As you approach contemporary İzmir from the bay, the city that lies ahead of you invokes images of a fortress city. It is enveloped by an unbroken concrete wall made up of tall apartment buildings, one morphing into the other, only to be interrupted by narrow streets. Republic Square, located at the very tip of the bay, resembles a gate to this immense fortress. If you walk half a kilometer eastward through this opening, you will arrive at a large green space at the heart of the city, quite unusual for, modern cities in Turkey. This is the Kültürpark, where İzmirians go to jog, play tennis, have their wedding ceremonies, take their children to play, and watch theatrical and musical performances. Its trees and flower gardens infuse life in a city that has fallen prey to the invasion of concrete as a result of unplanned over-urbanization. Toward the end of each summer, the park becomes even livelier with the opening of the annual Izmir International Fair on the grounds. The Fair attracts some four million visitors every year, and even though the majority are İzmirians, people from other parts of Turkey also flock to İzmir to view the pavilions of Japan, China, U.S.A., and England, as well as those showcasing Turkey’s national firms (Fuar Kataloğu 2000).

This paper explores the democratic capacities, demands, and aspirations of citizenship movements in relation to deliberations within a formal political system whose territorial boundaries have become blurred as a result of global political and economic restructuring. The case of the mobilization of a group of people from 17 villages located in the hills of Bergama in the northern Aegean region of Turkey in opposition to Normandy Mining Corporation, an Australian-based multinational consortium operating a gold mine in the region, provides an empirical context for the discussion. Normandy Mining Corporation uses the controversial cyanide-leaching method to extract gold, a method that allegedly has damaged the environment and has resulted in health problems for local residents. For more than a decade, Bergama villagers have been struggling to drive Normandy out of their region, as they are concerned about their own health and the well-being of the land on which they live and work.

Europe of the interwar years witnessed the rise of agrarian populism in several countries. In a sense, something in the “spirit of the age” paved the way for the rise of agrarian ideologies throughout the world. The impact of the Great Depression also played a role in the rise of this phenomenon, since urbanization, industrialization, and liberalism increasingly were seen as responsible for this global economic catastrophe. Turkey of the 1930s and afterward witnessed the rise of such a populism, with an emphasis on the cult of the peasant as one of the most important intellectual motifs of cultural and political discourse. As a matter of fact, agrarian populism, or the so-called köycülük (peasantism), as it was referred to in Turkish, was one of the most important constituent elements of Kemalist populism from the early 1930s through the end of World War II. In this period, the state devised cultural and practical projects for an ideological campaign emphasizing the significance of improving the social and economic conditions of the peasantry. For this reason, in the Turkish press, many wrote about köycülük, and official and semiofficial state institutions such as People’s Houses organized peasantist (köycü) activities throughout the country. The impact of such an intellectual campaign could be seen in some of the most important undertakings of the single-party regime, such as the establishment of the Village Institutes and the land-reform attempts.

Two frequently discussed issues in Turkish electoral studies concern the instability and geographical cleavages in electoral preferences. Turkish voters are not strongly identified with political parties and frequently vote for different parties due primarily to patronage distribution. Their vote is also strongly influenced by parochial ties. Despite various regulations in electoral laws, such as a minimum 10 percent nationwide support for representation in the Parliament, which makes representation of smaller parties in the legislature difficult, fractionalization of electoral support continuously increased over the last two decades. Consequently, formation of stable governments became more and more difficult.