Several sociological readings on Gezi portray a great estrangement, polarization and conflict. With conceptualizations such as the "Taksim commune", certain sociologists expected utopian and revolutionary ends from it. They sought the Paris commune at Gezi. This was a romantic leftist sociology. They found all the problems in the conservative politics and looked for the salvation in the revolution. They began to explain the social existence through the Gezi phenomenon adopting a representational attitude of the leftist revolutionary tradition once again. They placed the idea of conflict between the conservative politics and the nationalist left. Marx"s theories of class, conflict, contradiction, and anti-capitalism were served on the table. This orthodox leftist sociology was their big hope. They stirred up the debates and mobilized squares, crowds and revolution emblems. However, there was no working class at the essence of these demonstrations. They consisted of hegemonic elites and resisted international capitalism blocks such as the Economist, CNN World for whom they played a spokesperson role. The leftist sociology of Istanbul was building a theory in favor of this mentality.
Another group, which was directly implementing the Gezi spokesperson role, inclined to defend it from a liberal capitalist point of view. This sociology speaking from Paris described the crowds who stirred the Gezi and poured people on the streets, gave the place to incense and provoked them to invade the PM"s Office as the "the square"s reaction of the pluralistic democracy". This type of sociology had a liberal-leftist root. It regarded the demonstrators on the streets of Taksim as pacifist and reformist while the PM"s demonstrators at Kazliçesme as a social world for authoritarians, uniformists and "street" level people. Both the liberal left sociology and the nationalist left sociology allied on using the Gezi events as a means of opposition against the government. They were both Paris originated leftist and were functionally promoting the global western capitalism. They were instrumentalized for the strategy to make a revolution out of the crowds who were going against conservative politics. They could not accede to acknowledge the genuine rulers of the state. These sociologies in a strange way were gathering Marxism and capitalism in the same framework of opposing to conservatism. In other words, capitalism and the left cooperated to challenge the conservative state ruling.
On the other hand, regarding the Gezi events, the rightist sociology inclined to adopt a discourse to protect the local status quo and side with the hegemony and sanctify the power. It did not discover the new technology, the new generation, or the new demands of the urban participation because all that mattered were power and the hegemony.
Therefore, it told the new generation off and picked up the "regressionist" language against the innovations of communication and appealed to the classic rhetoric of external powers (the crusader metaphor). The rightist sociologists were speaking from ex cedra. For the rightist sociologists, the Gezi phenomenon is simply a matter that can be interpreted in terms of the Great Turkey topic. The issues regarding human rights, the new participation demands, the new technology participation or seeking a local democracy is all "the infidel"s work" after all.
Neither the liberals nor the rightist sociologies could assess the Gezi phenomenon from its real sociological perspectives because these sociologies had strong ideological connections. Both were oriented by certain ideologies, social networks, science communities and metanarratives. They did not go for analyzing the Gezi phenomenon or understanding it, or interpreting it based on standard objective principles. Both sociologies struggled to protect its own local, national, international and metaphysical authorities. They did not want to ruin their comfort in the way of their thinking in which they had fixed beliefs. They gave attention to small-scale crowds. The ears of sociology perked up not to listen to the nation, the reality or the human but to the crowds. They talked with the competition of the crowds. The "noise" of the crowds took them under their influence, which flocked up on the streets and became aggressive. They never appreciated personality and for that reason they were mindless crowds.
Such sociologies collapsed at the face of the Gezi event. It lost all the colors and voices of sociology and all its schools of thought. A sociology which does not identify its own society and detect its problems correctly and does not implement its "illuminative" role properly means that it has collapsed. We are facing this reality now. A kind of sociology that turned into a vicious cycle of authority struggle, devoted to protect its positions, deprived of criticism and incompetent to analyze realities as realities means it is finished.
Certainly, sociology determines the average of the society. It portrays the world of existence of science, research and the sociologist. Liberals who are not liberals, leftists who are not leftists, Islamists who are not Islamists... are empty identities, empty ideologies and empty sociologies, which we are encountering today. We are having a sociology today, which tells us about other worlds, societies, and incidents. In Istanbul, Turkey in 2013, a social incident went under by certain generations is narrated to another society through a different country and age. The conceptualization of the "Taksim commune" is its most interesting example or the description such as "Kemalists and Islamists broke their fasting in Ramadan together." As if Kemalists and Islamists were not the people who lived in the same country, spoke the same language, shared the same streets and had the same Islamic prayer calls, as if they both did not miss the movies of Kemal Sunal Sener when they went abroad!
These sociologies are strangers to their own nation, society, and country. They give priority to other societies" experience and adopt their realities as their fundamental. That is how they analyzed Gezi or they gave priority to "mega politics" without considering people, groups and generations as the rightist sociology did. Sociologies that are immersed and blinded in national and international power struggles will crash. Our sociologists who are talking from the towers of authority and ideology could not go beyond the fronts of being a "mouthpiece" or "rebel". They turned sociology into a gladiator arena following the bellicose steps of others. They succumbed into the waves of the crowds and gave fatwas to the divans of authorities (be it micro, global or community scale). They only critiqued the other. They vanished with the self-interest of their own at the face of the "self" in sociology. Finally, sociology once again was made an instrumental science. It was made blind, deaf, and mute against social reality. It was made a part of the game in Gezi.
