Transvaluation and Aesthetic Displacement: Gezi Park and the Power of Art Stephen Snyder Fatih University, Istanbul The transformative power of creative narrative is the power to give meaning to life’s activity by keeping ahead of forces that would deny it. This transformative power, articulated in Nietzsche’s theory of transvaluation, is a fundamental dynamic of the resistance movement that sprang from the Gezi Park sit-ins. This movement erupted with an aesthetic intensity that surprised detractors as well as supporters. The response of the police to the public dissent was disproportionately violent. The largely peaceful resistance, which began when sleeping demonstrators were violently removed from Gezi Park, countered the tear gas, truncheons, water cannons, and detentions with persistence and creative genius. Beyond the movement’s wishes to protect a park in the center of Istanbul, the resistance represented a coalition of those who oppose the autocratic ruling style of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. They ranged from anti-capitalist Muslims to students who simply oppose the Prime Minister’s Islamification of the Turkish public sphere. This wave of demonstrations also manifested an element of aesthetic creativity that sets it apart from other protests in Turkey and the Arab world. On several levels, the young movement became a form of artistic protest. Striking parallels are found between Nietzsche’s account of narrative transformation and the dynamic action of the people in Turkey who resist what they feel is an encroachment on their democratic rights and their way of life. Beyond illustrating these parallels, the aim of this essay is to examine how aesthetic imagination plays a role in forming a narrative that conjures meaning solely through creative fiat, showing how the power of transvaluation is manifested in the Gezi Park resistance through aesthetic displacement. These parallels exist because political violence and political art share a common set of background presuppositions insofar as each is