According to official data, urban poverty has been rising in Turkey since the 1990s. Macro-level causes include repetitive economic crises, the implementation of neoliberal policies recommended by international financial organizations, the failure to create employment and the increasing inequality in income distribution. The intensity of poverty in different provinces is related to the specific conditions of a particular region. In the 1990s, there was an influx of internally displaced people (IDPs) into the cities of Southeast Anatolia. The lack of employment opportunities, the state's reluctance to address the problems of IDPs and the IDPs' loss of kinship/community networks contributed to the deterioration of their condition in the new urban setting.

This article traces the recent history of border closures in Turkey and Morocco and their impact on human mobility at the two ends of the Mediterranean. Border closures in the Mediterranean have produced new spaces where borders are often fenced, immigration securitized, and border crossings and those facilitating border crossings criminalized. Here, bordering practices are conceptualized as physical bordering practices, border controls, and legal measures. Turkey and Morocco constitute comparable cases for an analysis of border closures insofar as they utilize similar mechanisms of closure, despite having quite different outcomes in terms of numbers. The article’s findings are based on fieldwork conducted at both locations between 2012 and 2014, as well as on analysis of Frontex Risk Assessment Reports from 2010 to 2016. The first part of the article reflects on the concepts of border closure and securitization, together with their implications, and draws for its argument on critical security studies and critical border studies. The second part of the article is an overview of controls over mobility exercised in the Mediterranean from the 1990s onward. Then, in the third and fourth parts, we turn to the particular cases—respectively, Turkey and Morocco—in order to discuss their processes of border closure and the various implications thereof. Through analysis of the two country cases, we show that border closures are neither linear nor irreversible.

This article explores how hope and visions of the future have left their mark on media discourse in Turkey. Looking back at some of the events that took place in the 1980s, a decade that was shaped by the aftermath of the 1980 coup d’état, and considering them alongside what has happened since the ban of Istanbul’s Pride march in 2015, it examines traces of hope in two periods of recent Turkish history characterized by authoritarianism. Drawing on an array of visual and textual material drawn from the tabloid press, magazines, newspapers, and digital platforms, it inquires into how queer hope manages to infiltrate mediated publics even in times of pessimism and hopelessness. Based upon analysis of an archive of discourses on resistance, solidarity, and future, it argues that queer hope not only helps to map out possible future routes for queer lives in (and beyond) Turkey, but also operates as a driving political force that sustains queers’ determination to maintain their presence in the public sphere despite repressive nationalist, militarist, Islamist, and authoritarian regimes.

A village in the province of Diyarbakır in Southeastern Turkey has recently appeared in many national newspapers and on TV with headlines such as “Rebellion against the landlord continues,” “Tractor chain against the landlord,” and “Peasants united against the landlord.” For many, this was rather amusing news – reminding them of a popular comedy film based on a fictional representation of peasants rebelling against their landlord in the 1970s. In reality, however, the actions were a serious appeal by peasants voicing their plight about extreme inequality in rural Southeastern Anatolia.

From a folkloristic point of view, memory is a repertoire, a potential knowledge that we store, only to perform when we choose. The selective process that defines what to tell is in folklore a function of the performance context. Why we choose to tell a particular story depends on who listens to it and how it is situated within the performative event. From an archeological-historical perspective, however, what we choose to preserve in our landscapes, archives and museums reflects choices made through historical-political processes. Within this framework, for an ethnographer in search of memory, there is an ongoing dialogue between narratives on what people remember and the material cultural context in which these narratives are produced. This essay is an attempt at writing an ethnography of memory in a small Black Sea town, Tirebolu/Tripoli, whose material culture and demographic structure radically changed since the 1900s through the effects of war, harsh climate, forces of modernization, and nationalism. To sum up very briefly, communities in Tirebolu—Muslims and non-Muslims alike—have been displaced at different times, temporarily or permanently since the First World War.

The recent rise of Islamic Radicalism in the Middle East is generally associated with anti-Western sentiment and interpreted as a continuation of the traditional conflict between Christian and Islamic civilizations. It is thought to reflect a traditionalist opposition to the modernization process which originated in the West and then was introduced to the Islamic countries (for an example of this literature, see Youssef, 1985). But this view cannot explain the historical timing and specificity of the current Islamic political revival. In this paper I suggest that Islamic radicalism is not a traditionalist plea to return to a pre-modern era. Quite the contrary, it is a product of the contradictions of Third World modernization and represents a post-modern reaction to the specific form of modernization experienced by the Islamic Third World. In the Islamic countries, where modernization has been synonymous with westernization, the response to the contradictions of modernization has taken the form of a “politics of identity.”

We commemorated in 1988 the sesquicentennial of the Convention of Balta Limani, the ground-breaking Ottoman-British commercial agreement that set a pattern for Ottoman agreements with other powers in the years immediately following. The Convention sprang from British interests and from Ottoman needs during the 1830s in the Near East. My function is to sketch the general international background for the Convention, to look at the situation of the Ottoman Empire, at British foreign policy in the early nineteenth century, and in particular at the development of British policy in the Near East in the years from 1827 to 1841. A subtitle indicating the desirable breadth of view might read “From Navarino (1827) to Nezib (1839), and from Hercules’ Pillars to Hormuz and Herat.”

This paper explores how the state employs digital technologies in its pacification of dissident political bodies, subjectivities, and communicative capabilities. It explores strategies of resistance to the surveillance practices which come to the fore as a state form, as a means of social control, and as a mechanism for creating manageable and disciplined crowds. Drawing upon ethnographic data, it focuses on the contemporary politics of the Kurdish movement in Turkey. In particular, it analyses the digitized surveillance and resistance of Kurds, both of which function as crucial components of contemporary power regimes in Turkey.

The Turkish-American relationship experienced the most difficult period of its history after the refusal of the Turkish Parliament on 1 March 2003 to allow US troops to open a northern front to Iraq from Turkish territory. By the time a new administration took power in Washington in early 2009, the badly damaged relationship had recovered somewhat and recently has even taken a positive turn. Although the parameters of the recovered relationship are not yet clear, by analyzing the intricacies of diverging and converging worldviews and interests of the two states in the post-Cold War era, one can understand what happened to the strategic partnership of the 1990s and how Turkish-American relations may develop in the future. Accordingly, this paper will first look at the constraints and limitations of the current relationship through diverging interests and contextual viewpoints in the post-Iraq War world. It will then highlight the areas of convergence that existed even during the lowest point of the relationship. Finally, I will argue that, while the strategic partnership may have ended, a strategic relationship between the two states will continue to exist and may even produce a newer form of connection and cooperation, the contours of which will also be outlined for the coming years, taking into account the opportunities and hurdles ahead.

Nınçir mangig im sirasun, Oror yem asum, Baydzar lusinn e meğm hayum, Ko ororotsum.

By analyzing the transmission of Armenian lullabies within the changing contexts of identity and cultural politics in Turkey, this paper addresses displacement and loss as two interrelated experiences shaping the sense of being an Armenian in Turkey. I criticize the liberal multiculturalist perspective that represents cultures in a way that cuts the link between the past and the present, by dissociating different cultures from the history of their presence in Anatolia and the destruction of that presence. I argue that in such a context where cultures are detached from lived experiences and memory, it becomes impossible to share the stories of violence and pain in the public sphere; hence, the loss itself becomes the experience of being Armenian. Finally, I try to explain how today young generations of Armenians in İstanbul, in their search for an Armenian identity, have developed a certain way of belonging to the space and culture, a way of belonging that is very much shaped by the experience of loss.

Attempts at common agreements to phase out fossil fuel subsidies (FFS) have been increasing, as the topic generated momentum through the Rio Dialogues prior to the 2012 United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio+20) and following the Paris Agreement in 2016. This study quantifies the magnitude and the relative importance of FFS in the Turkish economy and produces a relevant national FFS synthesis for policy design. FFS form a complex system of a self-contradictory nature that stands in stark contrast with the Turkish government’s statements regarding sustainable development. Based on available data from the 2000s, we find that Turkey provides state support for coal and the exploration of oil and natural gas that represents roughly 0.2 percent of its nominal GDP per year. Continuing to subsidize fossil fuels narrows down the fiscal options that could otherwise be used to support cleaner technologies and mitigation actions. Given the fact that fossil fuels have significantly negative implications for the environment and health, eliminating those subsidies has the potential to help combat environmental pollution, climate change, and related problems.

When the movie [Domu' al-hubb (Tears of Love) (Turkish title: Aşkın Gözyaşları) (Muhammad Karim, 1936)] was first released in Istanbul's Şehzadebaşı district, the movie theatre's windows were broken and the traffic was jammed [because of the crowd]. The audience, who had not been able to watch any Turkish films for the last three years, loved this type of movie, which was not much different from those made by our theatre artists, and starring some Arab singers, and people wearing the fez and local dress (Özön 1962a, p. 760).

This essay analyzes arabesk, a form of popular music in Turkey, as it pertains to debates around culture, politics, and modernity. I argue that arabesk, rather than being limited to discussions of music as an aesthetic form, reveals important issues as to the historical unfolding of discursive patterns that still very much outline the boundaries of cultural debates in Turkish society. The historic changes of arabesk music corresponds to turning points in the cultural and political history of Turkey. Furthermore, following the historical trajectory of arabesk makes it possible to analyze large-scale transformations in the ideological landscape of Turkey. In order to understand the complexity of these issues, it is important to trace the historical foundations of Turkish cultural politics, especially during the early Republican era (1920-1950), which was formative in establishing and maintaining an extensive regime of cultural classification.

In 1989, Turkey became one of the first—and few—emerging economies to fully liberalize its capital account. Given the adverse macro-economic conditions before the reforms, it is puzzling that Turkish policy-makers implemented policies amounting to a comprehensive and imprudent capital account liberalization. Using in-depth interviews with a significant number of key decision-makers behind capital account liberalization and employing archival material from news sources on the debates surrounding the reform process, this article examines the policy objectives and rationale behind the Turkish capital account liberalization. The main argument is that capital account liberalization represented a political rationality that put a premium on short-term expansion through funds from the rest of the world. This liberalization was a policy response to decreasing rates of economic growth and demands from organized labor and public employees for better working conditions and higher wages. Thus, this article shows that these distributional conflicts and the trajectory of economic growth were important determinants of the timing and scope of capital account liberalization in Turkey.

The literature of Europeanization claims that the EU transforms the politics of member and candidate countries through processes such as social learning and socialization. This article questions the emphasis of Europeanization studies on ideational factors by looking at the example of Turkey-EU relations. The reform projects undertaken jointly by the EU and the Turkish police show that the EU seeks to transform the practices of candidate country actors, rather than simply their ideas. Moreover, the candidate country actors are not only passive learners, but they also seek to modify the content of EU reforms according to their interests.

Scholars of Islam in Turkish society have written penetrating analyses on the reciprocal influences and complementary relationships, as well as rivalries between, Alevi Islam, Sunni Islam, Islam of the Sufi orders, Islam of student activists, Islam of “Islamist intellectuals”, Islam as embedded in the oral culture and daily practices of the “mahalle”, Islam of the scriptures, and so on. There are clearly different ways of knowing Islam, distinct yet intertwined. My concern in the present study is with a particular knowledge of Islam—as constructed on the landscape of commercial television in Turkey.