Until the Gezi protests in the summer of 2013, the AKP government has prided itself as a champion of democracy in the region and it was regarded as such by the majority of the international community. Since the AKP came to power in 2002, it had shown conscious effort to project an image of itself as a political movement that is more democratic and modern than any other political group, even and especially its secularist/Kemalist rivals. During the Gezi protests however, this image came crashing down. Erdogan took a relentless and uncompromising stance against the Gezi protestors, labeling them as terrorists who are plotting a “civilian coup” to bring him down and ordering the police to resort to any measures necessary to repress protests. As a result, the protests spread not only all across Turkey but also internationally resulting in supportive protests from Germany to Brazil and the US. It soon became evident that the Gezi protests would become not only a landmark in Turkish history but also a significant part of the globally rising demands for democratization. Yet despite the upmost significance of the movement, its major components are still largely understudied. One such aspect is the dialogue (or lack thereof) between the protesters and the state. In light of this, we ask “How are we to understand the relationship between the protestors and the state during Gezi?” We revisit issues such as patriarchy, state and citizen-formation, and political legitimacy and claim that focusing on the patriarchal discourse used by the state during the protests will help us understand the underlining political dynamics not just of the movement in question but also of politics in general. By examining the ways in which the AKP government and particularly Erdogan addressed and dealt with the protestors, we argue that patriarchy, which presents itself in two forms; paternalism and male-domination, emerges as a key element of the structuring and transformation of the state-citizen relationship so as to create and legitimize the authority of the state by establishing Erdogan as the great patriarch of Turkey. The protestors, on the other hand, have tried to cope with this formulation by challenging and subverting the role assigned to them by the government as riotous, out-of-control “looters” (“çapulcu”) who need to be forcefully disciplined back into being proper citizens as the deserving children of the great patriarch.