156

http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09695958.2016.1176925

and volunteered their services to help them. As a result, when the detention of

the Gezi Park demonstrators started, two phenomena seem to have occurred

simultaneously among attorney groups. First, attorneys who were already politi-

cal, in the sense of being sympathizers of various social movements or members

of a cause lawyering group called the Contemporary Lawyers Association

(‘CLA’),

got together quickly ‘to do something’given their previous experience

in cases that ended up with mass detentions such as the 2005 NATO Summit in

Istanbul or Labor Day commemorations that usually do not take place in a

festive mood in the city. Established in 1974, the CLA

is left leaning and

engages in both the pro bono representation of leftist as well as Kurdish

groups, including trial monitoring of cases that involve rights and liberties

issues, as wells as advocacy. In fact, the bylaws of the CLA are in Turkish and

Kurdish which can of itself be considered a political statement in Turkey. Never-

theless, the CLA website has an English version and shows a strong commitment

to the protection of human rights worldwide.

Second, there were also corporate lawyers sometimes condescendingly

referred to as ‘attorneys of the plazas’

who, having witnessed the police vio-

lence and on hearing about the detentions through social media,

organized

among themselves to appear at the court house the next morning. Since the

detention period was 24 hours, they seem to have thought that they were

attorneys after all, who ‘can do something’to help the demonstrators. The

two groups did not know each other before but seem to have come together

and volunteered to represent the detainees. Their work appears to have gone

far beyond regular legal representation in police custody, moving to keeping

watch on the streets to monitor police behavior and intervening in illegal

detentions, searching in car parks for detainees suspected to be held incom-

municado by the police. Attorneys even bought food and drink for detainees

from their own pocket when they were brought to court from police stations.

Given that the total number of detainees was 4,900 (see endnote 1) –around

1,100 of them said to be in Istanbul –the fact that a huge proportion of them

were represented in the pretrial stage by volunteer attorneys shows the scale of

the work.

It should be said that volunteering in Turkey is increasingly common for

doctors, psychologists and nurses especially in natural disasters. For the legal

profession it has been less so. For sure, since the 1980s there have been attorneys

who supported (and volunteered for) causes such as human rights and the rights

of the Kurds in particular, but this practice remained mostly at the margins of

the profession. However, during the Gezi events around 100 attorneys volun-

teered spontaneously to help detainees who were taken into police custody. By

way of in-depth interviews conducted with volunteer attorneys and prosecutors

who were in charge of the pretrial investigation of the Gezi events, I have sought

to explore the reasons for the emergence of this work since there is a govern-

ment-funded criminal legal aid in place. I further sought to understand what

132 I. ELVERIŞ

type of ethical problems arose during its provision. The primary reason for attor-

neys to volunteer seems to have been the failure of the Criminal Legal Aid

Service to function properly. As important appears to be the attorneys’identiﬁ-

cation with the protesters which, uniquely for the cause lawyering literature,

transformed attorneys’cause into ﬁghting against police violence and protecting

the rights and liberties of the detainees. As a result, their volunteer work can be

best described as defensive cause lawyering. Attorneys saw as ethical violations

the actions of their colleagues towards them rather than any failure on their part

to protect the interests of the demonstrators.

2. Theoretical framework

An unprecedented political crisis like the Gezi events and the governmental

crackdown in response, seems to have led volunteer attorneys to emerge and

represent those detained in the events. This can be best described as cause law-

yering because attorneys not only used their legal skills but engaged in the pol-

itical use thereof. To begin, attorneys seem to have strongly identiﬁed with the

political cause(s) of the Gezi demonstrators by participating in street protests.

After the detentions, however, they seem to have abandoned direct action and

swiftly changed their cause to representation for detainees who were subject

to police violence. In so doing, they seem to have transgressed in many ways

the boundaries of the profession and successfully mobilized various legal

methods. Cause lawyering appears to have been facilitated by an autonomous

legal profession, a politically engaged bar association, as well as other structural

factors such as legal aid and the relative independence of the judiciary.

The famous scholars of cause lawyering, Sarat and Scheingold, avoid a rigid

and all encompassing deﬁnition of cause lawyering due to the diversity of

cause lawyer activities in various jurisdictions (Berenson, 2009) as well as the

continuous evolvement of the concept. Nevertheless, “at its core, cause lawyering

is about using legal skills to pursue ends and ideals that transcend client service –

be those ideals social, cultural, political, economic or, indeed legal”(Scheingold

& Sarat, 2004, p. 3). In that sense, cause lawyers “construct and transform the

boundary between law and politics, fabricating political action with legal tools

and legal action that responds to political necessity”(Sarat & Scheingold,

2005, p. 9). In fact, cause lawyers “expressly seek clients with whom they

agree and causes in which they believe”(Scheingold & Sarat, 2004, p. 9, qtng

Simon, 1984). In that sense, cause lawyers are said to not only become advocates

“for their clients but for causes and, one might say, for their own beliefs”(2004,

p. 9). The deﬁning attributes of cause lawyers therefore are moral and/or politi-

cal commitment (Sarat & Scheingold, 2005). Given this, cause lawyering has

been associated with many movements from labor, the environment, consumers

to feminism including those opposing poverty and other inequalities. Cause

lawyers also want to “protect the rights of impoverished criminal defendants,

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF THE LEGAL PROFESSION 133

prisoners, immigrants and marginalized groups more generally”(Scheingold &

Bloom, 1998, p. 210).

Despite the tendency to link cause lawyering to social movements, this does

not need to be so. “Causes are abstract moral or political ideals or are embodied

in organizations, institutions and social movements”(Sarat & Scheingold, 2005,

p. 10). In fact, a cause not only evolves through experiences and circumstances

and therefore is a “social construct”but is also produced by cause lawyers

through shaping, naming and voicing it (Shamir Chinski, 1998). In other

words, the inﬂuence of the cause on the lawyer and the lawyer on the cause

seems reciprocal since there is social learning for attorneys that comes from

day to day representation of marginalized persons (Barclay & Marshall, 2005).

In fact, experiencing new legal values, a different legal practice and human

relations led to huge changes in outlook and understanding of the law

(Hilbink, 2006).

It should be noted that the most recent literature about cause lawyering is

about the offensive use of the law. In other words, law and litigation are deployed

as a “sword”(Sarat & Scheingold, 2006, p. 10) against injustices. However, the

law has also been used defensively, as a “shield”(2006, p. 10). For instance,

cause lawyers ended up defending activists of direct action campaigns as they

did in the civil rights movement in the US between 1960 and 1965 who

engaged in both legal action and mass protest depending on the context

(Hilbink, 2006). When there is opportunity, attorneys may also act “to keep

people out of jail”(2006, p. 72) and “saw their presence as ‘value’” (2006,p.

77). In the Third World, “Brazil, India, Indonesia, Peru, South Africa and Zim-

babwe”(Ellmann, 1998, p. 368), cause lawyers’work similarly focused on

defense of “ﬁrst generation civil and political rights”(1998, p. 358) including

assisting people in detention.

There are many ways to engage in cause lawyering. Even a corporate lawyer in

a pro bono program or a salaried attorney in a small ﬁrm may be acting as a

cause lawyer if he or she engages in cause lawyering (Scheingold & Sarat,

2004). In fact, they can be described as marginal cause lawyers while those

very actively engaged in cause lawyering may be described as core cause

lawyers (Sarat & Scheingold, 2005). In other words, one does not need to con-

stantly practice law as a cause lawyer to be deﬁned as such.

Given all this, a preliminary look at the activities of volunteer attorneys at

Gezi seems to ﬁt cause lawyering. First, legal skills were used to pursue ends

and ideals that transcend client service. These ranged from buying food for

detainees when they were brought to the court house, to distribution of leaﬂets

during the occupation of the park that explained rights under detention. Second,

attorneys’initial causes seem to be political ideals such as the environment or an

objection to commercialization of urban space as can be seen by their partici-

pation in direct action. Nevertheless, these causes were transformed in a very

short time through the circumstance of police violence. In other words, in the

134 I. ELVERIŞ

face of massive violation of rights and liberties (Ayata et al., 2013) the cause

seems to have turned into protection of detainees. Accordingly, politically

charged legal activities were used such as attempts to stop illegal detentions as

they were happening on the street. In serving this new cause, attorneys used

the law defensively against government intrusions with particular claims such

as respect for and protection of rights and liberties. In so doing, they replaced

their initial direct action through legal means. However, when the occupation

of the park ended with a police raid, cause lawyering also came to an end, at

least for those who were not subsequently charged.

It should be said that neither the Gezi events nor cause lawyering came about

as a result of a social movement. At the same time, the CLA, can be described as

the core cause lawyers at Gezi while ‘attorneys of the plazas’and other solo prac-

titioners who had less or no such experience can be described as marginal cause

lawyers. Together they were a mixed group of people, some practicing labor law

but involved in representing lefty student organizations or groups in political

cases. Some were practicing corporate law and occasionally took criminal

cases that involved the criminal side of corporate matters such as embezzlement,

fraud and tax evasion. Some had a mixed practice including domestic violence

and LGBTI cases. In any case, their coming together occurred spontaneously.

Nevertheless, there are signs that the experience created a memorable precedent

for future cooperation and a practice style among attorneys. Some may be

involved in other causes as this experience might have sown the seeds of estab-

lishing or joining a cause group, a social movement or simply translate into an

increased willingness to volunteer or act as a cause lawyer. In fact, seven of the

ten attorneys said they had prior experience of volunteering mostly by lawyering.

While cause lawyering is “more likely to ﬂourish in liberal democratic set-

tings”(Scheingold & Sarat, 2004, p. 131), it also appeared in transition to democ-

racy countries such as Argentina and Brazil (Meili, 1998); in South Africa during

apartheid or Southeast Asia where the basic rule of tenets were lacking (Schein-

gold & Sarat, 2004); or in an authoritarian political environment like Hong Kong

where a rights-receptive judiciary, a government-funded legal aid system and an

autonomous legal profession were already in place (Tam, 2010). In such a non-

liberal setting, cause lawyering is ‘defensive’where the goal is “to protect individ-

uals from arbitrary treatment and repression by the state”(Berenson, 2009,p.

483). In this case, achieving the values and norms of a liberal state “becomes

one of the overriding objectives of cause lawyers”(Scheingold & Sarat, 2004,

p. 132).

When viewed from that context, Turkey has a long tradition of being an elec-

toral democracy but democratic consolidation remains elusive (Özbudun, 2011).

In fact, following the 2010 referendum,

“Turkey’s already imperfect judicial

checks and balances appear to have been dismantled and further politicized”

(Iğsız, 2014, p. 29). Indeed, there are worries about growing authoritarianism

(Özel, 2014) and the rule of law institutions, “always a rare commodity”

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF THE LEGAL PROFESSION 135

(2014, p. 17), being dismantled. At the same time, its judiciary historically has

been established as an institution to protect the republic, hence the state

(Özman, 2001). As a result, its Constitutional Court has been dubbed as a “guar-

dian of the State”(Shambayati, 2002), a reputation earned by frequently closing

down political parties than its peers elsewhere and failing to protect human

rights and defend democratic principles. Trial and appellate courts in Turkey

have also not been different from the Constitutional Court, especially when it

came to Kurds (Bayır, 2013).

In addition, the judicial system in Turkey is a bureaucratic one. In such a

system, prosecutors and judges are civil servants who, after graduation from

law school, enter the judicial service. As a result of the bureaucratic system,

they are rotated to serve in many parts of the country as they progress through-

out their career. Their transfers and promotions are made by an independent

council, the High Council of Judges and Prosecutors, on the basis of seniority,

good legal judgment and other criteria evaluated on a biannual basis. It

should be noted that in this system, prosecutors are lumped together with

judges and enjoy almost the same immunities although they perform different

functions. In their initial years, judges and prosecutors serve in less attractive

parts of the country but as part of this rotation system, move to big cities

over time. It is said that this frequent change of venue breeds a statist mentality

and small town morality among the cadres of the judiciary (Özsu, 2013). The

professional socialization of judges and prosecutors is to keep themselves separ-

ate from society as well as attorneys. Not surprisingly, attorneys complain that

judges and prosecutors do not see them as equals (Elveris, 2014). In other

words, when it comes to the legal profession in Turkey, the Bar and attorneys

are on one side and judges and prosecutors are on the other, with the latter

group enjoying more prestige than the former.

Although the Istanbul Bar was established as early as 1878 by foreign

nationals practicing law in the Ottomon Empire, the ﬁrst Act on Attorneys

had to wait for the proclamation of the Republic of Turkey in 1923. Two

years later, as in many Continental European countries, the profession was

established top down by state action. As a result, like many free professions,

the legal profession and the Bar had to participate in state formation until the

1950s. This was necessary because the republic which constituted a rupture

with the Ottoman Empire was not established with the popular will of the

people but rather top down, following a war of independence, by state elites.

Accordingly, it needed to legitimize itself to the people. As the enlightened

cadres of society, professionals were the natural allies of the Westward

looking regime. Legal professionals played an especially important role in that

regard because the promise of the new and modernist republic was based on

legal reforms. From clothing and hat reform to adoption of the Western calendar

and metric system and in toto adoption of Civil, Criminal, Commercial and Pro-

cedural Laws from Western European countries, every aspect of life in Turkey

136 I. ELVERIŞ

was changed with laws. Lawyers were needed to help with enforcing them, ren-

dering support for the republic. Hence, the ﬁrst university of the republic was a

law school established in Ankara in 1925 the same date as the Act on Attorneys

was passed.

As the oldest and the most crowded bar in the country, the Istanbul Bar

initially resisted these efforts of the republic. However, when its elected president

was removed and members were purged from practice, it eventually submitted.

In return for supporting the republic, the attorneys not only became a profession

but the bars were able to compel attorneys to mandatory membership. They

completed the professional project by establishing “supply control and regu-

lation of production by producers”(Abel, 1986). With the introduction of the

multi-party democracy in the 1950s and the relative pluralism of the era,

however, the demands for independence of the profession grew (Özman,

2001). In the 1970s, the bars started voicing concerns about human rights and

democracy in the country. It was as late as the 2001 amendments when the

ﬁnal provisions constituting guardianship of the Ministry of Justice were

removed from the Act on Attorneys limiting the possibility of government inter-

ference. Today, with over 86,000 attorneys,

bars can be described as auton-

omous although there are still possibilities for government interference. For

instance, criminalization of professional activity has recently been expanded

to new areas such as environmental activism (Iğsız, 2014). As a result, attorneys

have been detained in political cases

while bars have been subject to

investigation.

In 1992, the government introduced criminal legal aid by provision of funds

and delegated its delivery to the bars. As a result, in each bar association, a crim-

inal legal aid service is established that is tasked with providing an attorney to the

criminal defendant upon request by one of the criminal justice actors at every

stage of the process. This structure creates a conﬂict of interest as the Bar is

torn to balance the interests of the public and its members. On the one hand,

the public must be provided with quality legal aid with proper checks and moni-

toring of attorneys given the public funds used for it. On the other hand, being

established to protect the interests of attorneys, bar members resist scrutiny by

claiming independence while the Bar is expected to defend the same line. The

existing structure also creates a dependency for government funds despite the

Bar’s general push for more autonomy. Although research showed that there

are problems with the quality of criminal legal aid (Elveris et al., 2007), so far

they remain unaddressed.

At the same time, bars are stuck in a paradigm of supply control and regu-

lation of production by producers despite a huge increase in attorney

numbers since the 1980s (Elveris, 2014). They are unable to counter the increas-

ing competitive pressures created by new entrants to the profession through

stringent enforcement of ethical rules. To make things worse, adopted in

1971, the ﬁrst section of the ethical rules talks about the general rules of the

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF THE LEGAL PROFESSION 137

profession such as its independence and honor. The second section talks about

relations with the judiciary; the third about the relationship with colleagues; and

only as late as the fourth section do the rules focus on the client. While some

claim that there are historical reasons for this (Özman, 2001), the spirit of the

rules show that the profession is looking for recognition and legitimacy by

associating itself with the judiciary and not by serving society or clients. In

other words, ethical obligations towards clients are secondary in the self-right-

eous professional paradigm. For instance, a conﬂict of interest is conceptualized

as something that can happen between two different clients and not between the

client and the attorney, let alone between the client and attorney’s cause as may

be the case in cause lawyering. In fact, there is no ethical rule that expressly states

that attorneys should be zealous and neutral advocates for their clients.

Given the role played by the state in its establishment, the profession is still

inclined to demand recognition by associating itself with the judiciary or

asking for the same privileges afforded to judges and prosecutors (Elveris,

2014) conveniently ignoring that they are civil servants while attorneys are

not. In addition, bars are inclined to demand work from the state such as the

introduction of mandatory legal representation to ﬁle a claim or similar. All

of this neglects the free profession side of the profession that serves the

society and obtains clients through market mechanisms. Accordingly, the Bar

has also been reluctant to support volunteering of attorneys or pro bono activi-

ties that is happening in an increasingly vibrant civil society scene. In fact, there

is an attempt to change the current Act on Attorneys dating from 1969 to reﬂect

these changes in the world and the profession. However, the bars’reactions to

the draft law have not been positive. In such a professional and ethical setting,

I was interested in exploring what ethical issues may arise when members of

the Bar engage in volunteering or cause lawyering.

Good cause lawyering is “more about developing an emotional connection

with the client”(Bloom, 2008, p. 15). Indeed, cause lawyering contradicts the tra-

ditional view of a neutral advocate because cause lawyers do not maintain “what

Max Weber might call a rational distance from the client”(Krishnan, 2006,p.

582). Deﬁned transgressive, this type of practice violates one of the most

accepted or imposed social boundaries in the profession, the principle of neu-

trality (Scheingold & Bloom, 1998), believed to be necessary for distance from

the client to produce cool rationality. Lacking neutrality may indeed endanger

lawyers as it creates an identiﬁcation with a client, especially in an illiberal

rights setting like Turkey where criminalization of professional activity has

not been uncommon. In addition, cause lawyering is said to undermine the

duty of loyalty to a client that an attorney not put herself into a conﬂict of inter-

est since “the pursuit of her cause may at times conﬂict with the client’s interest”

(Etienne, 2005, p. 1197). However, it has been argued that in the criminal

context, having a dedicated lawyer to a cause may be a preferable option since

“cause lawyers use their skills to pursue ends and ideals that transcend client

138 I. ELVERIŞ

service”(2005, p. 1198). Cause lawyers also seem to think that “the more closely

they identify with their clients’values, the better advocates they will be”(Schein-

gold & Sarat, 2004, p. 9 qtng Sterett, 1998).

Given all this, it may not be surprising that volunteer attorneys complained

mostly about the unethical actions of their non-volunteering colleagues who

allegedly badmouthed them through social media than recognizing their

own ethical violations towards their clients. On the other hand, some attor-

neys did not have experience in criminal law but did not see this as a possible

violation of an ethical rule towards the client. Nevertheless, some were con-

cerned that their inexperience might prejudice the rights of criminal defen-

dants since once a police or prosecutor statement is provided with the

presence of counsel, it is later difﬁcult to change. Lastly, few attorneys were

dismissed by their fee paying clients for not sparing enough time for them

due to being involved in Gezi events but the attorneys did not view this as

an ethical issue.

3. Methodology

This is a qualitative study to understand the phenomenon of volunteerism that

arose during the Gezi Park events in Istanbul in June 2013. In order to answer

the research questions, people who volunteered as an attorney were selected

using a snowball sample. As the goal was to gain a deeper understanding of

voluntarism rather than to give a representative picture of volunteer attorneys,

the sample was small. The number of volunteer attorneys who were actively

engaged were said to be 100 or just above 100,

distributed between the main

police station handling the events and the main court house on the European

side of Istanbul. Indeed, the sample includes attorneys who were engaged for

three days only, those who were there all the time, as well as those who are

still pursuing Gezi cases on a volunteer basis.

Overall, 12 in-depth interviews were conducted between March and April

2014 in which questions were semi-structured. Only ten were used. Two of

the ten attorneys were connected with the core cause lawyering group CLA. It

was therefore viewed unnecessary to analyze the remaining two who were also

members of the Association. Attorneys were asked how many days they

worked and what kind of actions they undertook during the events; whether

they had acted as a criminal defense attorney before; why they volunteered

and whether they had volunteered before; and the difference between volunteer

and paid work. They were also asked to describe their clients and whether they

experienced any ethical issues during the events.

The average age of the attorney interviewee was 35, only seven years older

than the Gezi demonstrators (KONDA, 2014) translating on average to ten

years of professional experience. The interviews lasted on average for 54

minutes (the longest taking 72, the shortest 35 minutes). All but one of the

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF THE LEGAL PROFESSION 139

interviews were tape recorded. Upon transcription, they were coded with the

assistance of software and analyzed.

Three of the volunteer attorneys interviewed were male and seven were

female. This imbalance is the result of a special effort to include in the sample

‘attorneys of the plazas’who seem to have been mostly female. Nevertheless,

the current gender balance among the members of the Istanbul Bar

is increas-

ingly being challenged by the feminization in the profession especially among

the young. Given that, if the three corporate attorneys were excluded, there

would be a more balanced gender distribution.

Once the attorney interviews were completed, it was clear that a self-congra-

tulatory heroic picture emerged. Therefore, it was thought that an outsider view

of the volunteer lawyering could increase the reliability of the ﬁndings, and

provide an opportunity to observe some structural factors that contributed to

the emergence of cause lawyering. As a result, another set of interviews was con-

ducted with prosecutors between July and August 2014. The prosecutors were

also asked how long they had worked in the investigation of the Gezi events

and what kinds of activities they had undertaken. They were asked about the

possible reason for attorneys’volunteering, their proﬁle and the quality of

the defense work performed. Lastly, they were also asked about the proﬁle of

the detainees.

The prosecutor interviews were not analyzed separately but were used to

conﬁrm or contrast the perspectives of the attorneys. There were in total ﬁve

prosecutors who were engaged in the investigation phase of the events either

by being on-call or –as the events continued –by being tasked by the chief pro-

secutor to speciﬁcally serve in the investigation phase during the three week

events. Four agreed to be interviewed who were all male (about 90% of prosecu-

tors are male in Turkey), had on average 33 years of experience as a prosecutor,

with an age average of 58. Throughout their career, they acted in various prose-

cutorial capacities including as chief prosecutor. Clearly, they had three times

more experience as the volunteer attorneys given the promotion and transfer

system of prosecutors in Turkey which will be explained further below. The

average length of the prosecutor interview was 50 minutes (the longest taking

79, the shortest 29 minutes).

4. Findings and discussion

An understanding of the activities of volunteer attorneys is necessary in order to

see whether they amount to cause lawyering. The ﬁrst steps of attorneys seem to

have been to set up a 24-hour on-call system and to get organized among them-

selves by using social media tools such as Facebook and Twitter. These tools

were also used to learn of and share detention information as well as inform

families of the detainees. Thereafter, regular legal activities such as representing

detainees in police interrogation and prosecutor statement were undertaken by

140 I. ELVERIŞ

almost all participants. As the events progressed, however, attorneys soon rea-

lized that representation was necessary at every step of the process given the

scale of police violence.

Indeed, all participants spoke of it and gave the follow-

ing examples: excessive and indiscriminate use of tear gas; physical and verbal

assault of detainees or protesters (and use of tactics such as ‘assault and

release’); directly aiming at their organs with gas capsules (one protester was

dragged, his eye poked with a rod and was then thrown towards a ﬁre); the

use of real bullets; attempted detentions in hospitals; prevention of health

checks according to doctor–patient privacy; holding detainees incommunicado

or for hours in detention buses in the summer heat without allowing any needs

to be attended to, including toilet; withholding detainee information; strip

searching of women; verbal and physical assault of attorneys; not giving water

and food to detainees or throwing food on ﬂoors.

In response, teams of three or four attorneys were set up and sent to hospitals

to accompany health checks to ensure that they were proceeding in compliance

with doctor–patient privacy and not in the presence of the very police ofﬁcers

who may have physically abused the detainees.

This was also necessary for

documenting the abuse. Similarly, detention buses were attended while detainees

waited in them to be processed. At the detention centers, attorneys checked

whether detainees were being given food and brought cookies, water and clean-

ing wipes for them. In addition, they did awareness raising and monitoring

activities by going to Gezi Park during its occupation and to make-shift hospitals

to distribute legal leaﬂets and answer questions regarding legal relief against

police violence and about rights in detention. Teams also went to places

where the police was intervening more frequently to monitor police behavior

–at times they literally took people from the police’s hands;

and checked

open spaces for detainees possibly being held incommunicado during the

heyday of the events.

When viewed from the theoretical framework, the activities of the attorneys

can indeed be described as cause lawyering. First, they used law-related means

–legal representation as well as other law-related actions –such as: awareness

raising in the park; attending health checks or detention buses; securing evidence

or issuing self-serving records reﬂecting illegal practices. In fact, attending health

checks or monitoring police interventions shows that they used their presence as

a“value”(Hilbink, 2006). Second, all the interviewed attorneys were among the

protesters before the mass detentions started. This shows they shared the politi-

cal goals or causes of the demonstrators. However, after the detentions, their

causes were transformed to protection of rights and liberties, a good example

of a cause evolving through experiences and circumstances (Shamir &

Chinski, 1998) as well as the reciprocal effects of cause on the lawyer and the

lawyer on the cause. Third, attorneys were willing to undertake political activities

or tactics as the situation required –including causing mayhem to stop or deter

police detentions on the streets or hiding in waiting to count detainees when

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF THE LEGAL PROFESSION 141

they were taken out of the police station (because attorneys were denied that

information).

This ﬂexible use of the law recognized that mass detention cases need a differ-

ent strategy and creative ways of intervention. As a result, attorneys not only

organized themselves to attend all steps of the process but also acted like go-

betweens between the police and the detainees by stepping into detention

buses. In so doing, they were able to assess whether detainees needed urgent

medical attention before providing any legal assistance. They even collected ciga-

rettes from the courts of the clerks to allow them a puff before they provided

their prosecutor statements. All of this shows that attorneys transcended

regular client service. In fact, some deliberately refrained from keeping the pro-

fessional attorney–client distance because they viewed this as necessary for

developing the correct defense as well as building the conﬁdence of the

client.

More importantly, it was a case of defensive cause lawyering, to

protect individuals from repression by the state (Berenson, 2009) where law

was used as a shield (Sarat & Scheingold, 2006) to protect people’s right to

freedom of assembly just like in the civil rights movement in the US.

4.1. Reasons for the emergence of the voluntary work

4.1.1. The failure of criminal legal aid

The main reason for attorneys to volunteer in their dozens seems to be the slow

reaction of the Criminal Legal Aid Service. The Bar simply seems to have waited

for the regular form of attorney appointment to take its course which is done

through police stations by calling the legal aid service. However, some detainees

remained unaccounted for for hours by being kept in police buses. Some were

accounted for simply by the fact that they yelled their name when getting off

police buses or when being put in detention, another protester having circulated

their name in the social media. In sum, if the normal course of appointment was

waited for, people could have remained in the police’s hands for hours.

In that regard, responses indicate various problems with the organization of

criminal legal aid. First, the requirement that counsel be appointed only through

one of the criminal justice system actors upon the demand of the suspect at the

police station (or giving a statement at the prosecution or court) and not through

an acquaintance or a relative is merely a bureaucratic hurdle in regular events.

However, it becomes ‘the problem’in mass events because in those events, the

police acts like a ‘party’. Because it was a party, it was emotionally tense.

Further, the events were handled by the riot police rather than the regular neigh-

borhood police station ofﬁcers that one sees in individual cases. Thus, police vio-

lence is exacerbated by the police attitude seen in these cases. By their tenseness,

unwillingness to share information and sometimes by keeping the detainees

incommunicado, the police delayed and made the appointment of criminal

legal aid attorneys through normal channels impossible.

142 I. ELVERIŞ

Further, as the responsible authority which runs the Criminal Legal Aid

Service, the Bar seems to have been unable or unwilling to adapt to the needs

dictated by the situation and acted indifferently in the name of not rocking

the boat. In other words, it wanted to continue with its automated appointment

system to keep criminal legal aid lawyers in its roster happy when it was clear

that it was not delivering to the needs of the detainees. In addition, a regular

criminal legal aid attorney gets paid according to a tariff for either representation

at police or court stage

but many activities undertaken by volunteer attorneys

that were responsive to the circumstances were not among the listed items in the

minimum fee tariff. At the same time, even if the appointment system was

working, the criminal legal aid lawyers might still have been ineffective, given

the fact that their trainings no longer cover advocacy in mass detention cases.

There appear to be other training-related problems especially in terms of

ethics as some attorneys expressed concern that the political heterogeneity of

criminal legal aid lawyers could have hampered proper defense of the detainees.

In other words, volunteer attorneys strongly identiﬁed with the demonstrators

and thus put up a ﬁght for them as well as for their causes as evinced by their

out of tariff activities. There were thus concerns that the criminal legal aid

lawyers who did not identify with the causes of Gezi, either because they believed

the government rhetoric that the events were an attempt to overthrow the gov-

ernment or who simply did not approve of street protests, would not do as good

a job.

Nevertheless, the initial hesitation of the Bar seems to have changed when

members of the CLA and other volunteer attorneys, especially those who were

politically active even before the Gezi events, put pressure on the Bar to

obtain its support. As a result, one of the phone lines of the Bar was taken

over and an on-call system was set up that mimicked the Criminal Legal Aid

Service. Appointments were made for the Gezi detainees from a list speciﬁcally

created. A crisis desk recorded the names of the detainees, the wounded and

listed the complaints. In addition, a minivan was assigned to the volunteers

that on the peak day of the events ended up rescuing doctors, people and the

wounded by driving through barricades and tear gas. Later, even a make-shift

hospital was established at the Bar’s premises in a room that is usually reserved

for training.

4.1.2. Identiﬁcation with the Gezi protesters and their causes

The second reason for volunteering seems to be attorneys’identiﬁcation with the

causes and their compassion (Bloom, 2008) towards the demonstrators. This

was evident not only by the fact that all of the interviewed attorneys were

among the protesters before detentions started but also by the language used

for the detainees. Pointing out their youth, all but one referred to the protesters

as “kids”. It is only normal then where “these kids”have in the words of an attor-

ney “thrown themselves at the ﬁre”, in a way their brothers and sisters also had

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF THE LEGAL PROFESSION 143

to do extraordinary things for them, as one would do in the family, such as col-

lecting cigarettes from courts’clerks to allow them a smoke before appearing at

the prosecution or waiting in hiding to count detainees getting off police buses

when they were denied that information.

One prosecutor also used the word “kids”when he said that he gave advice to

them. Similarly, another prosecutor observed that although attorneys did not

know the detainees, the eagerness and enthusiasm to represent them was at a

level seen in very few cases or investigations in his career, as if attorneys were

appearing to represent themselves or their relatives. Another example of this

kinship language was used in an anecdote relayed by an attorney. Apparently,

when the prosecutor asked the detainee whether (s)he was afraid and whether

(s)he knew why (s)he was brought in [there], (s)he replied: “No I am not

scared, I would do it again, I would go out to the street again”to which the pro-

secutor then said “of course you should not be scared, you are the children of this

country”.

Attorneys’perception as to the age and education of detainees seems

to be supported by research.

The following anecdote of a detainee about 18–20 years of age is also signiﬁ-

cant as it epitomizes qualities attributed to the ‘kids’. As relayed by his attorney,

he came to Istanbul to work in the kindergarten of the Gezi Park. When he was

detained, there was only a can of spray paint in his bag that could be considered

as a tool for crime. In the eyes of a prosecutor, this could be used to write grafﬁti

on the walls and cause problems. His lawyer, therefore, tried to convince him to

give a statement that accommodated this ‘truth’. In her words:

at the kindergarten, he does hand printing with the kids and this is the truth. This is not

a story to fool me or the prosecutor.(…) This is why there really are small plastic

gloves in his bag. To prevent children’s hands from getting dirty. (..). In addition,

he does other art works, like building a wall for the library. When the Gezi Park inci-

dent ends well, he will tear down that wall and that will symbolize the breaking of

certain taboos in our head.

When he gave this exact statement to the prosecutor, he was referred directly to

court with a demand to be put in pretrial custody along with a look to his attor-

ney as to “what he was talking about”. The attorney explained to the prosecutor

the situation in the park, to no avail. At the court, the same story was repeated

with the judge who luckily released him. While the story shows that the young

man was almost going to be put in pretrial custody for his principles, and can be

interpreted as a sign of political naivety of a person inexperienced with the crim-

inal justice system, it can also be read as his faith in convincing with the truth

and legitimacy of his actions.

It is not a surprise then that prosecutors made a distinction between the

“sincere and innocent”demonstrators who initiated the protests and those

with connections to illegal organizations who joined the protests later, were

violent and came prepared for clashes with the police. The former were

144 I. ELVERIŞ

people with ideas and a feeling of responsibility regarding the country and did

not conform to the proﬁle of the usual criminal. Attorneys also said that the

demonstrators had no prior connection with the police; they had attended a

rally for the ﬁrst time in their lives and were apolitical, a situation best illustrated

by the above anecdote regarding the spray paint. There were other qualities

ascribed to the detainees such as being integrated with the world, educated; cher-

ishing rights and liberties. On the other hand, elder demonstrators were

described with an emphasis on their professions as doctors and engineers; as

representatives of professional organizations and academics while some men-

tioned their ethnic or sexual background as Alevis, LGBTI and Kurdish.

In addition to identiﬁcation with the protesters, volunteer attorneys seem to

have had other motivations such as self-expression,

a sense of moral impera-

tive

and participation in a historical event

(Özel, 2014) all of which indicate

harmonization of personal conviction and professional life as in cause lawyer-

ing.

Indeed, all but two attorneys stressed the uniqueness of the Gezi events

by calling it a “landmark”,a“breaking point”that created the “Gezi spirit”

which some referred to as the “difference of Gezi”.

Further, participants indi-

cated that it transformed their political views by sensitizing them to the suffering

of Kurds and the LGBTI. Coming together with people they were previously pre-

judiced against or had no prior contact with, attorneys seem to have experienced

their “moments of truth”

indicating social learning in cause lawyering that

comes from day to day representation of marginalized persons (Barclay &

Marshall, 2005).

In addition, cause lawyering seems to have contributed to collegial learning by

bringing young attorneys together with seasoned criminal defense attorneys

whereby the former learned from the latter. It also seems to have created a

“style of practice”.

Similarly, on 1 May 2015 when Istanbul’s Taksim Square

was again declared off limits to demonstrators, workers decided they would

try to break the police siege of the square. In response, attorney groups circulated

in social media a call for volunteer attorneys to work in hospitals, police stations,

court houses and streets to assist possible detainees. These indicate changes in

outlook on lawyering by seeing the presence of a lawyer as valuable in ﬁghting

against government crackdowns. It also shows a developing understanding

through different legal practice and human relations (Hilbink, 2006). It is there-

fore not a surprise that most of the attorneys said that the Gezi process was not

yet over giving continuing street protests as evidence.

4.2. Ethical problems observed during the Gezi events

Participants were asked whether they encountered any ethical problems in vol-

unteer representation. In response, all but one participant gave examples of

unethical behavior by non-volunteering colleagues who, through social media,

made untrue allegations regarding volunteer attorneys. These included things

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF THE LEGAL PROFESSION 145

like: they were earning hefty sums of money; some were known to be represent-

ing lefty and Kurdish terrorists; they were targets of hate speech; and some were

accused of using social media for self-promotion. Other forms of unethical

behavior included seeking private representation during Gezi events or attempts

to hide documents from colleagues. These replies indicate that just like the

ethical rules in Turkey, attorneys prioritize the violations of colleagues

towards them over their own actions towards clients.

Nevertheless, attorneys mentioned ethical violations towards clients when

responding to other questions. For instance, attorneys said they neglected

their own paid work and not only experienced ﬁnancial problems but also

lost money and clients. However, this was not recognized as an ethical

problem. Further, the inexperience of some volunteer attorneys in criminal

law was worrying for some attorneys but the inexperience was not viewed as

an ethical violation towards the client. Given the scale of police violence in

the Gezi events, attorneys may be condoned for seeing their presence as valuable

(Hilbink, 2006). To be fair, attorneys did things to rectify such shortcomings. For

instance, experienced attorneys explained to inexperienced ones what to do in a

criminal law setting and made themselves available for questions while provid-

ing training on the spot.

Other tactics included appearing before police or pro-

secution statement in pairs, or making sure that inexperienced attorneys took on

less important tasks such as attending health checks at hospitals. Where prose-

cutors referred detainees to pretrial custody, representation was provided by

more experienced attorneys.

It was indicated earlier that ethical rules in Turkey emphasize duties towards

colleagues before duties towards clients. Attorneys’responses show that this may

have conditioned attorneys to focus on unethical actions undertaken by col-

leagues towards them rather than their own actions towards clients. It is never-

theless problematical that failing to spare enough time for fee paying clients due

to Gezi events, and thereby being ﬁred by the client, was not seen as an ethical

violation. It shows that bars need to do more to enforce the ethical rules. Given

the lack of ethical vision, there was also no recognition of ethical issues that may

arise in a cause lawyering setting such as transgression of boundaries hurting the

professional distance towards the client or leading to conﬂicts of interest

between the client and the cause, notwithstanding attorneys’strong identiﬁ-

cation with the protesters. At the same time, the political heterogeneity of crim-

inal legal aid attorneys being viewed as something that may prevent them from

providing a proper defense is also an indication for better ethics training.

5. Structural factors contributing to cause lawyering

Thus far, it has been argued that a political crisis like the Gezi events can trigger

cause lawyering. Nevertheless, there were also structural elements such as legal

aid, the Bar’s autonomy and judicial independence that contributed to the

146 I. ELVERIŞ

emergence of cause lawyering. To start with the ﬁrst, although beset with pro-

blems (Elveris et al., 2007),

legal aid did so in an ironic way. While it was

the failure of legal aid that seems to have triggered attorneys to volunteer, it

nevertheless served as a model because volunteer attorneys used its structure

and procedures such as its on-call system. Further, the existence of govern-

ment-funded legal aid for over 20 years seems to have so legitimized legal rep-

resentation at all stages of the criminal justice process that none of the actors

questioned that it was done on an unpaid basis

during the events. This accep-

tance is all the more interesting when one considers that the overall represen-

tation rate with counsel before criminal courts is not higher than 10%

cases where legal representation is not mandatory (Jahic & Elveris, 2010).

On the other hand, the events also show that the Bar ﬁnds it difﬁcult to

balance the interests of the public vis-à-vis its members. As the increasing attor-

ney numbers and competition threaten the solidarity-based structure of the pro-

fession, the Bar’s claim that too many law schools have been opened and the

graduates of these schools (entering the profession with ease given there is no

bar exam) have reduced the quality in the profession, is missing the global

picture. In other words, growing demand for higher education including legal

education, a phenomenon witnessed in the West in the 1980s, will continue

to bring an ever-increasing number of colleagues into the profession with or

without a bar exam and will contribute to the erosion of the professional

project. At the same time, criminal legal aid is a source of income for new

members. Junior colleagues are said to increasingly vote for administrations

that support the continuation of these mechanisms because in their initial

years of practice they rely on cases coming from legal aid. Given all this, the

initial hesitation of the Bar when volunteers suggest replacing criminal legal

aid appointments becomes understandable. Nevertheless, even in the face of

gross human rights violations, the Bar was inclined to prioritize the interests

of attorneys in criminal legal aid than to protect the detainees.

Notwithstanding the above conﬂict of interest, the importance of an auton-

omous profession for cause lawyering is clear. As the largest bar organization

in Turkey, the Istanbul Bar also has “high politicization”(Ongun & Hassan,

2013, p. 143) that started in the 1970s. Its autonomy allows it to often use “pro-

fessional issues in terms of general interest and democracy”. The same can be

said for the Union of Turkish Bar Associations (Elveris, 2014). As a result,

despite being engulfed in judicial struggles with the government at the time,

the Istanbul Bar contributed to cause lawyers through a phone line, minivan,

other tools and opening its premises. Further, despite the dependency of its

junior members on criminal legal aid funds dispersed by the government, it

did not hesitate in confronting the government through these actions all of

which indicate high autonomy.

Lastly, the prosecutors have been able to adopt a judicially independent pos-

ition in the events. One of the major factors contributing to this is the promotion

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF THE LEGAL PROFESSION 147

system. Prosecutors in big cities like Istanbul usually have at least 15–20 years of

experience when they are ﬁrst posted there. They accumulate experience by

having served in many prosecutorial bureaus and capacities in various places

in the country. Indeed, the interviewed prosecutors were very senior and had

on average 33 years of professional experience. As a result, they have high

status and therefore enjoy more independence than their junior counterparts.

Their independent stance manifested in many ways. First, all but one of them

said that the events were a reaction to the government. Second, they carefully

distinguished between the “sincere and innocent”demonstrators with no crim-

inal record who were by implication legitimate and the later involved “terrorist

organizations”who were illegitimate. Third, recognizing the government’s

inability to deescalate the events

and the police’s failure to contain the demon-

strators, they seem to have taken it upon themselves to establish law and order.

This was evident in their decisions

concerning the release of detainees or

sometimes ordering detentions to reduce tensions and “not because they com-

mitted a crime”. Similarly, by referring detainees for pretrial custody only

when they all decided unanimously,

by taking the initiative to instruct police

chiefs to change riot police ofﬁcers frequently,

by giving advice to young ofﬁ-

cers to disobey unlawful orders

and by warning the detainees that criminal

records may prevent them in the future from becoming civil servants, they

seem to have adopted an independent stance towards all the actors.

There is an additional layer of independence in prosecution–police relations.

Prosecutors are familiar with problems of police work in mass events. There

appear to be many of them: ﬁrst of all, the investigations are insufﬁcient and

the police fail to collect evidence. One of the contributing factors here seems

to be that the documents are not prepared on the spot of detention and not

by the ofﬁcer(s) making the detention but upon arrival at the police station

(post arrest) by different ofﬁcers. Further, when there is documentation, then

they do not have the necessary clarity, preciseness

or legal terminology

serve the evidentiary purpose they are supposed to in the investigation or

later in court.

In addition, there are problems with the riot police in terms of their youth,

and thereby inexperience and lack of moderation to deal with tense situations. In

addition, the young ofﬁcers seem unable to resist their superiors especially

because they are at the start of their careers. Given all this, the prosecutors’

course of action in the Gezi events seems to have been to strike a balance

between the police and the demonstrators, a task expected from them in an

inquisitorial criminal justice system by balancing crime prevention with over-

sight of the police while also guarding rights and liberties. In addition, in

mass events, both the police and the prosecutors seem to be under time pressure

while being overwhelmed by the number of detainees. Therefore, the prosecu-

tion appears to be less tolerant of police failure which contributes to the high

number of people released. While this shows that the state, although

148 I. ELVERIŞ

authoritarian in nature, consists of many institutions that have different con-

straints and is far from monolithic, it also shows that the rules and standards

of procedure are “geared to discrete, individual offenses and not easily

adopted to mass violations”(Badbus, 1973, p. 14). As a result, establishing indi-

vidual responsibility becomes difﬁcult and there is a “temptation to resort to

administrative procedures”(1973, p. 14) that focus on “the legality of the

arrest and the adequacy of post arrest procedures”(1973, p. 15).

Prosecutors’balancing act is made all the more difﬁcult given the fact that

there is no separate judicial police

in Turkey that is solely working for the judi-

ciary under their hierarchy. In other words, prosecutors oversee what the police

do in the criminal law context but they are not the police’s administrative

superiors. As a consequence of the former, prosecutors depend on the police

to collect evidence in investigations but as a consequence of the latter, they

also have to be on good terms with the police. This probably explains why

none of them mentioned police violence as an issue while all attorneys spoke

about it. Although for at least half of the demonstrators it was the major

reason to attend Gezi (KONDA, 2014) and intensely fought against by attorneys,

for prosecutors complaints regarding police violence were merely to be referred

to the ‘bureau of civil servants’whose task includes investigation of criminal

offenses committed by the police. When speaking of it, prosecutors employed

a bureaucratic language saying that there were allegations of police ill treat-

ment

and that some detainees had visible wounds. Compounded with legal

protections that prevent investigation of police abuse that sometimes leads to

impunity in Turkey, this shows the limits of their independence. Nevertheless,

when taken together, structural factors –such as legal aid, an autonomous

legal profession and the prosecutorial independence vis-à-vis the government

and the police –seem to have contributed to the release of the detainees in

high numbers and thereby to the success of cause lawyering.

6. Conclusion

In this paper I intended to ﬁnd out the reasons for the emergence of volunteer

attorneys during the Gezi events and to explore ethical issues related to volunteer

representation. The actions of the volunteer attorneys show that they engaged in

defensive cause lawyering because they thought that criminal legal aid was not

working in a mass case like the Gezi events and felt a strong identiﬁcation

with the protesters who were subject to police violence. As a result, their

direct action in the streets was quickly transformed to representation. Core

and marginal cause lawyers seem to have worked together and they seem to

be socially and practice-wise inﬂuenced by the experience.

The continuing enthusiasm for volunteering, especially in political events ever

since the Gezi events, can be read as a sign that there may be more cause lawyer-

ing of the defensive sort to come, if the government crackdown on liberties

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF THE LEGAL PROFESSION 149

continues. It seems that this will be supported by an autonomous and politically

engaged legal profession as well as the legitimacy created by legal aid. An experi-

enced and relatively independent prosecution –at least in larger cities –may

continue to play its part although the interventions into the promotion system

of judges and prosecutors since the start of January 2014 as well as the domestic

security bill

adopted in Spring 2015 may make that harder unless reversed by a

new government that is yet to be formed.

Lastly, the ethical rules of 1971 seem insufﬁcient to address the ethical con-

cerns of today’s lawyering including cause lawyering. Their redrafting, strong

enforcement and training of lawyers especially in criminal legal aid will need

strong leadership from the Bar as well as a change of heart in the dominant dis-

course of the profession.

Notes

1. See: 2.5 milyon insan 79 ilde sokağa indi, Milliyet, 23 June 2013. Available at: http://

www.milliyet.com.tr/2-5-milyon-insan-79-ilde-sokaga/gundem/detay/1726600/

default.htm, last accessed 20 September 2014. Citing the Ministry of Interior, Özel

(2014) gives the number as 3.5 million in 4,725 events in 81 cities.

2. According to the Ministry of Interior, 4,900 people were detained, most of them in

Istanbul.

3. Half of the demonstrators were university graduates when in Turkey the number of

university graduates is one in ten (KONDA, 2014).

4. The website of the Association uses the word ‘progressive’instead of contemporary,

see: http://www.chd.org.tr/, accessed 23 July 2015.

5. According to the bylaws of the Association, its goals are: the development of law; the

enjoyment of increasing freedom of human-beings; the establishment of a legal system

based on democracy and protected by society; and the prevention of all violations of

basic human rights and dignity, primarily of the right to life. To achieve these goals,

its activities include: redrafting of anti-democratic laws; research and publication in

areas that serve its goals; provision of legal representation for those whose rights are

violated; protection of judicial independence, self-determination and the environment;

ﬁght against discrimination, patriarchy, the death penalty and child labor; advocacy of

legal policies that will provide development of society; organization of meetings, con-

ferences and rallies; and solidaristic goals among members.

6. This is a description of their place of work in high rise ofﬁce buildings usually for cor-

porate clients who mostly do transactional work with very little involvement in the

court.

7. There was widespread self-censorship in the mainstream media. Therefore, people

turned to social media for news.

8. In 2010, the government presented 26 constitutional amendments to the public for a

yes or no vote. The most important of the amendments, which were adopted with 58%

of the vote, pertained to the Constitutional Court and the High Council of Judges and

Prosecutors. Before the referendum, the government maintained that the judiciary was

independent but not impartial. Following the example of many EU countries, it intro-

duced changes to the structure of the High Council of Judges and Prosecutors (HCJP)

that handle the promotion and transfer of judicial personnel. The most important one

150 I. ELVERIŞ

was that a majority of the members of the Council were to be elected by judges and

prosecutors ensuring intra-institutional independence. However, following an anti-

corruption probe into the government in December 2013, the same government

claimed that the judiciary was invoking a judicial coup against it and amended the

very same law it championed before. Through this amendment, it removed the prose-

cutors who were investigating the corruption from their positions, over the cries of the

judiciary that the government was meddling in its affairs through attempted controls

of the HCJP, see the EU Progress Report of Turkey (2014).

9. As of 31 December 2014, the latest ﬁgure available from the Union of Turkish Bar

Associations gives the number of attorneys as 86,982. See: http://www.barobirlik.org.

tr/Detay39218.tbb, last accessed 19 May 2015.

10. See: 9 Human rights lawyers arrested in Istanbul. Available at: http://bianet.org/

english/human-rights/143740-9-human-rights-lawyers-arrested-in-istanbul, accessed

14 October 2014.

11. See: Prosecutor seeks court denunciation of Istanbul Bar Association Lawyers. Avail-

able at: http://www.todayszaman.com/newsDetail.action;jsessionid=jIUHcFnK6tn4

fzV9g±03vko1?newsId=276592&columnistId=0, accessed 14 October 2014.

12. It was said that 800 attorneys had their names written down in a list and in a call made

at the Bar, 300 actually appeared.

13. According to the Union of Turkish Bar Association, as of 31 December 2014, the

number of female attorneys in Istanbul is 15,070 and male attorneys number

18,279, giving 33,349 in total. See: http://www.barobirlik.org.tr/Detay39218.tbb,

accessed 25 July 2015.

14. It should be said that police violence against demonstrators is not new in Turkey

especially when these are for Kurdish or lefty causes. The difference with the Gezi

events in that regard was that the police violence was not conﬁned to a remote

Kurdish town in the Southeast of the country and to a few ‘marginal’lefty people

but was happening in the very city center of Istanbul to thousands of people.

Thanks to technology and the availability of smart phones, it was recorded and circu-

lated quickly given the self-censorship of the media. Thus, it became very visible and

raised huge resentment against the police and the media.

15. Another reason for accompanying protestors for the health checks was that some hos-

pitals were considered ‘suspect’as they were more frequently used by the police. In

response, the police resorted to tactics such as saying they were taking the detainees

to hospital A but would then take them to hospital B.

16. One of these attorneys said that even when acting as a protester, she advised people

standing close to her of their rights and instructed them to yell their name if put in

detention. Her duty was also to prevent unlawful detentions on the street. She did

so by arguing with the police and causing mayhem at the scene.

17. In a divorce case, it was possible to draw a line by not listening to boring details but in

cases that involved police violence or people who were subject to their ﬁrst detention or

who were worried that their family or employer was going to ﬁnd out about the deten-

tion, one had to be more involved.

18. Participants explained anecdotes to illustrate this slow reaction. For instance, despite the

mass detentions and the apparent fact that these persons would be brought to the court

the next day, it was one participant and his volunteer friends that had the locked door of

the Bar Room in the court house opened the next morning. Similarly, when she called

the Bar to seek help, its response was that “they”should set up a coordination desk.

19. At the same time, the Bar’s automated system which allocated cases and points to

attorneys according to the number of cases they took, could not be switched off

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF THE LEGAL PROFESSION 151

given the fact that there still were attorneys being appointed for regular murder and

theft cases taking place across the city during the events.

20. The Turkish word used by the prosecutor is ‘evlat’which means kid but with a more

emotional connotation than child.

21. KONDA found that the average age of demonstrators was 28, with almost 31% being

between 21 and 25 and 20% between 26 and 30 (KONDA, 2014).

22. One participant said that thanks to the events, he felt he was able to “breath again”.

Another said she volunteered out of her reaction to the government and what she

did was actually for herself.

23. A participant as young as 28 described herself as “their sister who could not sit at home

while they –as people born in 1990 or 1992 –were on the streets”. After the detentions,

they simply could not sit idly at home without doing anything, for it would feel like a

“betrayal”.

24. The historical value of the events was put by a male attorney as follows: “in a country

where there was no culture of resistance in politics, the most central square of the main

city of the country was occupied for two weeks”.

25. For volunteer attorneys on the margins of cause lawyering, Gezi was an opportunity to

remember their lawyer identity. As one said: “that diploma does not hang there in vain”.

26. According to another attorney, given this uniqueness, “involvement with it has become

a source of beauty, privilege and prestige”.

27. One participant explained how, in a far out neighborhood of Istanbul populated by

Alevi Kurds, people were holding a rally with Turkish ﬂags in their hands while chant-

ing: “You cannot divide a country where the Turk eats Kurdish borek and the Kurd

drinks Turkish coffee”. This participant said she understood Kurds’long suffering

only after getting in touch with them (by moving there) and felt ashamed for being

so insensitive before. She had another anecdote: when there had been a police interven-

tion [with tear gas], Kurdish nationalists took a wounded Turkish nationalist over their

shoulders and carried him to safety and vice versa. Politically, these people never came

together but at Gezi, they talked and tried to understand each other. In her opinion,

“nothing could be better than this”.

28. For instance, in April 2014, workers of Greif factory in Istanbul occupied it by going to

the roof and were then detained. The event was covered by the media. By the time the

attorney relaying this story went to the police station, she observed that there were

already two groups of attorneys at hospitals to monitor health checks of the

workers. These were people who got themselves involved in these matters during

Gezi events. And in her words “they were like, there is an unlawful detention by the

police, where are you guys, we are coming”.

29. For instance, depending on whether there was any evidence against the client such as

stone throwing or breaking of windows, similar violent acts or otherwise, there were

certain defenses. They also taught them what to have recorded in a police statement

to serve its evidentiary purpose.

30. The problems of legal aid have been discussed intensely in Elveris et al.(2007), but

neither the government nor the Istanbul Bar have been eager to address them.

When and if discussed, the issues revolve around payment for attorneys which

remains an income earner for the young and inexperienced members of the profession.

This is disappointing given the millions of dollars that are allocated for that purpose

every year; as of 31 December 2014, the latest ﬁgure available from the Union of

Turkish Bar Associations gives the ﬁgure as TL 20,975,944.85 corresponding

roughly to USD7.6 million. See: http://eski.barobirlik.org.tr/tbb/baro_gonderimleri/

cmk/cmk_gelen.htm, accessed 23 July 2015.

152 I. ELVERIŞ

31. In fact, one of the prosecutors did not even notice that the detainees were represented

by volunteer attorneys.

32. There are many reasons for this low rate [as discussed in Elveris et al.(2007)]. When

legal aid is not mandatory, as is the case in an overwhelming number of cases revolving

through the criminal justice system, a criminal defendant must be reminded of his/her

right to an attorney by the actors of the criminal justice system. However, among these

actors there is not a strong rights culture. As a result, they remind defendants of their

rights in a fashion just to satisfy a legal requirement and not to actually encourage

them to use those rights. Further, rights are not reminded in a simple language allow-

ing ordinary people to understand them. On the other hand, most criminal defendants

do not know their rights. Further, they may harbor an assumption that only the guilty

need an attorney. As a result, legal aid does not reach high rates.

33. The relations between the Istanbul Bar (whose administrations usually represent the

values of the republic and the center) and center right governments (let alone an Isla-

mist government like the AKP who represent the values of the periphery) are usually

tense, not only over differences on issues like legal aid payments, opening of new law

schools and increasing competition in the profession but also in terms of political

issues. The Sledgehammer (Balyoz) trial was one such case in which top military gen-

erals were accused of plots to overthrow the government. See the comment on the

verdict of this trial: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/sep/25/turkey-sledge

hammer-coup-trial-verdict, accessed 21 August 2015. In September 2012, hundreds

of serving and retired members were convicted in this trial and were later upheld by

the Court of Cassation. In the changing political climate thereafter, the Constitutional

Court ordered a retrial and the ensuing court acquitted all defendants saying the initial

verdicts were based on fabricated evidence (see: http://www.turkeyanalyst.org/

publications/turkey-analyst-articles/item/331-the-balyoz-retrial-and-the-changing-

politics-of-turkish-justice.html, accessed 21 August 2015). The Istanbul Bar criticized

the Sledgehammer trial from its beginning and in April 2012 (10 months before the

guilty verdict), appeared to support the defense attorneys and to criticize the court

by making a public statement. It was thus charged with attempting to affect the judi-

ciary in performing its duties. At the time of the Gezi events, the Sledgehammer trial

was over but the case against the Istanbul Bar was still going on. The Bar members

were acquitted in February 2014.

34. These prosecutors stressed that the failure to manage the crisis contributed to its

growth into a mass event.

35. One prosecutor also said that in mass events like this, a legal strategy had to be

developed.

36. This was the case when there were recordings (evidence) of demonstrators throwing

Molotov cocktails at the police or breaking windows.

37. As the demonstrations lasted for 10–12 hours until the late hours of the night, police

ofﬁcers’nerves were racked and they were growing less tolerant. As a result, one pro-

secutor said he instructed that ofﬁcers be changed frequently and not be kept on duty

for more than six hours.

38. One prosecutor said that, just as he gave advice to the detainees, he also gave advice to

the police ofﬁcers to stay calm, not to listen to their superiors where necessary, not to

carry out illegal orders and not to mistreat the citizens.

39. “So we tell the police, do not bring 50 people, bring 5. Between the police and us, this is

always an issue. The police say we are ordered to bring everyone we catch. But we bring

them in from the front door, they release them from the back.”One prosecutor recalled

that the police stood at the entrance of a street and caught everybody that was running

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF THE LEGAL PROFESSION 153

away [from tear gas]. As a result, it was not a surprise that a mother and daughter were

brought in with plastic bags from a shopping mall in their hands. Similarly, a father

and daughter were brought in.

40. For instance, the demonstrators had to be warned to disperse themselves, a corridor

had to be opened for those leaving after this warning.

41. The police ofﬁcers could not identify the detainees later in the hearing because in the heat

of the moment they hardly realized a thing. Similarly, when they were asked about their

signature on the documents, police ofﬁcers would simply say they were told to sign them.

42. According to one prosecutor: “at the age of 23–24, freshly graduated, when they wear

the uniform, even the way they walk changes”.AsIwasinterviewingoneprosecutor,

there was a knock on the door and a very young man in civilian clothes stood at the

door and said in a respectful manner: “I left the CDs to the clerk’sofﬁce Mr. Prose-

cutor”, and the prosecutor thanked him. When the door was shut, the prosecutor

turned to me: “this is exactly my point, he is a police ofﬁcer”,pointingouthis

very young age.

43. Unlike other branches of the police, the judicial police reports to the judiciary and is

not under the hierarchy of the Ministry of Interior. It can be likened to Court Marshall

or Sheriff ofﬁces in common law countries.

44. Two of the prosecutors recognized that the detainees came from the police stations

hungry and thirsty. In fact, one of them said that he ordered tea for them while

they gave their statement. When prompted, he added that while the police were

“fuming with rage”they could not be expected to serve the detainees tea. Another pro-

secutor said, knowing the detainees’situation (“tear-gased and hungry”), they tried to

expedite the process by dividing the extra work among the other prosecutors.

45. The most important among these are: the extension of the detention period in mass

events from 24 hours to 48 hours; to allow the police to ‘remove’people if they

pose a risk for the safety of others; expansion of the use of ﬁrearms for the police;

and bypassing of prosecutors by administrative ofﬁcials to investigate a crime. For a

newspaper article that explains what will be changing with the new law, see: http://

www.hurriyetdailynews.com/explained-turkeys-controversial-security-bill.aspx?pageID

=238&nID=78658&NewsCatID=339, accessed 21 August 2015. The controversial law

is at the moment before the Constitutional Court. It remains to be seen whether it will

be struck down in part or as a whole.

Acknowledgment

I am grateful to my friend and colleague BT for taking the time to read and comment on this

paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conﬂict of interest was reported by the author.

References

Abel, R. (1986) The decline of professionalism?, The Modern Law Review, 49(1), pp. 1–41.

Ayata, G., et al. (2013)Gezi ParkıOlayları:İnsan HaklarıHukuku ve Siyasi Söylem Işığında

Bir İnceleme (İstanbul, Bilgi Üniversitesi Yayınları).

154 I. ELVERIŞ

Badbus, I.D. (1973)Dialectics of Legal Repression (Hartford, Russell Sage Foundation).

Barclay, S. & Marshall, A.M. (2005) Supporting a cause, developing a movement, and con-

solidating a practice, cause lawyers and sexual orientation litigation in Vermont, in: A.

Sarat & S. Scheingold (Eds) The Worlds Cause Lawyers Make (Stanford, Stanford

University Press), pp. 171–202.

Bayır, D. (2013) Representation of the Kurds by the Turkish judiciary, Human Rights

Quarterly, 35, pp. 116–142.

Berenson S. K. (2009) Government lawyer as cause lawyer: a study of three high proﬁle gov-

ernment lawsuits, Denver University Law Review, 86(2), pp. 457–508.

Bloom A. (2008) Practice style and successful mobilization, Law and Contemporary

Problems, 71(1), pp. 1–16.

Ellmann, S. (1998) Cause lawyering in the third world, in: A. Sarat & S. Scheingold (Eds)

Cause Lawyering Political Commitments and Professional Responsibilities (New York,

Oxford, Oxford University Press), pp. 349–430.

Elveris, I. (2014)Barolar ve Siyaset (Istanbul, Istanbul Bilgi Üniversitesi Yayınları).

Elveris, I., Jahic, G. & Kalem, S. (2007)Alone in the Courtroom: Accessibility and Impact of

Criminal Legal Aid in Istanbul Courts (Istanbul, Istanbul Bilgi University Publications).

Etienne M. (2005) The ethics of cause lawyering: an empirical examination of criminal

defense lawyers as cause lawyers, The Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology, 95(4),

pp. 1195–1260.

EU Progress Report of Turkey explained in detail under the heading Judiciary and

Fundamental Rights. (2014) Available at: http://ec.europa.eu/enlargement/pdf/key_

documents/2014/20141008-turkey-progress-report_en.pdf.

Hilbink, T. (2006) The profession, the grassroots and the elite, cause lawyering for civil rights

and freedom in the direct action era, in: A. Sarat & S. Scheingold (Eds) Cause Lawyers and

Social Movements (Stanford, Stanford University Press), pp. 60–83.

Iğsız, A. (2014) Brand Turkey and the Gezi protests: authoritarianism in ﬂux, law and neo-

liberalism, in: U. Özkırımlı(Eds) the Making of a Protest Movement in Turkey: #occupygezi

(New York, Palgrave Macmillan), pp. 25–49.

Jahic, G. & Elveris, I. (2010) An assessment of criminal legal representation, laws changed

results remained, TBB Dergisi, 23(90), pp. 165–194.

KONDA. (2014) Gezi Raporu.

Krishnan, J. K. (2006) Lawyering for a cause and experiences from abroad, California Law

Review, 94, pp. 575–615.

Meili, S. (1998) A comparative perspective and democratic change in Argentina and Brazil,

in: A. Sarat & S. Scheingold (Eds) Cause Lawyering Political Commitments and

Professional Responsibilities (New York, Oxford, Oxford University Press), pp. 487–522.

Ongun, E. & Hassan, M. (2013) How political dynamics work in professional organizations,

the radical left and the Istanbul Bar Association, in: E. Massicard & N. Watts (Eds)

Negotiating Political Power in Turkey: Breaking up the Party (Abingdon, Routledge),

pp. 140–156.

Özbudun, E. (2011)Otoriter rejimler, seçimsel demokrasiler ve Türkiye (İstanbul, İstanbul

Bilgi Üniversitesi Yayınları).

Özel, S. (2014) A Moment of Elation: the Gezi protests/resistance and the fading of the AKP

project, in: U. Özkırımlı(Eds) the Making of a Protest Movement in Turkey: #occupygezi

(New York, Palgrave Macmillan), pp. 7–24.

Özman, A. (2001) Siyaset hukuk ideoloji ekseninde hukukçu kimliğinin yeniden

tanımlanması: Erken Cumhuriyet dönemi üzerine bir inceleme, Toplum ve Bilim,87Kış

2000-2001, pp. 164–177.

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF THE LEGAL PROFESSION 155

Özsu, F. (2013) Müsterih olun yargıdeğişmedi, in: O.G. Ertekin, F. Özsu, K. Şahin, M. Şakar

&U.Yiğit (Eds) Türkiye’de YargıYoktur (Ankara, Nika Yayınevi), pp. 155–159.

Sarat, A. & Scheingold, S. (2005) The dynamics of cause lawyering constraints and opportu-

nities, in: A. Sarat & S. Scheingold (Eds) The Worlds Cause Lawyers Make (Stanford,

Stanford University Press), pp. 1–34.

Sarat, A. & Scheingold, S. (2006) What cause lawyers do for and to social movements, in:

Sarat & Scheingold (Eds) Cause Lawyers and Social Movements (Stanford, Stanford

University Press), pp. 1–34.

Scheingold, S. & Bloom, A. (1998) Transgressive cause lawyering: practice sites and the poli-

ticization of the Professional, International Journal of the Legal Profession, 5(2/3), pp. 209–

253.

Scheingold, S. & Sarat, A. (2004)Something to Believe In: Politcs, Professionalism and Cause

Lawyering (Stanford, Stanford University Press).

Shambayati, H. (2002) The Guardian of the State: the Turkish Constitutional Court In

Comparative Perspective, Paper presented at the annual meting of the American

Political Science Association, Boston MA August.

Shamir, R. & Chinski, S. (1998) Destruction of houses and construction of a cause, in: A.

Sarat & S. Scheingold (Eds) Cause Lawyering Political Commitments and Professional

Responsibilities (New York, Oxford, Oxford University Press), pp. 227–257.

Simon, W. (1984) Visions of practice in legal thought, Stanford Law Review, 36, pp. 469–508.

Sterett, S. (1998) Caring about individual cases: immigration lawyering in Britain, in: A. Sarat

& S. Scheingold (Eds) Cause Lawyering Political Commitments and Professional

Responsibilities (New York, Oxford University Press), pp. 293–316.

Tam W. (2010) Political transition and the rise of cause lawyering: the case of Hong Kong,

Law & Social Inquiry, 35(3), pp. 663–687.

156 I. ELVERIŞ

CopyrightofInternationalJournaloftheLegalProfessionisthepropertyofRoutledgeandits

contentmaynotbecopiedoremailedtomultiplesitesorpostedtoalistservwithoutthe

copyrightholder'sexpresswrittenpermission.However,usersmayprint,download,oremail

articlesforindividualuse.

Turning on the lights? Publicity and defensive legal mobilization in protest‐related trials in Russia

Article

Full-text available

Dec 2022

Renata Mustafina

How and to what extent do defense actors use publicity in trials of protesters in contemporary Russia? Why do they fight over strategic uses of publicity if “everything is decided in advance”? Drawing on original ethnographic research, this article finds, first, that publicity accompanies legal resistance to politicized prosecutions and is inventively used by the defense. Second, mobilization of publicity creates opportunities for the defense to bargain with and keep the prosecution in check. Third, the relationship between publicity and legal resistance in repressive settings is ambiguous. Some human rights lawyers embrace publicity and others avoid it. I argue that this divergence should be interpreted in relation to lawyers' embeddedness in different professional ecologies. At the same time, lawyers' publicity strategies are altered by the interactional dimension of the trial. The latter manifests itself on two levels: at the micro‐level of a courtroom and in the public sphere where different publics engage in debates that interfere with lawyers' defense strategies. This paper has broader implications for the analysis of defensive legal mobilization in dual legal systems beyond the Russian case.

Cause Lawyering in the Third World

Chapter

Jan 1998

Stephen Ellmann

This essay is a sketch of cause lawyering in the Third World. The picture I present is not meant to be definitive, and indeed it is hard to imagine how a definitive portrait could be drawn, for there may now be thousands of cause lawyers at work in the nations of the South. Instead, this essay grows out of interviews conducted in May, 1991 with representatives of twenty-two public interest law groups from eighteen countries in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. The sample is not random, for all of these groups had been brought together at a conference on “Public Interest Law around the World,” organized under the auspices of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund and with the funding assistance of the Ford Foundation. Thus these are groups with contacts in the West, and with at least enough confidence in the legitimacy of an enterprise funded by the Ford Foundation to be prepared to participate in it. As we will see, these may be important limitations on the representativeness of this sample.

Caring about Individual Cases: Immigration Lawyering in Britain

Chapter

Jan 1998

Susan Sterett

If any political change through litigation is possible at all, it often seems to require some form of institutionalized rights, that is, binding statements of duties owed to individuals, along with an organization that has the power to enforce them despite what majoritarian institutions might say. In the United States, law and society scholars have pointed out the difficulty of institutionalizing rights. Because effective rights often require coordination among complex and multiple organizations that do not necessarily agree with the substance of enforceable rights, rights do not have the bite in fields as wide-ranging as employment discrimination and school desegregation that Americans might expect in a rights-based political system. Still less would we expect ordinary statutory rights to matter in a system such as Britain’s, which does not have institutionalized fundamental rights. Institutionalizing fundamental principles has become an international issue, despite all the difficulties of getting such rights enforced.

Cause Lawyers and Social Movements: A Comparative Perspective on Democratic Change in Argentina and Brazil

Chapter

Jan 1998

Stephen Meili

This chapter explores the relationship between cause lawyers2 and grassroots popular movements in Argentina and Brazil. I selected these two countries for such a comparative study for several reasons, aside from their obvious geographic proximity: first, each has endured a period of military rule during at least part of the last four decades (1964-85 in Brazil; 1976-82 in Argentina), which had serious implications-but also presented certain opportunities-for cause lawyers; second, each has undergone a transition from that military rule to democratic consolidation over the past two decades, which permitted an opening for cause lawyering; third, each has active grassroots social movements in both urban and rural sectors; and fourth, each has a long tradition of a no independent and bureaucratic judiciary, which has rendered traditional forms of lawyering of limited use to many cause lawyers.

Introduction: The Dynamics of Cause Lawyering: Constraints and Opportunities

Chapter

Jul 2005

6. Supporting a Cause, Developing a Movement, and Consolidating a Practice: Cause Lawyers and Sexual Orientation Litigation in Vermont

Chapter

Jul 2005

The Profession, the Grassroots and the Elite: Cause Lawyering for Civil Rights and Freedom in the Direct Action Era

Chapter

Jun 2006

Thomas Hilbink

A moment of elation: The Gezi protests/resistance and the fading of the AKP project

Chapter

May 2014

S. Özel

Soli Özel situates Gezi in a broader, more global, Y context and offers insights into the societal dynamics that might have led to the June protests. Pointing to the commonalities between social movements in countries as dissimilar as Thailand, Brazil, Ukraine and Greece (or indeed the Arab world), Özel stresses the role of the impoverished middle classes, who try to turn these protests into an opportunity to produce participatory and democratic political spaces. What was put into practice with these demonstrations in Turkey is a search for a new definition of citizenship, Özel argues, as well as "an attempt to enlarge the liberal-democratic space in Turkish politics". © Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited 2014.

Brand Turkey and the Gezi protests: Authoritarianism in flux, law and neoliberalism

Chapter

May 2014

A. Iğsiz

Asli Iğstz claims that Gezi protests have crystallized larger dynamics in Turkey, which include recent legal changes and their contributions to the institutionalization of neoliberalism, centralization of power, allegations of cronyism and authoritarianism, thereby offering us a valuable opportunity to reconsider how high-security, neoliberal nation-states operate in general. It is easy to overlook that "there is a complex transnational system behind neoliberal policies that feeds authoritarianism", she maintains, pointing to the gradual process whereby the riot police have replaced the military in "liberal-democratic" societies, assuming the task of domestic guardianship of capitalist interests. © Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited 2014.

Brand Turkey and the Gezi Protests: Authoritarianism in Flux, Law and Neoliberaiism

Chapter

Jan 2014

Aslı Iğsız

Aslı Iğsiz claims that Gezi protests have crystallized larger dynamics in Turkey, which, include recent legal changes and their contributions to the institutionalization of neoliberalism, centralization of power, allegations of cronyism and authoritarian-ism, thereby offering us a valuable opportunity to reconsider how high-security, neoliberal nation-states operate in general. It is easy to overlook that “there is a complex transnational system behind neoliberal policies that feeds authoritarianism”, she maintains, pointing to the gradual process whereby the riot police have replaced the military in “liberal democratic” societies, assuming the task of domestic guardianship of capitalist interests.

A Moment of Elation: The Gezi Protests/Resistance and the Fading of the AKP Project

Chapter

Jan 2014

Soli Özel

Soli Özel situates Gezi in a broader, more global, context and offers insights into the societal dynamics that might have led to the June protests. Pointing to the commonalities between social movements in countries as dissimilar as Thailand, Brazil, Ukraine and Greece (or indeed the Arab world), Özel stresses the role of the impoverished middle classes, who try to turn these protests into an opportunity to produce participatory and democratic political spaces. What was put into practice with these demonstrations in Turkey is a search for a new definition of citizenship, Özel argues, as well as “an attempt to enlarge the liberal democratic space in Turkish politics”.

Cause lawyering when it really matters: how Istanbul lawyers reacted to events in Gezi

Abstract

Recommended publications

The program of church music leadership training for the volunteer/part-time director as administered...

A Commission to Change: The United Methodist Church in Detroit, Michigan, 1950-1980

NORWAY'S DISTRIBUTION OF BOOKS ON FAMILY PROBLEMS

Defining work: Gender, professional work, and the case of rural clergy