‘No one is larger than the state.’ Consent, dissent, and vigilant violence during Turkey’s neoliberal urban transition

Abstract

View related articlesView Crossmark data Citing articles: 1 View citing articles ARTICLE 'No one is larger than the state.' Consent, dissent, and vigilant violence during Turkey's neoliberal urban transition

Social coexistence and violence during Turkey’s authoritarian transition

“…Our contributors examine the blurring of these boundaries, as paramilitary violence can be endorsed by the state and legalized with the transition into authoritarian governance in conflict regions (Ayhan 2021). Even extralegal social violence can be seen by various societal actors as 'legitimate' and applauded implicitly or explicitly by state authorities and citizens against the perceived enemies of the state or in-group (Saglam 2021;Kadioglu 2021), and violence that disproportionally impact certain parties and groups may not be recognized as such, especially by partisans of incumbent governments who are tempted to blame their rivals for provoking such incidents (Toros and Birch 2021). Moreover, the contributions reveal not only the workings of physical violence but also that of symbolic violence, which can take the form of internalized hostility, humiliations, and legitimation of inequalities among citizens (Bourdieu 1997), and they highlight the importance of cultural and moral contexts to understand the emergence, perception, and functions of violence.…”

“…In their attention to the social dynamics and subnational mechanisms that drive distinct forms of violence (Isik 2021;Kadioglu 2021;Saglam 2021;Toros and Birch 2021) and conflict resolution (Bozan 2021;Celik 2021;Dilek 2021) in an authoritarian setting, the contributors to this special issue provide a better understanding about how authoritarianism trickles down and changes social relations at both micro and macro levels. There is a need to better understand and theorize the everyday underpinnings of social conflict and collective violence if we want to understand insecurity and instability for countries under democratic decline.…”

Planetary Gentrification and Urban Authoritarianism

“…It is refreshing to read Turkish‐Dutch scholar Bahar Sakızlıoğlu's intervention which zooms in on gender, something that gentrification studies has engaged with much less than say class, and even less so with respect to the state as the actor promoting and ‘doing’ the gentrification. There has been significant writing on the role of the authoritarian Turkish state and the Erdoğan government in enacting urban renewal as gentrification, especially in Istanbul (see Polat, 2021), but here Sakızlıoğlu introduces us to the lived experiences of low‐income women when confronted by this state‐enacted gentrification‐induced dispossession. Sakızlıoğlu draws on her rich and detailed ethnography of Tarlabaşı in central Istanbul, a neighbourhood she was able to access in this ‘deep’ way because of her long‐term, on‐going work and connections there.…”