Düşüş sürecinde protesto: 2021 Boğaziçi Üniversitesi protestoları örneği

This thesis examines the demobilization of protest campaigns through an in-depth case study of the 2021 Boğaziçi University protests in Istanbul, Turkey. Utilizing an agent-based approach, the research draws on interviews with both protest participants and organizers to explore the factors contributing to declining participation. Key findings indicate that the destruction of the campus "free space" and the inherently transient nature of the student protestors played significant roles in the decrease of protest activity. The thesis introduces the concept of "alienation" to describe the demobilizing effect resulting from frame disagreements between organizers and participants. Frame disagreements refer to differences in how participants and organizers delineate the grievances, goals and methods of the protest campaign. In the Boğaziçi case, the clash between a university-specific frame and the wider frame that involved the larger scheme of left-wing politics steered the protesters away from active participation. Traditionally viewed as a mobilizing force, the reversal of this concept reveals complex dynamics of frame alignment within protest campaigns. Furthermore, the study looks into how protest organizers interpret success and failure when their campaign fails to accomplish its political goals. Participants list personal transformations, social ties, and partial gains as absolute successes in their life stories, while also addressing the political failures of the campaign. In addition to providing a fresh theoretical framework for examining frame alignment and its effects on the longevity of social movements, this study advances our knowledge of protest demobilization and advocates for a wider definition of protest outcomes, beyond the binary of success and failure.