Istanbul Cab Drivers and Dispute Resolution: A Study of Legal Consciousness

Abstract

For three decades until November 2021, when an additional 1,000 cab licenses were issued, the total number of cab licenses in İstanbul was limited to 17,395. As the total number of cab licenses has not kept pace with İstanbul’s growing population, it has become impossible in the last decade to find an available cab during rush hours. The increasing scarcity of cabs not only turned this issue into an important social and political problem; it also brought many other players into the market, such as pirate cabs and Uber, the ridesharing app. Surprisingly, there is limited scholarly research on İstanbul cab drivers and the sector in general. Based on a research project conducted by undergraduate students in İstanbul during the fall of 2017, this article takes a comparative look at how İstanbul cab drivers engage in dispute resolution. During field work based on 19 semi-structured interviews with cab drivers and participant observation at a cab station, two types of grievances emerged as the most important issues for these drivers: 1) problems at the cab station, especially with the order of dispatching, and 2) encroachment by Uber. While most of the drivers were quite successful in utilizing various dispute resolution mechanisms in dealing with grievances at the cab station, very few of them engaged in mobilization, such as pursuing mechanisms to combat the increasing competition from Uber. We argue in this article that cab drivers are more likely to mobilize in defense of their rights if they believe that they are legitimate and rights-bearing subjects, as they are at the cab station. However, they are less likely to mobilize for their rights if they believe that they are marginalized and disreputable members of society, as in the case of their grievances against Uber. In other words, we argue that rights mobilization depends heavily on a sense of belonging.