The actors of Democracy Watch in Turkey: towards a non-negotiated public sphere?

Since 2010, we have been living in a period in which new forms of activism are emerging in different societies. To the new social movements which had proposed a social imagination based on horizontality, autonomies, consensus and solidarist individualism, counter-movements responded by promoting verticality, a hierarchical society, devotion to the leader and holistic citizenship. Populist regimes support these counter-movements. Inviting parts of the population to the streets and banning demonstrations of the others go hand in hand with this new type of populist authoritarianism which tries to provide an appearance of respect for democracy, represented by “the street”. To be able to understand this phase of democracy and street politics, we will analyze the case of Turkey’s “democracy watches”, after the Coup attempt on July 15, 2016. We look at democracy watches and its actors to find the relevant keys to understand the new unitarian public space in Turkey. The public space, defined as a sphere of deliberation by Habermas, becomes the non-deliberative reflection of the government’s will in the new period. The new regime is consolidated today under the State of Emergency. I consider the case of Turkey, besides its characteristics inherited from its political history, as an example that reveals a shift in the global political imagination from democracy to the new authoritarianisms. In continuity with a previous research based on a fieldwork realized with actors of democracy watches in 2016, I aim to understand the relationship between the Street and the new authoritarian regime and its repercussions on today's political subjectivities.