This project aims to create a digital archive to collect and preserve information about the protests in Turkey starting on March 19, 2025. As mainstream media is largely pro-government and purposely avoids coverage of the protests, social media has become the main source of real-time information for many people; not only for following events, but also for organizing gatherings and providing support during protests. However, this content is ephemeral and often hard to trace later, at risk of getting lost in the vastness of the internet.
The project consists of two main components. The first is an interactive timeline that traces the evolution of the protest movement, including general boycotts, calls for action, and relevant developments. This timeline will be accompanied by a map highlighting protest locations, each linked to related materials. The second component focuses on collecting and preserving protest-related materials such as social media posts, flyers, press statements, testimonies, and media documenting police violence and state repression.
This will be a collaborative project with İmran Gökçe, as we have been discussing developing this archive together. Our aim is to make it searchable, accessible, and resistant to erasure — offering a counter-memory to dominant state narratives. Sustainability will be considered by embedding most of the media rather than self-hosting, and storing key documents in lightweight formats. The archive will not only serve as a historical record, but also a tool for future advocacy, research, and solidarity. This project will be built using HTML5 and CSS, with the possibility of later incorporating JavaScript for interactive features like map filtering or search. It is inspired by the urgent need for grassroots memory work and the current lack of a centralized source of information to follow during the protests. It seeks to preserve voices and events that risk being silenced.