During the summer of 2013, Gezi Park, in the Taksim district of Istanbul, was the epicenter of a series of urban protests that quickly spread across Turkey. Clashes against Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s restrictive policies were marked by both violent police reactions and broad-based support inclusive of many of Turkey’s social groups. Yet, for Cihan Tugal, associate professor of Sociology at UC Berkeley, the upper-middle class interests that sparked the protests represent a contradiction to the spirit of the protests in general.