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Folds of Authoritarianism: Political Mobilization, Financial Capitalism, and Islamism in Turkey

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Folds of Authoritarianism: Political Mobilization, Financial Capitalism, and Islamism in Turkey Folds of Authoritarianism: Political Mobilization, Financial Capitalism, and Islamism in Turkey Fırat Kurt Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirement for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of Arts and Science COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 2018 © 2018 Fırat Kurt All right reserved Abstract Folds of Authoritarianism: Political Mobilization, Financial Capitalism, and Islamism in Turkey Fırat Kurt Beginning with 2002, the Justice and Development Party (AKP) has mobilized millions of Turkish citizens from the most impoverished districts of Istanbul. Based on two years of ethnographic engagement in two districts of Istanbul (Esenler and Kucukcekmece), the party’s stronghold, this dissertation focuses on the conjunction of neoliberal economic transformations, mass mobilization and political Islam. By paying close attention to personal histories, daily capacities, emerging hopes and inter-generational grievances of the party members and sympathizers, it investigates how material and financial transformations facilitate and even promote a popular knowledge that authoritarian politics, embodied by the AKP in Turkey, are the only solution for the predicaments of late capitalism. The project aims to problematize some key presumptions of contemporary social scientific analyses, namely individualization, depoliticization, and economic rationality, and investigates the emergence of alternative practices in their steads: self-negation, authoritarian mobilization, and fundamentalist disposition. To this end, the dissertation intervenes in four current debates of social scientific and public significance. Firstly, against the long standing debates about the character and consequences of neoliberal transformation in the global south, in which the general consensus is that these new economic practices have resulted in depoliticization and apathy among the masses, the project demonstrates that the very same economic polices and practices result in the promotion of a form of mass mobilization that is authoritarian in its characteristics. Second, it intervenes in a related literature about depoliticization, which claims that the contemporary form of capitalism produces isolated individuals, i.e. individuation. The dissertation shows that neoliberal transformations have precipitated a wide range of political and social practices, like self-sacrifice of partisans, which produce alternative modes of political identification and new identities conditioned by economic vulnerability. Third, the research and analysis argues that the critique of bureaucracy and bureaucratic regulations, conceived as sources of unproductivity and institutional rigidities by neoliberal thought collectives, has been appropriated by the masses in Turkey as a part of anti-formalist policies that the AKP propagates. However, the popular critique of bureaucracy among the AKP partisans does not produce a version of liberal governance, in which transparency, flexibility, and accountability are dominant values, but a popular conviction that rules, regulations, and laws may be suspended for the interest of “the people,” thus legitimizing the violation of “bureaucratic” rights, be they human rights, freedom of speech, or fair trial principle. Lastly, this dissertation furthers a significant body of anthropological works on political Islam that complicates the relationships between secularism and religiosity by showing their co-constituted histories. However, it substantially diverges from the trajectory of this literature by shifting the focus from morality to efficacy, from cultural politics to political economy. Ultimately, the purpose of the dissertation is to understand how neoliberal economic transformations provided a suitable social, material and political context for religiously informed authoritarian practices without attributing any essentialized qualities to their religious characteristics. TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ............................................................................................................ ii CHAPTER 1 Introduction ............................................................................................................. 1 CHAPTER 2 Political Mobilization as Valuation: “We keep the Turkish Lira valuable!” ........ 28 CHAPTER 3 Intimations of Precariousness: Translating Unskilled Labor into Political Mobilization .................................................................................................................................. 77 CHAPTER 4 Self-Negation: A New Form of Capital? ............................................................. 131 CHAPTER 5 Belligerent Grammars: Formalist Bureaucracy, Substantive Politics, and Full Life at the Margins of Istanbul ........................................................................................................... 171 CHAPTER 6 Fundamentalism, Secularism, and Small Miracles: Towards a Political Anthropology of Causation ......................................................................................................... 241 CONCLUSION Towards an Anthropology of Alter-Power? ................................................... 291 ENDNOTES .............................................................................................................................. 294 BIBLIOGRAPHY ..................................................................................................................... 297 i ACKNOWLEDGMENTS After having finished writing a dissertation, I can more confidently argue that any work of intellectual exertion has characteristics and qualities resembling those of a section or a chapter from a longer book. Events take place; characters enter and exit; and the protagonist(s), generally, lives through. A story unfolds. This dissertation is a small part of such a story that many people, including myself, witnessed its many different aspects –aspects that sometimes intersect and sometimes not. The setting that rendered possible many of the ideas in the dissertation was generously provided by Columbia University, more specifically by the Department of Anthropology, and even more specifically by my committee members. Rosalind Morris played an immensely influential role in bringing out each and every possibly meaningful articulation in this work, punctuating the rhythm of my thinking and writing, expanding the horizon within which my intellectual speculations travelled with her compass. I am forever indebted to her. Nadia Abu El- Haj has been an invaluable benchmark to measure the validity and intelligibility of my writing, not to mention her persistent support in hard times. Naor Ben-Yehoyada joined our department after I finished my field research, but his amazing sharpness and passionate engagement helped me define my project in ways that I would not be able to come up with by myself. Miriam Ticktin and Louis Fishman acted more than external committee members and provided crucial support that shifted my perspective on many questions that I tried to ask in the dissertation. Beyond my committee, the Department of Anthropology turned into a home for me. Elizabeth Povinelli has inspired many of my ideas and theoretical attempts. She showed me the possibility of combining ambition and rigor into one’s work. Apart from being an academic legend, Partha Chatterjee is one of the most generous intellectuals I have ever met, whose ii support at the hardest times was definitive. Brian Larkin, Audra Simpson, Marilyn Ivy, Catherine Fennell, and Maria José De Abreu have all created an institution that many great scholars and students come together and generously converse the most substantial as well as most trivial matters in life. Not only did I find a home for myself in New York, but also a family. They have been the major characters from my point of view. Aarti Sethi comes first, and not only because of a logographic obsession that secures her place by doubling the first letter in the alphabet. She has been the most. Seung-Cheol Lee is both a companion and a brother to me, who thought me serenity under extreme duress –including some unusually strong turbulence interpreted as a fatal accident above the Aegean Sea. Being the most tactile thinker I have met, Sumayya Kassamali embodied affective delicacy and cerebral violence, a rare combination that allows her to think beyond the immediate perception. Soo-Young Kim led me into the world of rye whiskey, cutting-edge art, and the persistence of truth. I learned from Amiel Melnick how to write grants and how to gently read the most unfamiliar anthropological texts. Tzu-Chi Ou, and her great present for our family –Füsun-, has been a great source of support, inspiration, and comradeship. Clare Casey appeared as a miraculous portrait (literally) in my study, drawn by her mother, watching over my shoulder without me knowing her identity. And Natacha Nsabimana, my sister from my other family in Rwanda, made the life in New York such an adventure, her name and the city conjoined in my mind forever. My cohort, my family, did not stay unchanged in this story. It expanded to include other, most amazing people at Columbia. Deniz Duruiz gave without holding anything back, even her house when I needed most. Julia Fierman became part of my life so deeply that I cannot see myself in the future without us passionately discussing our works. Danielle Judith Zola Carr has iii been a true gift, an immense source of energy, joy, and love. Fernando Montero, Tori Gross, Murat Guney, George Bajalia, Xenia Cherkaev,
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