Removal Notice: What can the Gezi protests on their 10th anniversary tell us about the dialogicality of memory?

In this article, we examine the implications of the dialogicality of collective memory through our analysis of the Gezi protests on their 10th anniversary. Through interviews and surveys with members of a wide range of civil society organizations, we tap into the different aspects of the dialogicality of collective memory that have thus far not been examined by the existing scholarship. We aim to shed light on the implications of dialogicality for the continued relevance of a collective memory. We find that dialogicality in the Gezi case amounts to an ongoing relationship between the individual and collective memory as well as providing ways of bridging the past, present, and future. The dialogical engagements of the respondents reveal that Gezi proposes a lens through which the past gets into dialogue with the present. At the same time, Gezi serves as an anchoring point through which the present and future are gauged dialogically. We argue that it is through dialogicality that actors negotiate their memory of Gezi and thereby their individual and collective purposes and future orientation. What is more, Gezi provides a focal point with an interconnecting potential by serving as a point of intersecting memories by representatives of ideologically different civil society organizations.