Introduction

In this chapter, I argue that queer participation in the 2013 Gezi Park protests constitutes a ‘line of flight’ – a rupture in the assemblage of control that is queer identity, which I refer to as the queer common (Deleuze and Guattari, 2008, pp. 8– 10). A queer common, I argue, is an injunction against the state's governance of queer bodies, one which takes the form of diffuse, horizontal protest. Processes like the state, religion, family, and religion can often work to marginalize queer and trans lives. In opposition, activist events like Gezi Park both expose these negative relationships and create opportunities for change. I draw upon interviews and media around the queer activism surrounding the Gezi Park protests to demonstrate resistance to oppressive Turkish institutions. I show how the state and concomitant institutions (including the family, Islam, and the media) have narrowed the scope of what constitutes ‘good citizenship’. This entails constrictions of freedoms of speech, assembly, and association for some. Yet the queer common represents an interruption of the governance of bodies as per usual, enabling queers to assert their own demands to govern. Within the queer common, queer affects, language, and relationships create an ontological disturbance that alters party politics, identity categories, and the public perception of queer and trans individuals.

I begin by establishing the context for the Gezi Park protests. I define Turkish governance of queer bodies as reflecting a particular national identity, which compelled many to organize against it. I reflect upon some of the particularities of how the government works with other institutions to normalize the exclusion of queer bodies. From there, I explore how Gezi Park emerged as a rebuke to this tightening of sexual and gender governance. I focus in particular on the queer movement at Gezi: I demonstrate the relationship between Gezi Park and the pride protests of 2013, consider how they descend from a global genealogy of protest, albeit rooted in local idioms, and explore how queers used Gezi to leverage their own movement. Here, I introduce the queer common as a lens for understanding the topology of Gezi. This assemblage, I show, fundamentally changed the state's ability to normalize images of heteropatriarchal-nationalist identity.