Heterogeneous Encounters: Tolerance, Secularism and Religious Difference at Turkey’s Border with Syria by Mahiye Seçil Dağtaş A thesis submitted in conformity with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of Anthropology University of Toronto © Copyright by Mahiye Seçil Dağtaş 2014 Heterogeneous Encounters: Tolerance, Secularism and Religious Difference in Turkey’s Border with Syria Mahiye Seçil Dağtaş Doctor of Philosophy Department of Anthropology University of Toronto 2014 Abstract This dissertation is an ethnographic investigation into the politics of religious difference in Turkey. Drawing on fieldwork in Antakya, a city near Turkey’s Syrian border populated by Arabs and Turks of Sunni, Alawi, Jewish, and Orthodox Christian backgrounds, it explores the mundane, political, and aesthetic representations of religious difference and demonstrates how such difference is constructed, lived, and configured in everyday realms of sociality. Four such realms are focused on: a multi-religious choral ensemble, Antakya’s historical marketplace, domestic and communal sitings of guesthood (misafirlik), and places and discourses of common worship. Official representations of Antakya’s religious diversity imply a pluralist and “tolerant” form of national citizenship as compared to Turkey’s Republican secularist model. I argue, however, that daily practices, artistic expressions, and networks of exchange between different denominations of Muslim, Christian, and Jewish residents of the city inhabit a more heterogeneous field characterized by interpersonal relations of negotiation, hospitality, intimacy, and hostility. These interrelations are further informed and delimited by structures of power embedded in local, national, and transnational regimes of diversity management and implicated in the minoritization ii of non-Sunni and non-Turkish communal identities. Nevertheless, they also rework and transcend such regimes of governance. In illustrating what it means to cohabit an interreligious milieu near a national border, this dissertation is positioned among other anthropological explorations of religious diversity and the growing literature on secularism, as well as anthropological studies of borders and marginality. It shows that religious difference is produced at the intersection of multiple discourses, practices, and boundaries, and as such it evades both pluralist (multi-community) and dualist (i.e. religion vs. secular) models of religious co-existence. iii Acknowledgments This dissertation could not have been written without the emotional, intellectual and spiritual generosity of many people. First and foremost, I am grateful to the people of Antakya who must remain anonymous. Had they not opened their houses and lives to me from the early days of my research, and offered their friendship, wisdom, and hospitality, I wouldn’t have come this far. I hope this dissertation can stand as a small token of gratitude for their trust, patience, tolerance, and openness. I owe many thanks to my supervisor Janice Boddy for her support and guidance throughout my PhD education, and for her confidence in me during the most uncertain stages of my work. Special thanks also go to my core committee members Amira Mittermaier and Michael Lambek. Amira commented generously on my chapter drafts and pushed me to think more carefully about the blind spots of my research, and of the secular. She has also been a great mentor for my academic life and has helped me acknowledge its rewards while facing its challenges. Michael Lambek has been an inspiring scholar and an encouraging teacher whose passion, engagement, and critical feedback during the Dissertation Writing Workshops have deeply shaped my analysis, and nurtured my interest in the anthropology of religion. I would also like to express my gratitude to Pamela Klassen, Holy Wardlow, and Esra Özyürek for serving on my dissertation defense committee and providing me with their insightful, engaging, and incisive comments. I am especially indebted to Esra Özyürek for being my external examiner and giving me concrete directions for taking this dissertation further. The Department of Anthropology and the broader community of the University of Toronto provided an ideal intellectual home for me. I was fortunate to know many scholars who have helped me along the way and shaped my thinking, including Valentina Napolitano, Girish iv Daswani, Naisargi Dave, Simon Coleman, Ritu Birla, Mark Hunter, Bonnie McElhinny, Donna Young, and Kathryn Morgan. I am equally indebted to my friends and colleagues in the Dissertation Writing Workshop whose critical and engaging feedback on several of my chapters has significantly contributed to the revising of this dissertation. I also thank to the administrative staff in the Anthropology Department for their patience, collegiality, and tireless work. A special thanks goes to my MA supervisor from York University, Daphne Winland for her never ending support, encouragement, and friendship. I am also grateful to Kabir Tambar, Hussain Agrama, and Mayanthi Fernando for critically engaging with parts of this project on various occasions, and pushing me to think about the relationship between politics and secularism in new ways. The research and writing of this dissertation have benefited from the financial support of a number of institutions and programs, including the Anthropology Department at the University of Toronto, The Connaught International Scholarship, the Ontario Graduate Scholarship, the SSHRC Vanier Graduate Scholarship and Michael Smith Foreign Study Supplements. I thank all these institutions and programs for their support. I also thank the organizers, participants, and lecturers of the IWM summer school in Cortona on “Religion in Public Life,” the 12th and 15th Berlin Roundtables on Transnationality, the University of the Aegean Summer School on “Cultures, Migrations, and Borders,” and the master classes with Elizabeth Povinelli and Henrietta Moore on “Intimacy and Precarity” at the University of Toronto. The feedback I received in these settings, as well as the intellectual debates I became part of, have helped me sharpen and refine my argument. I could endure the challenges of being a graduate student in a foreign country only because I have been so lucky to have an excellent circle of friends and colleagues who became my best v readers, advisors, critics, supporters, and comrades. I would like to express my gratitude first and foremost to my lifelong friend from Turkey, Aslı Zengin, whose arrival in Toronto deeply enriched my experience here in every sense. She has been a constant and enduring friend, a source of inspiration, and an astute critic. Vivian Solana and Özlem Aslan have offered their time, energy, and thoughts during the most stressful times of this project. Together with them, my loving thanks go to Daniella Jofre, Alejandra Gonzalez Jimenez, Timothy Mwangeka Makori, Janne Dingemans, Ayşegül Koç, Ümit Aydoğmuş, Burak Köse, Tuğçe Ellialtı, Begüm Uzun, Aziz Güzel, Hülya Arık, Sharon Kelly, Glen Chua, Aaron Kappeler, Shihoko Nakagawa, Kate Rice, Dylan Gordon, Jacob Nerenberg, Nermeen Mouftah, Hollis Moore, Sertaç Sehlikoğlu, Behzad Sarmadi, Sardar Saadi, Nora Tataryan, Laura Sikstorm, Deepa Rajkumar, Melanie Richter-Montpetit, Naoko Ikeda, Nayrouz Abu-Hatoum, Deepa Rajkumar, and Gül Çalışkan for their moral and intellectual support through the various stages of my graduate experience in Toronto. I also thank Andy Hilton for his editing skills and engaging comments and reflections on my work in general. I am indebted to Öznur Şahin, Esra Demir, Tansel Demirel, Berke Özenç, Ferda Karagöz, and Doğuş Derya for the intellectual and friendly company they provided from the other side of the Atlantic over the last decade. I would also like to express my gratitude to Meri Izrail-Kohen for hosting me in my first days in Antakya. A recent transplant to Antakya, Meri, as well as her husband Samuel and her mother Viki, made my transition from stranger to guest a much less difficult and isolating process. Mustafa Çapar and Elif Kanca who were affiliated with the Anthropology Department at Mustafa Kemal University in Antakya at the time of my fieldwork have also generously shared their ideas, suggestions, and insight with me. vi Although thousands of miles away, my parents Halise and Seçkin Dağtaş and my sister Serap Dağtaş-Budak have made me feel their presence, support and confidence everyday. More than I could adequately express and reciprocate, I am grateful to them for believing in me throughout and for their unconditional love. Love and thanks also to my sister Sinem, my brother Savaş, my nephew Silvan and my brother-in-law Serkan, as well as to Iris, John, Katrina, Travis and Stella Paruch who have become my second family and made Canada a true home for me. Ultimately I thank Andrew Paruch for his presence before, during, and after my fieldwork, for being the best companion, supporter, and partner along the way, and for his endless patience, willingness to edit my work and think with me about it, and his care and love. Although I know that it is not enough, it is to him that I wish to dedicate this work. vii Table of Contents Abstract…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….ii Acknowledgements…………………………………………………………………………………………………..iv Table of Contents .............................................................................................................................. viii List of Figures ........................................................................................................................................