Kaya Genç’s Under the Shadow Offers a Snapshot of Turkey’s Political Landscape

In choosing to focus his book on events lost to many in the Western world, the Gezi Park protests of 2013, Turkish author Kaya Genç offers a snapshot of his fractured country. Under the Shadow: Rage and Revolution in Modern Turkey follows a chain of events that began with protests against Gezi Park’s redevelopment followed by the violent removal of the protestors, which morphed into a multifarious opposition to Turkey’s encroaching government. Here were Kurds, Grey Wolves, members of the LGBTQI and corporate communities, and even the Ultras of the country’s big three football clubs all arrayed against the conservative government of then Prime Minister and now President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Genç set out to better understand Turkey via the various voices that felt displeased within it, either with or at the status quo, and his resulting work is a chorus of discontent. He speaks with both conservative and liberal journalists—one must realize that for long stretches of its modern history, secularism, not religion, has been an oppressive factor in Turkey—and popular filmmakers, successful entrepreneurs, and student activists. The only thread binding them is their country and their unease at their place within it. While the various positions Genç chronicles can make one’s head spin, that same complexity also presents an honest face of the nation.