Department of Humanities and Social Sciences
Permanent URI for this collectionhttps://hdl.handle.net/10679/5962
Browse
Recent Submissions
BookPublication Metadata only Turkish literature as world literature(Bloomsbury Publishing, 2020-01-01) Alkan, B.; Günay-Erkol, Çimen; Humanities and Social Sciences; Alkan, B.; Günay-Erkol, Çimen; ERKOL, Çimen GünayEssays covering a broad range of genres and ranging from the late Ottoman era to contemporary literature open the debate on the place of Turkish literature in the globalized literary world. Explorations of the multilingual cosmopolitanism of the Ottoman literary scene are complemented by examples of cross-generational intertextual encounters. The renowned poet Nâzim Hikmet is studied from a variety of angles, while contemporary and popular writers such as Orhan Pamuk and Elif Safak are contextualized. Turkish Literature as World Literature not only fills a significant lacuna in world literary studies but also draws a composite historical, political, and cultural portrait of Turkey in its relations with the broader world.ArticlePublication Metadata only Gender of trauma in İstanbul İstanbul(Taylor & Francis, 2020-09-01) Günay-Erkol, Çimen; Humanities and Social Sciences; ERKOL, Çimen GünayBurhan Sönmez’s İstanbul İstanbul (2016) is a powerful addition to contemporary prison novels in Turkey. The novel revolves around prisoners who experience systematic torture and are unable to escape the grim destruction that surrounds them. The discussions in the novel around Islamic faith, free will, solitude and captivity produce self-reflexive stories of memory and forgetting, in which gender also comes to the fore as an important center of gravity. In this grand scheme of brutality and torture, the only female prisoner, Zinê Sevda, is limited to sign language, and she facilitates men’s transformative recognition of their trauma through her ghostly presence. In this article, I explore how Zinê Sevda’s silent witnessing transforms men into overseers of themselves and comment on the implications of her sign language. I argue Sönmez’s play with traumatic memory and its resilience is an excellent metaphor for the recurrence of military tutelage in Turkey.ReviewPublication Metadata only The politics of the welfare state in Turkey: How social movements and elitecompetition created a welfare state(Wiley, 2024-02) Birelma, Alpkan; Humanities and Social Sciences; BİRELMA, AlpkanN/AArticlePublication Metadata only The stubborn persistence of working-class protest in Turkey in an age of authoritarian neoliberalism(Taylor & Francis, 2024) Birelma, Alpkan; Işıklı, E.; Sert, H. D.; Humanities and Social Sciences; BİRELMA, AlpkanUnder authoritarian neoliberalism, Turkey has seen the number of legal strikes plummet since the mid-1990s. Alongside deepening authoritarianism, the AKP government banned nearly all legal strikes in the 2010s. How have working-class protests fared against this bleak backdrop? Have workers become pliant victims of a repressive regime of accumulation? Or is there evidence of fight left in the Turkish working class? This article addresses these questions through protest event analysis (PEA) of an original dataset of working-class protests between 2015 and 2019. Workers are found to have managed to maintain a significant protest performance despite the increasingly authoritarian environment.ArticlePublication Restricted Anthropologist Lloyd A. Fallers’ Research in Turkey during the 1960s(Cyprus International University, 2023) Sipahi, Ali; Humanities and Social Sciences; SİPAHİ, AliDue to the influence of the modernization paradigm, as the main axis of the American social sciences during the Cold War, and since the 1950s, the field of anthropology has shown interest in the developing nation-states in addition to primitive societies. Within this context, Turkey was one of the ‘new nations’ to become a potential object of analysis for Western anthropologists as Turkey was already praised as an exemplary democracy in the political science literature. As a result, for the first time in the history of American anthropology, a series of ethnographies pertaining to Turkey were generated in the 1960s. This article brings to light the academic portrait of the anthropology professor Lloyd A. Fallers at Chicago University and his studies on Turkey. Fallers worked on Turkey for more than ten years, did long-term fieldwork during his residences in Turkey for a total of two years, and supervised dissertations about Turkey. Fallers’ work, which has mostly remained unpublished due to his early death, is analyzed by relying on the archives deposited in the Chicago University library and on oral history interviews conducted by the author with people who had known Fallers.ArticlePublication Metadata only Armenians in 1920s Greece: Turkey’s unwanted minority, the league of nations’ Burden, Greece’s “Other” refugees(Brill Academic Publishers, 2023) Erol, Merih; Humanities and Social Sciences; EROL, MerihThis article sheds light upon the history of an underresearched group of refugees who settled in Greece in the 1920s. It focuses on Armenians from Anatolia who fled to Greece in 1921-22, during and after the Greek-Turkish War of 1919-22. The article examines how the Greek government and international humanitarian organizations (Near East Relief, American Red Cross, etc.) approached the Armenian refugees, including orphans. The study further highlights practices such as transfers of Armenians within Greece, repatriation programs supported by Greece to send the Armenian refugees to Soviet Armenia, and citizenship policies regarding them.Book PartPublication Restricted Reception(Springer, 2023) Şahin-Mencütek, Z.; Gökalp-Aras, N. E.; Kaya, A.; Rottmann, Susan Beth; Humanities and Social Sciences; ROTTMANN, Susan BethIn this Chapter, we describe the strategic temporality embedded in the Turkish reception system for Syrian refugees. First, we focus on the effect of laws and how they lead to nuances in multilevel governance on the ground where a local turn is observable, and a politics of subsidiarity is created. We discuss the discursive dimension of reception governance, which centres on cultural intimacy and guesthood rhetorics. These narratives reflect the strategic approach of policymakers who consistently underline that migrants’ reception is a temporal phenomenon. The chapter provides a multi-layered emphasis on discourses and practices that show how the reception is a policy field where strategic temporality is a dominant mode.Book PartPublication Restricted Integration(Springer, 2023) Şahin-Mencütek, Z.; Gökalp-Aras, N. E.; Kaya, A.; Rottmann, Susan Beth; Humanities and Social Sciences; ROTTMANN, Susan BethStrategic temporality permeates the integration experience of Turkey’s Syrians in a number of ways. First, given their temporary legal status, there is a grey area between reception and integration, which is highly symbolic of ambiguous inclusion (Kaya & Nagel, 2021). Until recently, there has been no publicly announced national integration policy; instead, there was only a discourse about uyum (social harmony) that is not premised on permanent inclusion or equal rights with locals. Further, refugees face liminality in every possible sphere governing long-term settlement, such as in the labour market, education, housing, health and citizenship. Most work informally and experience economic precarity; a third of Syrian children are not in school; refugees must secure their own (often substandard) housing; linguistic and other barriers prevent full health care access, and pathways to citizenship or long-term permanent residence are limited. All of this creates feelings of profound anxiety and uncertainty for refugees as they go about their day-to-day lives.Book PartPublication Restricted Conclusion(Springer, 2023) Şahin-Mencütek, Z.; Gökalp-Aras, N. E.; Kaya, A.; Rottmann, Susan Beth; Humanities and Social Sciences; ROTTMANN, Susan BethThe findings of this in-depth case study provide insights for generalisations about how strategic temporality may operate in other refugee-hosting countries as well as specific findings about state responses to mass migration situations. Some key findings can be summarised as including a (1) complicated and fragmented legal system, (2) multiplicity of actors, (3) re-nationalisation and restrictiveness, (4) increased complexity and uncertainty in all layers of rules and practices, (5) consistent liminality experienced by refugees. These characteristics are observable in concrete policy practices in diverse sub-policy fields involving remote border controls, blocking reception, downgrading protection and slowing integration. As we showed, the concept of strategic temporality, along with its related components of liminality, uncertainty and complexity, is helpful for understanding state responses across time and sub-policy fields.Book PartPublication Restricted Legislative, institutional and political context(Springer, 2023) Şahin-Mencütek, Z.; Gökalp-Aras, N. E.; Kaya, A.; Rottmann, Susan Beth; Humanities and Social Sciences; ROTTMANN, Susan BethRefugee governance has legislative, institutional, political, and discursive dimensions. These components co-constitute each other and reflect the fragments of strategic temporality as a building principal. It is possible to trace signs of strategic temporality in each dimension. This chapter starts with an overview of the legislative landscape marked by the Turkish asylum regime’s dual structure. Then, it maps the institutional architecture where relevant actors put these legislations into implementation. Both legislation and institutions play out in a highly political domestic and international context, which is scrutinised in the following section. The discursive dimension will be delved into further in Chap. 3.Book PartPublication Restricted Protection(Springer, 2023) Şahin-Mencütek, Z.; Gökalp-Aras, N. E.; Kaya, A.; Rottmann, Susan Beth; Humanities and Social Sciences; ROTTMANN, Susan BethTurkey has a highly complex structure with stratified legal statuses and multiple actors in migration and refugee governance. The chapter shows how temporality is the key encompassing characteristic of Turkey’s refugee governance, which is the basis for its response to Syrian mass migration and multilevel refugee governance. In this regard, the chapter asks how strategic temporality is used as a tool for international protection in Turkey and what the consequences are in terms of the legal, political and institutional frameworks at the macro level, as well as perceptions, experiences, and strategies of policy implementers and policy beneficiaries at both meso and micro levels.Book PartPublication Restricted Introduction(Springer, 2023) Rottmann, Susan Beth; Humanities and Social Sciences; ROTTMANN, Susan BethJust after the local elections in 2019, irregular migrants in Istanbul faced a months-long crackdown. The Ministry of Interior from the Justice and Development Party government (known as AK Party or AKP) gave Syrians until 20 August 2019 to return to the cities in which they were first registered. Although the time period was eventually extended, the internal controls for migrants became stricter. Migrants found themselves frequently stopped by police, and officers visited registration addresses to check if they were occupied. If irregularities were discovered, the official directive was that Syrians should be returned to the cities in which they were first registered. For non-Syrian migrants without registration, the result of police stops was often being confined to pre-detention centres. According to the Head of the Directorate General Management of Migration (DGMM) of the time, Abdullah Ayaz, “Operations in Istanbul target irregular migrants such as Afghans and Pakistanis. Even if Syrians are found without registration at all, they are not deported, unlike the claims in the media. It is not possible to issue deportation decisions legally about Syrians due to the conditions in Syria” (AA 2019).Book PartPublication Metadata only At the unsettling limits of collaborative life writing: A memoir of an ethnography-memoir(Taylor & Francis, 2023-01-01) Rottmann, Susan Beth; Humanities and Social Sciences; ROTTMANN, Susan BethThis chapter uses a memoir to examine the limits of anthropological collaboration. I draw on 12 years of friendship and fieldwork that culminated in my writing an ethnographic life story of a German-Turkish return migrant (Leyla) and publishing it together with Leyla’s own original memoir. In recent years, anthropologists have rightly celebrated collaboration as the latest incarnation of engaged, public or activist anthropology. Yet, while reflecting on my collaborative project with Leyla and moving forward with further ones, I have found that collaboration is limited in ways that have not yet been fully explored. Researchers have tended to focus on barriers to collaboration stemming from unequal power dynamics, appropriation of an other’s story and the revealing of ethnographic secrets. In this chapter, I argue that important challenges for collaboration lie with the ethics of reciprocity in the ethnographic encounter and specifically with issues of authority, readership and publication goals; the limited training of anthropologists to engage in co-authorship; and the highly fraught nature of friendship itself under the pressures of late capitalism and professional academic anthropology.ArticlePublication Metadata only Akle Tayyibe [Tasty Dish]—Cooking up belonging in the Syrian refugee foodscape in Turkey(Taylor & Francis, 2023) Rottmann, Susan Beth; Kanal, M.; Humanities and Social Sciences; ROTTMANN, Susan BethThis article is a study of Syrian women’s food practices in Turkey. Researchers have shown that food matters for belonging, but we need more research examining how migrants use food in memory-work; how they cook to create a “happy home”; and how shared meals are tied to inclusion in communities. Drawing from ethnographic fieldwork, this research examines five food practices of belonging that can inform migration researchers about how refugees relate to their heritage and collective memories. The article sheds light women’s agency within struggles over belonging and the role of food in the home-making processes of refugee families.ArticlePublication Metadata only New approaches and challenges in Ottoman historical writing(Societa Editrice Il Mulino, 2023-07) Oğuz, Ç.; Afacan, Ş.; Akpınar, Özkan; Mazzucotelli, F.; Özavci, O.; Topal, A. E.; Yenen, A.; Humanities and Social Sciences; AKPINAR, ÖzkanN/AArticlePublication Metadata only Forced migration and the politics of belonging: Integration policy, national debates and migrant strategies(Sage, 2023) Rottmann, Susan Beth; Humanities and Social Sciences; ROTTMANN, Susan BethThis research note examines the politics of refugee belonging in Germany, Sweden, Austria, United Kingdom, Italy, Greece, and Turkey. Specifically, it explores how migrant belonging is impacted by integration policies and national political debates on immigration in these countries. Prior research suggests that refugees have little knowledge of policy, but that national political or media debates strongly impact a feeling of inclusion. Our research shows that both policy and national/media debates affect belonging. Despite widely differing legal and national contexts, the countries studied largely base integration on principles of cultural assimilation that can be hostile to “outsiders” and lead to insecure and contradictory belonging. The article also examines the strategies migrants adopt to forge belonging, depending on the national context. We find that in some contexts, migrants emphasize that they take individual responsibility for integrating and in others they build belonging on cultural and religious similarities with the host community. Thus, this research shows that the national policy environment not only impacts belonging, but also shapes the strategies migrants adopt to achieve it. The research is based on a long-term study conducted as a part of an EU Horizon 2020 project, RESPOND.ArticlePublication Restricted How to be a good guest: American ethnographers in Turkey in the long 1968(Wiley, 2024-03) Sipahi, Ali; Humanities and Social Sciences; SİPAHİ, AliThe article uncovers a forgotten chapter in the history of anthropology by revealing the experiences of American ethnographers in Turkey between 1967 and 1969. Using original archival documents and oral history interviews, it focuses on the trials of Professor Lloyd A. Fallers as well as doctoral students Michael Meeker, Peter Benedict, and June Starr in navigating Turkish bureaucracy and global politics. Conceptually, the article evaluates the case of anthropologists in Cold War Turkey from the perspective of hospitality studies with a particular focus on guest-to-guest relationships. Adopting the guests’ points of view shows us that hospitality assemblages are forged by other-oriented thinking and behaviour, which involves misunderstandings, empathy, and projection. The article conceives the hospitality relationship as an encounter among perceptions of hospitality.ReviewPublication Metadata only Can nacar, labor and power in the late Ottoman Empire: Tobacco workers, managers, and the state, 1872-1912(Taylor & Francis, 2023-01-26) Kovankaya, Başak Akgül; Humanities and Social Sciences; KOVANKAYA, Başak AkgülN/AArticlePublication Metadata only Eating and cooking beyond the borders in Elif Shafak’s The Saint of Incipient Insanities(Taylor & Francis, 2023-08) Atik, Egem; Humanities and Social Sciences; ATİK, EgemIn her novel The Saint of Incipient Insanities (2004), Elif Shafak explores the theme of alienation by portraying a group of individuals who live in the U.S. and struggle to adapt to the American lifestyle. This article focuses on Alegre, a Mexican-American girl with bulimia. Surrounded by her Chicana aunts and foreign friends, Alegre is forced to adopt American culture, yet she is also asked not to sever her ties with her Mexican roots. I argue that Alegre's relationship with food mirrors her connection to the American and Mexican cultures: by gorging and disgorging herself with food, she challenges the frontiers that separate cultural identities and the borders that divide the inside and the outside of the self. Alegre considers the kitchen her native soil as it provides her with the space to challenge the boundaries of her own body and identity. The food she cooks there brings different identities together over one meal, where they realise they have much more in common than they expected. Thus, she creates an environment for others to find a chance to question the boundaries that restrict their identities.ReviewPublication Metadata only Timber and forestry in Qing China. Sustaining the market(Cambridge University Press, 2022-08) Kovankaya, Başak Akgül; Humanities and Social Sciences; KOVANKAYA, Başak AkgülN/A