Protester-Police Fraternization During the Gezi Park Uprisings in Turkey

The 2013 Gezi protests still remain the largest to have arisen in the AKP era of governance in Turkey. For three months, around 5% of the population dissented nonviolently against the incumbent government. To date, this wave of dissent has received substantial interdisciplinary attention. This present study analyses a previously neglected, yet salient dynamic, 'fraternization', that arose throughout thousands of protester-police interactions. Among 150 videos that are publicly available in the social media on Gezi protests, we carried out a statistical analysis, complemented by qualitative interviews with Gezi activists. We discovered that 31% of the videos featured fraternization between the activists and the police, and a positive dialogue was established in 22% of the videos. Although fraternization did not end up spurring police to defect, this action was carried out by a heterogeneous group of activists (age, gender, identity) and exposed that not all police officers were of the same mind-set throughout the protests. In fact, there was a significant number of police officers that shared grievances with the movement.