Immortal

An Anthropological Understanding of Digital in Turkey

Nisa İrem Kırbaç 12159050 [email protected]

Amsterdam - June 21st, 2019

MSc Cultural and Social Anthropology Graduate School of Social Sciences University of Amsterdam Master thesis Supervisor: dr. C.H. (Tina) Harris Assessment committee: dr. L.G.H. Bakker and dr. Y.M. van Ede Plagiarism Declaration I hereby declare that this thesis meets the rules and regulations for fraud and plagiarism as set out by the Examination Committee of the MSc Cultural and Social Anthropology at the University of Amsterdam. This thesis is entirely my own original work and all sources have been properly acknowledged.

Nisa İrem Kırbaç 20/06/2019

2 Abstract This research seeks insight into the formation and regulation of the meanings of beginnings and endings of life with the expansion of technology. In line with this, I conceptualize digital identity as an extension of an individual’s life through which regulative surveillance is achieved. Drawing on data I have collected during three months of fieldwork in Turkey, I argue that digitalization leads individuals to become subjects/objects of a never-ending vulnerability and insecurity. Individuals, while living and after death, become more vulnerable to various forms of violence and are often deprived of their right to privacy at social, commercial and legal levels. To develop an understanding of how technology extends lives and forms digital , I conducted over twenty interviews with data privacy lawyers, employees in commercial institutions, those whom I call the ‘left-behinds,’ (digital caretakers of people who have passed away), as well as acting as a participant-observer for data protection authorities and attending a . Increased digitalization is not always an advantage for those who are living -and death-. I demonstrate that social media facilitates a kind of afterlife by allowing mourners to interact over death without limitations of place and time; making death More visible than is typically outlined in modernist discourse. This in turn leads chief mourners to become more vulnerable in their process. As death becomes a part of digital life, post- mortem privacy emerges as the concept through which I explain the way personal data becomes more ‘public’ and consequently more ‘vulnerable’ at legal, commercial and social levels when the owner of this data has died. Keywords: Internet, Turkey, anthropology of death, digital identity, digital afterlife, post- mortem privacy, vulnerability.

3 Acknowledgements To all the lawyers, engineers, professors and left-behinds, without your assistance this thesis simply would have not been possible. I would like to express my special gratitude to all the professors and professionals for giving me their attention and time. I would like to thank all the left-behinds for their generosity and trust in sharing their most intimate feelings about losing a loved one with me. I would like to thank my supervisor, Tina Harris, for her guidance, support, patience but most of all her generous encouragement throughout the year. I would like to thank Olin for proofreading this thesis and offering many useful comments. I would like to thank Derin for her inspiring comments, continuing assistance but most of all for her never-ending friendship. Her support really motivated me to finish this thesis. Finally, I would like to thank my father, brother and boyfriend. Thank you so much for being unbelievably supportive throughout my thesis process. Thank you for never getting tired of listening to me.

I want to dedicate this thesis to my mother, Şura Hatice Kırbaç, who died in 2010. You taught me a lot when you were alive, and continue to do so with your cherished memory.

4 Contents

Introduction ...... 6 Background ...... 6 Setting ...... 8 Research question ...... 11 Theoretical framework ...... 11 Methodology...... 21 Outline ...... 23 Chapter 2: Becoming digital ...... 25 Technology as extensions of human faculties...... 25 The digital book of deeds ...... 27 Legal regulations about personal data ...... 31 Conclusion ...... 36 Chapter 3: Online ...... 38 On left-behinds ...... 38 The funeral ...... 39 When and where to mourn? ...... 43 Hidden or not? ...... 47 Conclusion ...... 51 Chapter 4: Post-mortem privacy ...... 53 On being post-mortem ...... 53 “You can never erase yourself from the world” ...... 53 Insatiable desire for more data ...... 55 Post-mortem privacy and the left behinds ...... 58 Suggestions for post-mortem data regulation ...... 61 Conclusion ...... 62 Conclusion ...... 63 References ...... 68

5 Introduction

Background

“‘I'm fine’ I remember the moment I shared these words on my wall three days after my mother's death. This post means a lot for me, as much as any Facebook post can mean for anybody. I also remember why I decided to post this. I did it not only because I was exhausted from replying to each condolence message in my private message box, but also I wanted to inform more people about myself and to be supported in some way, as this post was the last time I shared about my mother. Because the post was not directly referring to my mother’s death, it was something only those who had already heard of the situation could understand. A friend of mine, who did not know about my loss, thought that it was absurd that I made a post about my current mood and wrote a mocking comment. I remember finding this very ‘rude’ -which is meaningless- and completely removed social media from my grief process. Following my mother’s death, responsibility became an increasingly important notion in my life even to this day-- responsibilities to my brother and father, responsibilities to my mother, and most importantly to myself. My realization of my responsibilities towards myself began about six months after I lost my mother, when I realized that everything was awful in my life. I realized that I had to move on, even though I suffered a great loss. It took me almost three years to completely - if such a thing is possible - accept my mother's death. What I became aware of at the end of this process is this: death is an extraordinary situation, and in order to accept it, one must realize the reality of death. This is only possible by fully acknowledging that the deceased is gone and we will never again be able to interact with them in a worldly sense. In addition to this, however, there is a constant effort to keep the deceased person present in this world. I believe this paradox is the greatest challenge for people who loses their closest. Then one day somebody hacked my mother's Facebook account. Fortunately, we reported it to Facebook and closed the account. The incident was solved without any real harm, at least technically. This event did, however, bring with it a sense of violation, of personal information and privacy, that stayed with me even as the technical aspects of the issue were solved. It made me feel guilty that while I was questioning this issue a lot (death, being left behind, responsibilities towards the deceased) I had somehow overlooked the digital traces of my mother until her account was hacked. It forced me to consider what

6 else about my mother had been exposed to strangers since her death, what had been held or used by them that we were not aware of? This question reminds me of my feelings when I realized that my mother read my diary. However, it took me a shorter time to realize that my mother read the diary as my mother implied that she had done so, and the page in which I had dried a flower had changed. Therefore, it is both rare and easy to recognize when someone uses your physical objects. When we think about the digital world, things gain a very different dimension. It is impossible for me to be aware of every digital trace that my mother left-- they will continue forever in different ways, everywhere” (Amsterdam, April 2019)

This is what I wrote in my notebook during my fieldwork as an answer to the question, “Why I am working on this topic?” The internet has become a part of our lives in a very short period of time. Only thirty years ago it was necessary for people to use home phones to communicate with each other. In contrast, today, from the moment we wake up in the morning we can communicate with anyone in seconds. Despite the sudden introduction of technology into our lives, people have learned how to adapt their old habits to the internet and gain new habits around these spaces. The intersection of technology and death begins at this point and evolves into two areas that are highly interrelated. Firstly, as my Facebook post shows, we do not only share our happy memories on online platforms, but also some of our mostly intimate information and feelings such as grief. This way, we can keep our communication with the other mourner, who do not necessarily share our pain, and the deceased person. Secondly due to technological limitations and capitalist and governmental authorities, it has become impossible for all of this personal information to remain ‘digital traces’ that we leave behind after we die. My attitude towards my mother's digital assets shows that despite all this, I was not as considerate as I should have been about the consequences of my technological habits. It also made me think about the rest of the Turkish society with whom I share everything. My experience reveals that all the digital assets that we acquire throughout our lives, like their physical counterparts, continue to belong to us after we die. However, no authority that has the power to use this data openly speaks about it. Consequently, the intrinsic vulnerability that people have just because they exist in the world takes a new form; people become permanently vulnerable to manipulation in many ways after they die. In this way, I hope to explore the vulnerabilities of being in the digital world, both as a mourner and as a person who has died.

7 Setting

Istanbul is the city with the highest population in Turkey. The current population of Turkey is estimated to be approaching 80 million with more than 15 million people living in İstanbul (Turkish Statistical Institute 2017). This makes İstanbul the financial center of the country. Levent and Maslak are the two main financial districts in the city, both of which are home to the headquarters of the largest local and global companies, banks, and legal firms. As I will mostly focus on actors rather than places for my project, carrying out fieldwork in İstanbul strengthened my research in terms of the increased number of interlocutors; bankers and lawyers whom I could reach. Internet usage rates are increasing rapidly in the county. Although the number of internet users is growing globally, 72% of Turkish population uses internet in their daily lives—well above the worldwide average of 57% (Kemp 2019). İstanbul has the highest percentage of computer usage and Internet access in the country (Turkish Statistical Institute 2013). Statistics show that the percentage of households with internet access is more than 60% in İstanbul, far higher than the country average (ibid). Turkish citizens use online services for social networking, shopping, banking and governmental services. Turkey, where individuals spend 7h15m of their day on the internet, is among the top 10 in the world in terms of the number of active Facebook and Instagram users (Kemp 2019). Other heavily used social media platforms are downloaded are WhatsApp, and Snapchat. Moreover, the number of citizens who use online services to buy something and access their bank accounts is increasing in the country (ibid). The number of people using mobile banking services is more than 35 million, and people use these services both for financial (i.e. money transfers and tax payments) and non-financial (i.e. credit card and loan applications) transactions (The Banks Association of Turkey 2017). Hence, the financial sector and digitalization are strongly related in Turkey, and İstanbul, being the most technologically-oriented part of the country, serves as a perfect fieldwork site to study the cultural, sociostructural, financial and legal transformations in the region through expanded use of technology in everyday life. As the internet and technology are inevitable parts of the individuals’ everyday lives, they need protection. In Turkey, the main regulation concerning the protection of personal data is the Law on the Protection of Personal Data numbered 6698 (Official Gazette of the Republic of Turkey 2016) that was issued on April 7, 2016. Hereafter in this thesis, I will refer Turkish Personal Data Protection Law as KVKK; abbreviation of its original name, Kişisel Verilerin Korunması Kanunu. KVKK takes “Directive 95/46/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of

8 24 October 1995 on the protection of individuals with regard to the processing of personal data and on the free movement of such data” (European Parliament and of the Council 1995) as a reference. KVKK derives from European Union rules, but it does not directly correlates with the current EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) (Özdemir 2018). Although the EU directive that guides the KVKK was the main regulation in the union during the implementation of it in Turkey, the EU issues GDPR to replace the former directive shortly after KVKK comes into force. The Grand National Assembly of Turkey approves and enacts KVKK hurriedly, because adoption and implementation of “legislation on the protection of personal data in line with the EU standards” (European Commission 2016) is one of the five remaining requirements that Turkey needs to meet for visa-free access to the Schengen area. When considering the historical development of the relationship between the state and citizens in Turkey, it is possible to realize that top-down practices in Turkish legal system are not new or specific to the current government. Strong state tradition and authority in Turkey date back to the Ottoman Empire. According to Kemal Karpat, the common belief that respect for state authority is reflective of public faith in the impartiality of the judiciary, while immensely popular during the early periods of the Ottoman Empire, was replaced by or transformed into a glorified image of state as a mystical entity in the 17th century (1996: 67). During the transition from Ottoman Empire to Turkish Republic, the bureaucrats and intellectuals considered modernity “as the ultimate goal, without regarding its content and relevance to society…With modernity, centralization became the chief characteristic of Turkish statism” (ibid). Historically the Turkish state has always been the dominant aspect in state-citizen relations. While the dynamics remain the same, there has been a constant shift in the governing ideologies, and therefore the social structures. Consequentially to this power dynamic, the top- down legislation tradition creates a constant distance between the citizens and their legal rights. Similar to modernization, the process through which KVKK becomes the main regulation over personal data protection is a reflection of the top-down functioning of the centrally concentrated justice system in Turkey. Various contradictions stem from the tension between sociocultural values, knowledge and practices of privacy, which leads the notion of ‘digital traces’ to become too challenging for any person to fully comprehend. It is undeniable that the number of internet users is increasing exponentially over time, and therefore the same can be said about amount of online data. However, technological means are not only extensions of the activities of a living person, but also of the dead. When considering the unawareness regarding personal data and privacy in the region, the fact that people are constantly online today causes some problems

9 about post-mortem privacy. ‘Digital traces of the deceased’ is a notion which comprises, on the one hand, the concept of death that has become extremely privatized in Turkey through Islamic and national laws; and on the other hand the feeling of in-betweenness inherent in online platforms. On top of all this, because the KVKK does not cover the data of the deceased people, both the mourners and the dead people become vulnerable the digital era. Article 2 of the KVKK outlines the scope of the law: “The provisions of this Law shall apply to natural persons whose personal data are processed as well as to natural or legal persons who process such data fully or partially through automatic means or provided that the process is a part of any data registry system, through non-automatic means” (Official Gazette of the Republic of Turkey 2016) Digital identity creation is supported by the Turkish government in various forms. However, law protects data only until the point of death. This is because Turkish law defines natural person with respect to personality that “begins at the very moment the child is fully born and ends by death” (Official Gazette of the Republic of Turkey 2001). So the digital traces that deceased people leave behind make way for a continuous interaction between the deceased and the mourners, as well as within the mourners themselves. Dead people are affected mainly because their online personal information becomes manipulable through ignorance of their autonomy and right over their own data, which is interfered with by different actors. Furthermore, the mourners are harmed as they cannot adapt to death and mourning concepts that change shape with digitalization. Although it is crucial to highlight the socializing, democratizing and life-facilitating power and potential of the online interactions, the afterlife of digital data is not acknowledged enough in Turkey as these services mostly do not have specific regulations on their users’ accounts and data after they die. Although the case is similar in most of the other parts of the world, İstanbul is a great place to explore this term when considering the above mentioned contextual background. Higher usage of social media means more online personal data of living and death; and this positive relationship raises the issues on privacy of these data after death. To conclude, what makes Turkey and specifically İstanbul crucial as a locus for fieldwork for this research is that in contrast to increased practices that make death more public and visible, legal, social and financial regulations, together with technological advancements, constrain digital afterlife in a particular way. Hence, when considering this background, digital afterlife and post-mortem privacy are crucial issues to explore in this field.

10 Research question

Originally, the central question that guided my research was: How might an anthropological investigation of post-mortem privacy shed light on digital afterlife in İstanbul? The question that aims to identify and analyze the financial, legal and social ways of dealing with post- mortem privacy and digital afterlife in Turkey from an anthropological perspective, did not change completely. However, after observing the strong relationship between traditional and contemporary rituals regarding death, I revised the question: How does technology change rituals related to the digital traces of deceased people and how do customs and expectations of post-mortem privacy shed light on digital afterlife in İstanbul?

Theoretical framework

Privacy

For the purposes of my research, I will follow Irwin Altman’s definition of privacy as “the selective control of access to the self” (1975: 24). There are three main characteristics of privacy according to Altman’s theory (1977). Firstly, it is a dynamic and dialectic process in which individuals control their boundaries with others through opening up or closing off. Secondly, it must be optimized to accommodate the individual’s shifting needs in terms of interaction. In his words: “Crowding is a deviation from a desired level of interaction in a too much direction, and isolation is a deviation in a too little direction” (ibid: 67). Thirdly, it is a multi-mechanism which requires the use of a range of behavioral mechanisms, allowing for people to adjust their interactive circumstances to their need for privacy. For Altman, privacy is inherently paradoxical. Whereas the need of individuals to reach the optimal level of privacy through dynamic adjustment of their relations is a universal phenomena, mechanisms used to regulate privacy are culturally specific (ibid: 68). Privacy is therefore simultaneously universal and culturally determined. Following George Simmel, Graham Jones (2014) states that “secrets produce value through both the exclusion of outsiders and the inclusion of insiders” (54). Given that these are social concepts, it can be argued that the definition and spectrum of secrecy depend on the societal environment that secrecy occupies. The long-term anthropological studies show that privacy is a social fact, and that it evolves with society, time and circumstance. The two major turning points that stand out with regards to privacy are the rise of modernism (when the body becomes private) and postmodernism (when the private becomes public). Despite postmodernism’s emergence in the 1960s as a counter- reaction to modernism with anti-modernist ideals, Sarah Michele Ford (2002) argues that there

11 is no clear endpoint between these two periods, and therefore one must not consider the two to be mutually exclusive or chronologically ordered. She then interprets the relationship between the two concepts through their presence on the internet, which is a vital element of postmodernism: “Internet, is in fact an element of contemporary society in which the modern and the postmodern at times coexist and at other times are in tension” (ibid: 86). There are various internal and external factors that shape our notions of secrecy and risk is one of these. The paradox of secrecy refers to the idea that secrecy “must be performed in order to be realized” (Herzfeld 2009:135). People do not realize the need for privacy before they actually feel the risk of the invasion of privacy. Meanwhile, “Secrecy engenders risk insofar as concealment entails the possibility of unwelcome revelation; noncirculation also creates risks of its own, such as the breakdown of social relations or cultural reproduction” (Jones 2014: 54). The literature on secrecy shows that the notion of privacy is strongly related to era and culture. When the sense of limitlessness that technological developments bring is combined with the postmodern worldview that excludes the private, the concept of privacy takes on an entirely new form. So how can this shift be understood anthropologically? How does technology impact the foundations of anthropology? This broader question will allow for the inspection of how technology, not just the internet, extends people’s lives and afterlives.

Liquid modernity

Throughout this thesis, I work with the theoretical influences of Zygmunt Bauman on postmodernity as liquid modernity, and David Lyon on liquid surveillance in the digital era. In his foreword to 2012 edition of Liquid Modernity, Bauman refers ‘liquid modernity’ as “the growing conviction that change is the only permanence, and uncertainty the only certainty” (13). Furthermore, he addresses the pragmatic interpretation of this metaphorical conceptualization: “Why this metaphor of liquidity? Look into any encyclopedia: You will find that a liquid is a substance that cannot keep its shape for long. In terms of society, that is a revolutionary change” (Bauman 2004). Essentially, the uniqueness of this era stems from the removal of limitations on identity creation that are imposed by modernist thought. Modernity prevents departures from norms, and therefore leaves no room for individual freedom or autonomy. In liquid modernity, instead, “unstable things are the raw building material of identities that are by necessity unstable” (Bauman 2000: 85). Digital platforms are perfect spaces for identity creation in the liquid world; they are now indispensable for individuals because they aid in the activities of daily life by removing the barriers regarding time and place. In turn, however, digital platforms “depend for

12 their existence on monitoring users and selling the data to others” (Bauman and Lyon 2012: 12). So, they become spaces for the “‘liquefied’, ‘flowing’, dispersed, scattered and deregulated version [of] free-floating capitalism, marked by the disengagement and loosening of ties linking capital and labour” (Bauman 2000: 149). The perceptions of time and space are the key figures in the transformation from heavy to liquid modernity. In the era of heavy modernity the fundamental objective is to conquer space, and accordingly time emerges as “the principal tool of power and domination” (Bauman 2000: 9). Bauman writes “Accelerated movement meant larger space, and accelerating the moves was the sole means of enlarging the space” (ibid: 112-113). Contrarily, space loses its ‘strategic value’ (ibid: 117) in light modernity. Everything moves at light speed, and as “space may be traversed, literally, in 'no time'; the difference between 'far away' and 'down here' is cancelled” (ibid). Time and space hold little significance in the capitalism of digital platforms, thereby setting the stage for capitalist expansion. In the light of this growing instability of the world, a transformation of the power relations and disciplining tools in inevitable. Michel Foucault's articulation of Jeremy Bentham's Panopticon as “a compact model of the disciplinary mechanism” (Foucault 1991: 197) is characterized by ‘fixedness to the place’ (Bauman 2000: 10). Roy Boyne writes as follows: “Panoptical surveillance was formerly a model for the whole of society, Bauman’s work seems to suggest, but now its power is diminished as its context has been lost” (2000: 287). In liquid times, surveillance does not require any fixed space or the ‘mutual engagement’ (Bauman and Lyon 2012: 16) of the managers and the managed. Technology enables social structures and capital to flow efficiently over time and across space, and accordingly the power to discipline and control the liquid subjects “has become truly exterritorial” (Bauman 2000: 11). The ‘Post- Panopticon’ provides a model for today’s boundary-breaking “electronic technologies through which power is asserted” (Bauman and Lyon 2012: 10). ‘Liquid surveillance’ emerges as a post-panoptic idea that “spreads in hitherto unimaginable ways, responding to and reproducing liquidity” (ibid: 9). David Lyon asserts that in “the post- panoptical world of liquid modernity much of the personal information vacuumed so vigorously by organizations is actually made available by people using their cellphones, shopping in malls, travelling on vacation, being entertained or surfing the internet. We swipe our cards, repeat our postcodes and show our ID routinely, automatically, willingly” (ibid: 2012: 17). New technologies through which independent individuals become “simultaneously promoters of commodities and the commodities they promote” (Bauman 2007: 6) facilitate surveillance

13 and encourage tendencies to classify anything. David Lyon refers to “the classifying drive of contemporary surveillance” (2003: 13) as ‘social sorting’. As digitalization becomes an integral part of the physical world, technical authorities find ways to classify any move on the internet, from transactions to social media posts.

The beginning and endings of life

Kaufman and Morgan (2005) elaborate on how anthropological studies shed light on the historical discourses and practices of the beginnings and ends of life. Kaufman and Morgan show how, throughout history, beginnings and ends have been transformed, created and regulated life and death in line with the interests of particular cultural, political and financial authorities and technological advancements. Discussions concerning , childbirth, practices, embryos and comatose patients demonstrate that “producing persons is an inherently social project” (ibid: 320), one that is shaped by cultural, political and financial interests. Additionally, in the contemporary era, meanings and limits of life and death are being extended through “biomedical technique together with a legitimating socio-economic and bioethical apparatus” (ibid: 330). Hence, technology and the process of defining and redefining the limits of life and death are strongly related. This relationship is twofold: On the one hand, technology extends the beginnings and ends of human life; on the other hand, various actors manage these beginnings and endings through the use of technology. An extension of person: Digital identity Marshall McLuhan (1964) argues that technology extends individuals’ sensory and nervous systems. McLuhan exemplifies the concept of extension, writing: “With the telephone, there occurs the extension of ear and voice that is of extra sensory perception. With television came the extension of the sense of touch or of sense interplay that even more intimately involves the entire sensorium” (ibid: 293). What follows these sensory extensions is the conscious extension that comes with network technologies. Today, “we see ourselves being translated more and more into the form of information, moving toward the technological extension of consciousness” (ibid: 69). McLuhan’s discussion foresees the current media and cultural landscape. Eric Peterson (2008) writes that “Certainly my body inhabits or lies in an imaginary space, but this is not a new function brought about by computer technology and telecommunications. My body does not become transparent or disappear in weblog storytelling. Rather, weblogs draw attention to the imaginary inherent and lived by a body that is both seeing and visible, a body that simultaneously sees and sees itself seeing”. Although Peterson’s (2008)

14 text does not refer to McLuhan's theories, the case undeniably embodies his work, with the blogger and his blog replacing the man and his extension, respectively. Digital identity is “…a growing sense of another self, a notion of a self that is digitally distributed across text messages, Web pages, social networking sites, blog comments, and so on” (Graham, Gibbs and Aceti 2013: 134). The growth of digitalization in daily activities leads to the formation of digital identity as an extension of the beginnings of life (Kaufman and Morgan 2005). Paul Bernal considers online life an intrinsic component of the contemporary world, stating that “…to function fully in that life an individual needs to be able to assert an online identity” (2014: 234). In the contemporary world having a digital identity is nearly inevitable, and various anthropological works have shed light on the way this identity coupled with online socialization resemble and differ from the real world. Virtuality is an age old concept, one that has become increasingly integrated into people’s everyday lives. Tom Boellstorff acknowledges virtual worlds as “places of imagination that encompass practices of play, performance, creativity, and ritual…They draw upon physical world cultures in multiple ways yet at the same time create possibilities for the emergence of new cultures and practices. Just as in the physical world, people within virtual worlds perform and cycle through different roles and identities” (Boellstorff et al. 2012:1). Digital identity emerges as a new life form that is unique to its creator and makes itself a necessity in everyday life. Vulnerability Coeckelbergh (2013) considers vulnerability as an integral concept of risk, and he suggests that vulnerability affirms “the potential ‘victim’ of the risk” (7). Basically a person or a thing becomes vulnerable if “the entity is at risk” (ibid). Risk is inherent to any being in the world, and therefore human existence is essentially vulnerable as “we always already stand in relation and are engaged in the world technology” (ibid: 9). Coeckelbergh notes that the relationship between technology and risk is paradoxical: New technologies both facilitate and prolong human life so that people become less vulnerable to certain types of threats (Kaufman and Morgan 2005), but also they “always create new risks and vulnerabilities, thus transforming human vulnerability rather than substantially reducing it” (Coeckelbergh 2013: 5). Online platforms and specifically social network sites (SNS) reveal how the public and private can fuse together on the internet. boyd and Ellison describe SNS as a “web based services that allow individuals to (1) construct a public or semi-public profile within a bounded system, (2) articulate a list of other users with whom they share a connection, and (3) view and traverse their list of connections and those made by others within the system. The nature and

15 nomenclature of these connections may vary from site to site” (2007: 211). Therefore, SNS are public spaces through which individuals share their private memories, thoughts . User- generated content created through SNS is persistent due to increased recording practices; replicable as it is easy to replicate bits more than anything; scalable since it allows for increased visibility of a larger population, and searchable thanks to search engines (boyd 2010:48). Although these characteristics make everyday life much easier in many ways, they also draw attention to the long-term and hidden influence of digitalization on privacy. The internet inhibits users from seeing the risks and comprehending how digitalization may violate users due to its limitless nature. From Bauman’s perspective, liquification of the social structures leads the way for new forms of vulnerabilities to emerge, and social media platforms are the places where these vulnerabilities become clearly visible. The modern notion of privacy has lost its meaning in today's liquid society, and is replaced by the illusional state generated by online platforms. In his interview with Ricardo de Querol, Bauman comments on this illusional state: “You feel in control. You can add friends if you wish, you can delete them if you wish. You are in control of the important people to whom you relate. People feel a little better as a result, because loneliness, abandonment, is the great fear in our individualist age…Social media are very useful, they provide pleasure, but they are a trap.” (de Querol 2016). Social media allows individuals to construct their own identity and community as a ‘DIY job’ (Bauman and Lyon 2012: 34), and silently make money through creating an illusional a sense of belonging. Vulnerability changes shape, but in any case it follows individuals throughout their lives. Coeckelbergh refers this process as follows: “[I]t first appears that our vulnerability diminishes, but then soon we discover new vulnerabilities, or, rather, we experience that our vulnerability has not diminished but is merely modified, transformed—if not increased” (ibid: 81). Coeckelbergh is concerned with new forms of risk, notably those posed by society's high dependence on technology, writing, “[O]ur own minds and bodies, increasingly safe from biological viruses, are extended via the Internet and in this way become vulnerable to virtual viruses, system breakdowns, and other ICT ‘security’ problems…Moreover, we relate to others and to ourselves through the medium of technology, which has transformed the vulnerability we experience in these relationships.” (ibid: 73). SNS are one of the ways through which people become vulnerable by extending themselves. Following this, in the next section, I will focus on the new vulnerabilities that emerge from ‘being in the digital world’.

16 An extension of death: Digital afterlife Digital afterlife refers to “the persistence of digital user data after the user has passed away” (Bollmer 2013: 143). Digital traces of people after they die remain untouched due to various limitations. Digital environments and technological developments that lead digital identity to emerge as a new life form are not capable of determining the difference between the data belonging to a person who is dead and one who is alive, and therefore the data of the deceased may remain indefinitely on the internet. As Graham, Gibbs and Aceti (2013) assert “…even after death, people’s lives are extended, prolonged, and ultimately changed in the present, future, and in history through new circulations, repetitions, and recontextualizations” (133). The process that starts with the creation of a digital identity and continues after the death of the creator is shaped by external factors such as legal, financial and social interests. The connection between the user and his/her online data is tentative and needs active management to be maintained (Bollmer 2013: 143). Church (2013) states that “When the identity of the living creator shifts from mortal to post mortal, the cosmic realities that govern temporal space change. However, the digital identity maintains itself, still fluid and present to the community”. New technologies do not only extend sensory and cognitive capabilities, but also lifetimes.

Towards a more public death

Following the traces of digital afterlife, I will explore Tony Walter’s theorization of death. In his work, Tony Walter (1994) proposes three historical approaches to death by considering the social, bodily and authority contexts around individuals’ experiences of death and dying. Firstly, in traditional society, where death and death-related practices are experienced in public within a community due to geographical and social factors, God was the main authority behind death. Secondly, Walter characterizes modern death with the split between the public and private due to increased bureaucratic control over death through biomedical technologies and “the exclusion of personal feeling from the public sphere” (ibid: 52). In the modern era, death was avoided in conversations and rituals around death were mostly maintained in the private sphere. Thirdly, since the mid twentieth century, there have been many rapid developments in information technology and mass transportation that influence the neo-modern understanding of death. Neo-modernism “conflates the public and the private: the private feelings of the dying and bereaved become the concern of the professional” (ibid: 41). It is possible to see the traces of Walter’s (1994) theory in Turkey. Elisabetta Costa’s studies on social media use in Mardin, a town in southeast Turkey reveal that today Turkish people “post hundreds of photos of themselves that were previously kept strictly outside of the public

17 gaze, and some of these images portray moments from their intimate, personal and domestic lives” (2016: 52). This transformation is criticized by some of the locals of the region and led them to “adopt different strategies to limit and contain the display of their personal and private life, the overall outcome has been the entry of the private into the new online public space” (ibid: 52). Hence, discourses and practices around digital property is a contradictory point in Turkey. Following this, although traditional mourning lasts for 40 days in the region (Cihan 2006; Keskin 2003), Gönden and Güzel (2017) reveal how social media, as an inevitable part of our lives, contradicts with traditional societal norms. In their words, the contradictions of contemporary existence “can be seen in [social media] posts about death, funeral, and mourning which are crucial in Turkish culture” (116). Online memorialization In this section, I will take on the growing trend of online memorialization in relation to Walter’s conceptualization of neoliberal death that turns private into public. Hallam, Hockey and Howarth (1999) assert that the people who are left behind after someone dies have direct responsibility for the afterlife of the dead, through praying, caring for the grave and taking care of the legacy. Expansion of social interaction through online platforms have transformed the ways afterlife is experienced and the responsibilities are fulfilled by the left-behinds in the neo- modern era. Following the greater emphasis on the self, private experience, practices and discourses around death are now more public, and visible, majorly by the means of media and technology (Walter 1994; Walter et al. 1995). In the contemporary world, social media platforms and various websites facilitate the way death becomes public and visible, as they function in a similar way to traditional graveyards. They allow left-behinds to fulfil their responsibilities to honor the dead and overcome their personal mourning processes. People deal with their loss on online platforms by sharing their messages and prayers towards the death (Carroll and Landry 2010; Roberts and Vidal 2000; Brubaker, Hayes and Dourish 2013). Roberts and Vidal (2000) divide the Web memorial themes into eight categories: “standard , celebration/storytelling, detailing grief/missing, guilt, focusing on death circumstances, philosophical musings about life and death, religious interpretations, and other” (531). Consequently, the expansion of possibilities to grieve leads to an increased emphasis on death through memorialization. In his book Death and the Right Hand, Robert Hertz (1960) treats the corpse as a social entity, besides being a biological entity and focuses on the moral obligations around death. Due to its social status, death is strongly related to collectivities and societal bonds. Collective

18 consciousness make sense of death as a temporary exclusion at the beginning, and consequently, mourning is “the necessary participation of the living in the mortuary state of their relative” (ibid: 86). This mortuary state of the deceased is problematic in the contemporary era because in contrast to traditional, non-digital artifacts, digital content does not decay over time “thereby expanding the reach of mourning and memorializing” (Brubaker et al. 2013: 158). Today, Facebook and various websites serve as digital through facilitating personal mourning process and collective experience of death. For Nansen, Arnold, Gibbs and Kohn (2014), “The restless dead are both emerging through these hybrid interfaces of the digital and the physical, materialized in more lively forms of media and exhumed within a network of social and technical connections previously delimited by geography and physical inscription in stone” (1). Hence, the sensory and cognitive extension of human life that accompanies the digital age leads to a reinterpretation of Hertz’s conceptualizations of mourning and end the mortuary state in relation to Walter’s neoliberal death. In the case of Turkey, a study reveals the reasons behind mourning as sadness and anguish; “mourning was a mechanism by which to cope with sorrow, but did not seem to hinder daily life activities” (Bahar, Beşer, Ersin, Kıssal and Aydoğdu 2012). It is possible to say that mourning does not hinder daily activities but become a part of them. Gönden and Güzel (2017) give the example of emoji usage to express their death related feelings and state that emojis becoming common symbols to express personal feelings is parodical. Our intrinsic vulnerabilities are easily exploited by social media. Bauman explains this during his interview with Feona Attwood: “Mark Zuckerberg, the owner of Facebook as you know, has made 50 billion on the stock exchange, on what? On our fear of loneliness. The success of Facebook is very simple. There’s no secret in that. Mark Zuckerberg put his finger on the gold mine. And the gold mine was people’s fear of being abandoned. Facebook is the way in which in spite of being lonely, we are connected” (Attwood:2018:135). Grieving after losing a loved one is an emotional process, and consequently it draws the capitalist authorities’ attention to its monetary value. Post-mortem privacy: Invisible afterlife To be able to connect the macro and the micro level of theory, the conceptual framework must reach beyond the concept of post-mortem privacy and its management. Aesthetics is one of the most important differences between traditional and digital forms of graves. As digital platforms do not allow conventional aesthetics associated with memorials, “…the photographs and written text by the deceased create a new brand of digital sublimity for the bereaved. Thus, the

19 digital landscape is adorned with its own unique aesthetic” (Church: 2013: 187). Changing practices concerning death and afterlife at the social level increase the visibility of deceased people by allowing their online contacts to memorialize them and post and repost digital traces of the deceased. This change in the aesthetics of graves and death-related practices in the digital era raise another branch of issues related to post-mortem privacy. Gibson explains the way contemporary practices around digital afterlife violate post-mortem privacy as “…public space through roadside memorials and internet archives are now sites where individual life and death is recorded for posterity. While access and use of these spaces might signify the growing democratization of public forms of grief, remembrance and memorialization, they are also signs of the ascendency of the individual to claim the value of its specific life history and existence beyond traditional public and private rites/sites of mourning and remembrance” (2007:422). Hence, neo-liberal death, which is mainly based on private feelings becoming public issues, is becoming problematic in the digital age in the sense that they challenge the essential bond between the individual and their own online creations.

Regulation of digital afterlife

Bernal (2014:234) mentions that the right to online identity has three levels: “the right to create an online identity, the right to assert that online identity and the right to protect that online identity”. Thus, he recognizes the right of the user to control their online data and identity. Extending Bernal’s ideas on online identity, Harbinja (2017:26) defines post-mortem privacy as “the right of a person to preserve and control what becomes of his or her reputation, dignity, integrity, secrets or memory after death” and elaborates on digital post-mortem privacy through theories of autonomy. Building on the ideas and conceptions of various classical and contemporary theorists, Harbinja asserts that “autonomy should in principle transcend death, allowing individuals to control their privacy/identity/ personal data post-mortem” (ibid: 30) and establishes an analogy between controlling digital afterlife and the concept of testamentary freedom. Hence, she advocates the need for regulations concerning digital afterlife and post- mortem privacy. Lessig (1999) elaborates on the changes in regulatory processes concerning property with technological expansion. In his words “the right is protected to the extent that laws (and norms) support it, and it is threatened to the extent that technology makes it easy to copy” (ibid: 171). Law, norms, code, and the market are four actors behind the management of property and they “interact as they regulate” (340). Law regulates entities by allowing and permitting certain behaviors. Individuals “certainly feel their freedom regulated, even if only rarely by the law”

20 (ibid: 122). Norms are mostly socially determined ‘rules’ that regulate entities. The market regulates and constrains entities in favor of financial authorities and opportunities. Finally, Lessig introduces code, “the instructions embedded in the software or hardware that makes cyberspace what it is”, as the fourth regulatory power that “could be a significant threat to a wide range of liberties, and we don’t yet understand how best to control it” (ibid: 136). It is important to note that these factors that regulate and constrain property and behavior are not independent from each other. In the neoliberal era, technological advancements and focus on death as a self-journey give rise to public practices of mourning and grief (Walter 1994). On one hand, mourning, which was supposed as a process within society to get used to the absence of the deceased (Hertz 1960) leads death to be visible in public sense. on the other, it raises issues about privacy of digital traces.

Methodology

I conducted semi-structured interviews ranging from thirty minutes to three hours with six individuals (3 men and 3 women) who work in the legal field. These people were graduate students of law, data protection lawyers and law professors between the ages of 24 and 45. All of them have been registered with Istanbul Bar Association and had at least a master's degree, except for one law student in the US. Through the interviews I learned more about the legal history of privacy and current practices on personal data protection in Turkey. In this way, they helped me get to the root of the problem concerning privacy and personal data. I conducted semi-structured interviews with four men between the ages of 25 and 35 who work in the commercial field. Interlocutors were employed as data scientists and research and development engineers in various business industries such as e-commerce, banking and telecommunications. These narratives allowed for a deeper understanding of the world of algorithms and a greater awareness of the unlimited possibilities of surveillance and control in the digital age. A basic definition of an algorithm is “a sequence of instructions telling a computer what to do” (Domingos:2015:1). However, attributing a particular meaning to an algorithm prior to entering the field may lead anthropologists to overlook the emergence of the algorithm as an emic term that gains meaning only through its use within a particular professional culture (Seaver:2017:7). During my interviews with the engineers, I adopted an ‘algorithms as culture’ approach, and I draw specifically upon Nick Seaver’s framing of algorithm-culture relationship, which defines algorithms as objects that are “culturally enacted by the practices people use to engage with

21 them” (ibid:5). Therefore, I attempted to answer three questions he poses to ethnographers: “How their [algorithmic systems’] secrecy is constituted in practice?” “What kinds of information are so important that they must be kept secret?” and “What kinds of information are so important that they must be widely known?” (ibid:7). The majority of approaches regard interviews as unreliable, since they “merely reflect what people say, not what they do” (Seaver:2017:8). In contrast, interviews were crucial for my fieldwork as more than half of the interlocutors were working in corporate offices or universities, and therefore were familiar with the ‘interview culture’ (Hockey:2002). For the purposes of my fieldwork, I regard the interviews not as artificially-created situations that “extract people from the flow of everyday life”, but rather as part of their lives (Seaver:2017:8). To understand beliefs about responsibilities towards death and digital legacy among Turkish people, I conducted unstructured and semi-structured interviews with five women left-behinds between the ages of 25 and 50. By left-behinds, I mean the individuals who somehow communicated with the digital traces of their loved ones after his or her death. The interlocutors were family members, partners and friends of five deceased people (2 men, 3 women) who had died of various causes, including car accident, bullet wound, heart attack and lung cancer. Their ages at the time of their death range between 20 to 55 years. The interviews were excellent, full of inside information regarding the role of social media and digital identities in grief processes. Two of the interviews were conducted in Izmir, a city on Turkey’s Aegean coast. All of the other interviews were conducted in different places in Istanbul, mostly at quiet cafés, or by request at interlocutors’ offices. I was more comfortable with semi-structured interviews throughout the research. In the beginning, they helped me to develop a comprehensive understanding of the topic. Additionally, it was better to have several already-prepared questions before talking to professionals such as lawyers, professors and engineers. All except four of the interviews were audio recorded after receiving permission from the interlocutors. All of the interviews were conducted in Turkish, except for Teri’s, as he told me that he was more comfortable with English. I then transcribed and translated the interviews from Turkish to English. Maintaining the fidelity of my interlocutors’ words proved to be a challenge, because the interviews often involved complex region-specific notions deeply rooted in the cultural, sociological, and historical realities of Turkey. In addition to interviews, I spent time at two collective events as participant observer. Firstly, I attended the 2nd Personal Data Protection Symposium on February 7. I was there as a participant observer; I took notes during the talks, met new people and observed how those

22 people interact with each other. I obtained a list of possible interlocutors who are mostly professionals of the topic. Moreover, being there allowed me to become acquainted with various perspectives and discussions around privacy and personal data, especially at the legal level. I conducted my second participant observation in my grandfather’s funeral. As grief period is seven days in Islam, I had chance to participate in different rituals that helped me understand death in Turkish culture. In this time, I participated in and observed the gathering at the house of the deceased, prayer in the mosque, and the burial ceremony at the cemetery. This event was puzzling for me in two ways. Firstly, it was methodologically insightful as it was important for me to find the balance between being a participant and observing at the same time. I was, after all, a subject of the event - a left behind - yet even through such a personal experience, I was compelled to integrate the insights I gathered into this research. In this case, I was my own interlocutor. It was also theoretically insightful because I had the chance to explore the similarities and differences between death in real life and death in digital life. Since death is a sensitive topic, I paid extra attention to protecting the rights, cultural values, and vulnerabilities of the interlocutors. All names and other identifying characteristics of the interlocutors, the organizations, and the deceased people are concealed. The given names and surnames are all pseudonyms to protect the interlocutors’ identities. I decided on the names through a random Turkish name generator tool. Additionally, privacy-related issues are treated confidentially by the organizations, and so I took care to comply with their policies. The sensitivity of the topic increased and became more apparent during the interviews with the left- behinds. In that sense, I explained the research to the participants in detail in order to ensure that they understood the limits of confidentiality. I chose cases where the loss had occurred between 4 to 8 years prior to the time of the interviews. It was important to keep some distance from the interlocutors and to strike the right balance between remaining silent and interrupting during the interviews in order to avoid any emotional harm towards the left-behinds. I have also been careful with the information of dead people so as not to violate their post-mortem privacy.

Outline

In this study, I will first identify key concepts such as digital assets and digital afterlife, to ascertain how practices involving online personal data have become extensions of real life. I will also provide a legal and financial framework through which online platforms are regulated in Turkey, with a focus on data privacy and online surveillance. Elaborating on how these platforms are incorporating interactive customs from real life, Chapter 3 will focus on how death and mourning move into the digital sphere. Traditional funeral and mourning processes

23 will be compared to online practices, revealing the extent to which these customs are preserved or changed during digitalization. Concepts such as sequestration, spatial and temporal limitations, and online communities will be discussed in relation to arising discussions about privacy. In the context of data privacy, Chapter 4 will focus on how the deceased leave a digital trail that falls into a data-ownership purgatory, and how the lack of regulations about digital afterlife can be beneficial for companies which collect and capitalize on user data. At the end of these chapters, the study will conclude by mapping out the advantages and disadvantages of the digitalization process, remarking its intertwinement with death, a universal but also inarguably cultural concept.

24 Chapter 2: Becoming digital

Technology as extensions of human faculties

Digitalization is a crucial part of human life in Turkey. Internet usage rates are increasing rapidly in the country. Technology has various advantages, such as facilitating communication, both between individuals, and between individuals and businesses. The following are two excerpts from two interviews that exemplify how communication and commerce become easier with technology and how technology removes barriers regarding place and time. “Because in the end these data collection services have improved our lives in many ways. It is how you find out about the opportunities around the world, it is how we travel, it is how I make friends, it is how I keep in touch with friends, make business decisions and things like this. But we need balance. And balance is the hardest thing we can obtain anywhere” (Teri, Istanbul, January 2019) “The advantage is that it offers easy access to the companies. Instead of calling or going to the ATM and spending hours, you can do whatever you want right away. For instance if you want to top-up your phone, you can do it online in a click. You can turn the TV channel over without leaving your seat. I mean, these all come together with digitalization. You're not home anymore, but you can turn on the air conditioner. Remote management is a part of what we call Industry 4.0. remote management” (Taha, Istanbul, February 2019) As Teri’s and Taha’s reflections reveal, technology improves lives as they become a prominent part of everyday. Individuals use technology for almost everything, because the internet allows ‘space-time compression’, through speeding up the pace of life and bringing the whole world closer together (Ford: 2002: 91). Consequently, technology extends individuals sensory and nervous system, and consciousness (e.g. McLuhan: 1964). Extension of lives through the internet, by adding to the ‘beginnings and ends of life’ (Kaufman and Morgan: 2005) is possible. This may happen in two ways. Firstly, individuals extend themselves through providing information about themselves on the internet. However, by means of internet, individuals do not only extend themselves, but also any other social entity with which they interact through online platforms. Hence, social actors such as our social media connections have a role in individuals’ processes of digital identity creation. Digitalization, both, strengthens the real-life relationships, and, provides an environment through which

25 completely new types of relationships can be established. Besides the social media interactions which are usually mutual, others may extend one’s life and death, either by posting after the deceased or posting about prenatal events. The internet enables these extensions by allowing people to act in behalf of others, regardless of the loss of individuals’ autonomy. Technology becomes an inevitable part of everyday life -and death- and leads individuals to create new identities for themselves. However, ‘being-in-the-world is always a being-at-risk’ (Coeckelbergh:2013:9), and this makes any person who has been on the internet in any way at any point his life ‘at risk’. The next section is about what I mean by risks and vulnerabilities of the online world.

Inherently vulnerable

Online platforms are perceived as independent from previous understandings of public and private spaces. That means that “technology provides a forum for rituals otherwise performed in private, non-mediated environments” (Kern, Forman and Gil-Egui:2013:3). Online platforms give a magical feeling that the users are in a special place where the private and public are fused. This magical feeling, on the one hand, leads the individuals to use technology more, but on the other hand, it leads to concerns regarding privacy. Teri reflects on the inherent ambiguity of online platforms that make them dangerous: “N: Do you think that people are aware of the possible dangers? Do you think people are aware of the importance of the digital data and protection of it? No, I don’t think so. And one reason they are not aware of it is because they don’t understand the consequences of doing things online. It is very easy to just go online and do things, and when you wake up tomorrow, nothing really happens. But what this data will mean one year from now, five years from now, how companies use your data to convince you to do things is something we need to look at. And what people need to do is track record of what they search…And also people are not aware because they are not aware of how much protection they deserve. So for example if I write something online, usually people will assume ‘oh I wrote it online. So it is for the public’. Actually it is not. As soon as you write it online it is still yours. If someone copies that without your permission, you have the right to say ‘I want you to pay me for this or I want you to stop putting this online’. People are not aware that they have the right for more protection than they think. Usually they just assume ‘I put it online or someone else puts it online, so I can just take it or download it’. No you can’t! You should know that it is still your property, it is still their property, it is still that concept, it is property. It is all

26 the same as before the internet. So if we told people how important this is, and how much protection they have, they will be more aware and I think more people should be educated about this issue” (Teri, Istanbul, January 2019) Today information is more likely to be lost or used for unknown purposes, hence they are more pervasive (Walter:2018). When Teri mentions the difficulty of understanding the consequences of online actions, he draws attention to the long-term and hidden influence of digitalization on privacy. In addition to the inherent vulnerability of the internet, contemporary technological and legislative practices engender crucial risks. In light of this, the following section will discuss the financial motivations of today’s capitalist powers.

The digital book of deeds

Visibility appears as a problematic notion when considering the importance given to digitalization and its widespread use in everyday life. Visibility opens doors to new techniques for monitoring, and the rise of Big Data completely changes the power relations between individuals and institutions. According to Lyon (2002), to understand the term surveillance, it is important to be able to analyze it in historical context by comparing today’s applications to the Panopticon. The Panopticon was first mentioned by Jeremy Bentham in the late 18th century. It is actually an architectural model in which there is a tower in the center surrounded by cells, with people who needs to be watched by the person standing on the tower. Foucault and Rabinow (1984) emphasize that the significance of this model is that it makes the power visible but also unverifiable (210). Even though people do not exactly know when they are surveilled and even if they are really being surveilled or not, they pay attention to their behaviors. Thus, it is both a real architectural design and a God-like metaphor. However, the concept of the Panopticon is limited in its ability to explain today’s surveillance practices. In the digital era, power is fluid and ‘exterritorial’ rather than being fixed. Canberk works as a data engineer at Yadeo1, one of the leading e-commerce companies in Turkey. He reflects on the power that comes with the ability to control and understand Big Data: “For me, you're just a point on the internet... I have the power to manipulate all your thoughts. If one has the data, they can control everything, and Google opens everything to us. That's how we can collect everything[...]In the digital world, we can be manipulated very easily” (Canberk, Istanbul, January 2019)

1 Pseudonym

27 Canberk speaks up about the excessive power given to the capitalists enterprises through their ability to control mass amounts of data. This does not match Foucault’s observations of panoptic practices in the modern era before the introduction of the internet. In contrast to modern surveillance techniques, which are only effective in fixed places, today’s ‘post- panoptic’ (Bauman:2000; Bauman and Lyon:2012) surveillance systems are so advanced that they can trace any move online in a few seconds, regardless of physical structures or locations. Big Data characterizes today’s surveillance. Drawing on a number of sources, Rob Kitchin (2014: 262) summarizes the key features of big data: “huge volume, consisting of terabytes or petabytes of data; high velocity, being created in or near real time; extensive variety, both structured and unstructured; exhaustive in scope, striving to capture entire populations of systems; fine-grained resolution, aiming at maximum detail, while being indexical in identification; relational, with common fields that enable the conjoining of different data-sets; flexible, with traits of extensionality (easily adding new fields) and scalability (the potential to expand rapidly)” (as cited in Lyon: 2014: 5). Erberk works as a research and development engineer at a bank in Turkey, and therefore has considerable knowledge and experience with Big Data. The explanation that Erberk provides for big data corresponds with Kitchin’s definition: “There is one ambiguity regarding the definition of big data that needs to be clarified. Big Data isn't just about the volume of the data. Yes, there should be a large amount of data but not every large amount of data is the Big Data…What happens with Big Data is when you have so big data that you can’t find enough space to store it all or your computer can’t run it, so you can't manage it in the existing system and need another way to do that. Big Data is actually this methodology. We call this power Big Data” (Erberk, Istanbul, March 2019) More precisely, Big Data is the name given to the methodology used to manage large data sets. One may have a large data set, but this is not Big Data if they insist on using conventional ways to deal with it. Thus the crucial question to ask at this point is about the tools and mechanisms that make companies that powerful in managing personal data. Technological development allows personal information in codes to become meaningful through collection, categorization and analysis. Digital space removes limitations of the offline world regarding the amount of data collected from individuals and paves the way for post-panoptic surveillance. Kerim is a law professor specialized in data-privacy in Turkey. He draws an analogy between the mass amount of personal data and a Book of Deeds to emphasize the limitless capacity of Big Data:

28 “On the one hand, there are big companies that write your deeds... When you ask Google to show your personal data, it can tell you everything. What did you look for, what did you watch on YouTube, what did you eat, what did you drink? It knows everything” (Kerim, Istanbul, February 2019) The concept of book of deed has an important meaning in Islamic tradition. It is the book in which the rewards and sins of a person are written by angels during an individual’s lifetime. According to Islamic belief each individual will receive their book of deeds on the Day of Judgement. The Quran describes this as follows: “This Day you shall be recompensed for what you used to do. This Our Record speaks about you with truth. Verily, We were recording what you used to do (i.e. Our angels used to record your deeds)” (al-Jaathiyah 45:29). Much like the angels charged by God to constantly record individuals, capitalist authorities eagerly develop new algorithms and techniques to monitor, manipulate and sort their clients. Moreover, they are as invisible as the angels. This metaphor reveals the post-panoptic power granted to what Kerim refers as ‘big companies’ in the contemporary world. Personal data is everywhere and new technologies to manipulate this data are being developed each and every second. Collection of any personal data, even online conversations is the first step of Big Data methodology, because the machine learning algorithm needs to have enough samples to learn how to understand human behavior. Categorization comes after collecting the data. “You're a point in the digital world for me. But a point with features” says Canberk. These features makes us meaningful in the digital world, especially when it comes to categorization. Codes are “the invisible doors that permit access to or exclude from participation in a multitude of events, experiences, and processes” (Lyon:2013:13), therefore, directly or indirectly influencing the decisions of online users. Canberk reflects on this notion of ‘social sorting’ and show how online data is categorized both within and between the limits of the already established social stigmas: “So I worked in a company where we were profiling the users. What kind of news are they reading? Are they reading economics? Are they reading gossip pages? The company can analyze all of these, separate people into different segments... For example, if someone reads economics, we considered is as an upper segment and show them the BMW ads...Or if someone reads the gossip pages we show him/her Toyota ads. So we're separating everything” (Canberk, Istanbul, January 2019) The information that is constantly monitored and categorized by companies is not limited to information the users intentionally provide. As Canberk says, any online action, including

29 simply clicking a link, enables algorithms to determine the segment to which one belongs. Cheney-Lippold’s (2011) notion of soft biopolitics can be seen as a more focused understanding of social sorting in the business environment. Canberk clearly states that marketing companies use technology as a tool in the management of digital identity. Soft biopolitics is the categorization of identities in the online world through “algorithmically assigning meaning to user behavior” (ibid: 170) which becomes a source of contemporary power. This means, in the contemporary world, soft-biopolitics emerge as a branch of the whole regulative system that facilitates directing user behavior in favor of financial authorities.

Data is the new oil

In the contemporary world, the motivation behind companies taking advantage of mass personal data is simple: money. “Data is the new oil” and everybody wants to enjoy this unlimited resource. The following fieldnotes from my participant observation in the second Personal Data Protection Symposium reveal the current discussions around cruel intentions of the big companies, and therefore can be considered as a comprehensive summary of the new motivations and technologies to surveil:

“A speaker emphasizes the importance of data in today's world: ‘data equals knowledge equals oil’. Following this, he points out that the surveillance techniques that gained momentum with technological advances are actually reflections of Jeremy Bentham's Panopticon. The speaker refers to the increasing economic value of personal data and concludes as: ‘Personal Data Protection Regulation hinders an unarmed occupation of individuals’ lives; so the protection of personal data means protection of the individual and the democracy.

The fact that the data can be saved, stored, explained and spread provides the economic value it has today and gives the companies the motivation to process the data. ‘to obtain value from open data, this is the main objective in the digital world’ says a speaker and explains two issues regarding surveillance today: ‘the justification of the legitimate cause of monitoring and the thorough consideration of the possible consequences of monitoring’. One speaker emphasizes the importance of open consent. She concludes: ‘Social media sites, make money from the data we provide either voluntarily or without knowing. And for sure, the companies don't pay attention to the necessary points’” (İstanbul, February 2019)

30 Already before the digital age, individuals were being surveilled by authorities. However, technology on the one hand facilitates this surveillance, while on the other hand it makes it possible to process, and assign meaning to, the mass amount of digital data. A speaker refers to the data processing technologies and explains what he means by processing the data: ‘to save, to store, to explain, and to spread’. Technologies increase the visibility of individuals and thus facilitate surveillance, and the increasing economic value of knowledge makes data gathered through surveillance unique for the companies. However, the question of the extent to which companies want to know or inform their customers about personal data protection is somewhat controversial. Because today the motivation behind collecting data is different from any other era. Extensive management of Big Data makes it the new source of social, economic and political power that needs remain silent .

Overall, digital data is a property that we produce ourselves, mostly in our leisure time, and sell for free to commercial agents. Digital traces follow individuals throughout their lives, and even after they die. Therefore, any move online makes us vulnerable forever. The following section is about the emerging legal regulations of personal data protection. Because of the emergence of privacy as an issue in the liquid world, it is crucial to see the way discussions on personal data protection in Turkey may shed light on sociocultural understandings of privacy.

Legal regulations about personal data

The concept of privacy begins to be discussed towards the end of 19th century, but its origin is in the second world war. The practices in Nazi Germany such as recording people's personal data and sending them to concentration camps, treating them differently and killing them because of their personal characteristics has led the discussions around personal data, identity and privacy to increase and spread around the world. The Council of Europe opened the convention regarding protection of personal data for signature on January 28, 1981. Thirty-five years later, in 2016, European Union recognized the need for a general personal data protection regulation that applies to “any information relating to an individual, whether it relates to his or her private, professional or public life. It can be anything from a name, a photo, an email address, bank details, your posts on social networking websites, your medical information, or your computer's IP address” (European Commission:2012). Consider this next excerpt from my interview with Teri, a law student in the US who specializes in intellectual property and patents:

“With digitalization we have to change the laws and acknowledge the idea that anyone can just go on the computer and find something […] Before the internet, the law was

31 not designed for people connecting very fast. Now in digitalization we have to take into account that I can send you data in two seconds […] In my opinion [the legal system] is very slow like some laws are written last year” (Teri, Istanbul, January 2019)

Teri acknowledges the very deep relationship between digitalization and law, and claims that digitalization alters legal definitions. Therefore, the laws that protect personal data and privacy in the digital age are very different from the rest of the laws of the past century. Furthermore, Teri asks some questions loudly to himself: “What does it mean to have online data? What does it mean to have personal data? What does it mean to give this data to somebody else? What happens if someone steals it? What happens if someone uses it improperly? What if I give something only to one person but somehow three people gets it?”. These questions raise some of the legal issues that arise from the technological developments. It becomes difficult to answer these questions when considering the pervasive and dynamic nature of the online platforms, which require constant effort to keep up with.

Europe accepted GDPR to enter into force in 2018. It is crucial to note that Turkey also started working on the same kind of a regulation - the Personal Data Protection Regulation (KVKK) - within the same year, and the act comes into force even before Europe; on April 7, 2016. On the same day, Personal Data Protection Authority was also established to follow up the developments in the European legislation and to make evaluations, suggestions, and research regarding personal data protection in Turkey. Since then, the authority has played an influential role, especially in raising awareness about the importance of personal data. Consider this next field note taken during my participant observation during II. Personal Data Protection Symposium:

“‘May I have your first and last names please?’ one of the suited men behind the desk asks. ‘Nisa İrem Kırbaç’ I reply. He finds my name tag among the other pre-printed, plastic-coated tags and hands it to me. I see the small, red and green tags lined up side by side on the other table. I ask the suited man who gave me the name tag a few seconds ago what they are. ‘The red one means that your photos won’t be taken during the event or they won’t be published online. However, if you take a green one, that means you allow your photos to be taken and published by Personal Data Protection Authority”. I take one of the red tags and start observing the guests waiting for the symposium to start in the area right in front of the hall where the event will be held. They talk while eating the snacks from the open buffet table. Some of the words I overheard from the conversations around me are: ‘Article 28’, ‘data controller’, ‘GDPR’ and ‘cybercrime’.

32 Since I don't know anyone, I take my coffee, go towards the hall and choose a place for myself. Following the opening speech of the Symposium is made by the chairman of the Personal Data Protection Authority, academics from various universities make presentations concerning different aspects of personal data protection in Turkey. Members of the Personal Data Protection Authority are aware of the lack of awareness regarding personal data at the individual level. ‘Data protection should be a part of individual and social culture,’ says a speaker, ‘we want the regulations on the Protection of Personal Data to be privacy and people-oriented, this should be imprinted on minds’ she adds. To raise awareness, 7 April, the date on which Personal Data Protection Regulation act come into force, is celebrated as Data Protection Day in Turkey for the last three years. Moreover, Personal Data Awareness Clubs are established in high schools. Besides, Data Privacy Day is celebrated globally each year on 28 January since 2007” (Istanbul, February 2019)

KVKK is very new in Turkey. Even though, the data protection lawyers and corporate employees whom we can describe as professionals have started to talk about personal data protection, the level of awareness at the individual level is very limited. Moreover, corporate- level practices are frequently questioned and criticized. Legal authorities believe that raising awareness at the social level is difficult to achieve in Turkey. To that end, the legal authorities try to notify people of their rights by hosting events at conferences and companies. Therefore the authorities believe that the only way to do this is to make personal data a part of culture. This case shows that online privacy is not an internalized value among Turks. Legal narratives give insight into the possible reasons behind this incognizance among Turkish citizens, especially regarding the importance of personal data and vulnerability.

In the following section I present a cultural approach that explains this by referring to religious differences between Turkey and Europe.

Incoherence between law and tradition

KVKK is not directly based on GDPR but it is based on a European Union directive and “tries to be parallel to GDPR”. This leads to contradictions concerning culturally shaped perceptions on privacy among Europeans and Turks. A short excerpt from our interview with Teri reveals the relationship between law and culture, and influence of religion on legislative processes in Muslim countries:

33 “The problem with Islamic countries is that everything is so hidden, we don’t have enough data and information to see what should be protected. And usually it is assumed that everything just belongs to the family. And whenever, for example, there is a cultural issue in very conservative Islamic countries, data is stolen for example, it is not reported that the data is stolen and not reported that there is an issue with someone’s property being stolen, being taken or being misused. It is usually kept secret just because we need to keep it in the family, for example, or we need to show that we’re stable. We need to make sure no one knows about this. It is more hidden. . .Because it is more encouraged in Western countries, as a result Christian-based traditions, to be open about these things. We have less data protection as a result, in Islamic countries because there is less encouragement to talk about these issues and to encounter them and to see if we can control them and see if we can repair them” (Teri, Istanbul, January 2019) In contrast to his professors who compare legal decision making process with a math equation, Teri acknowledges the importance of human factor in legislation. Naomi Mezey emphasizes the mutually constitutive relationship between law and culture and states that “legal and cultural meanings are produced precisely at the intersection of the two domains” (2001:57). Religion may be one of the factors strengthening the contradictions around privacy influential factors. However, explaining why people cannot internalize personal data and privacy issues solely through religious differences simplifies this complex situation. When I ask Canberk about his perceptions of privacy in the digital era, he replies as in the following: “Privacy means nothing for me. Because there is no such a thing as privacy today. We are always accessible, every day, every hour…we are, our transactions are followed wherever we go. It is certain that there is no privacy” (Canberk, Istanbul, January 2019) Canberk is pessimistic about privacy, but the reason behind his perception appears to be related to lack of trust - towards the ones who have access to anything we do online - rather than lack of awareness. Therefore, Canberk’s explanation reveals the necessity of discovering the privacy-related problems in Turkey through focusing on the policies of the authorities who have the power to manipulate us. The following section focuses on a more structural explanation of the lack of awareness, and emphasizes the historical development of state-citizen relations since the Ottoman era in Turkey.

Long (hi)story

34 Top-down practices in the Turkish legal system are not new or specific to the current government. The whole modernization process in Turkey is a top-down project, and the transition from the Ottoman Empire to the Turkish Republic is an example of this. Keyman and Gümüşçü (2014) explain the modernization process in Turkey as “a more complex and, at the same time, more ambiguous project, aiming to achieve a top-down and state-based transformation of a traditional society into a modern nation by introducing and disseminating Western reason and rationality” (13). In Ataturk’s era, Turkish code was completely rewritten, borrowing certain parts of Swiss and French codes. The following are excerpts from interviews with two different lawyers:

“There is a constant pain in our law. For example, laws are very convenient but the practice is not good. Or the law is always inadequate. There is always a conflict between our society and the law. I think that one of the biggest reasons is this: during the transition from Ottoman Empire to Turkish Republic, all of our laws were renewed and taken from Europe to westernize Turkish institutions…But there is a culture clash here. In other words, the laws that were determined by trial and error as a result of a cultural accumulation in Europe do not fit much to the Turkish people” (İnci, Istanbul, January 2019)

“These are all due to the fact that the process is directly executed without passing through development. The way the law is constructed in Turkey is wrong. Arrangements are never discussed in society. The effects of the laws should be spoken on television. There is no such thing in Turkey” (Taha, Istanbul, February 2019)

KVKK in Turkey is an appropriation of GDPR. One of the main differences between them that leads to the aforementioned problems regarding personal data protection in Turkey is the motivation behind accepting the law. Although Europe establishes GDPR as result of almost forty-years of discussions and necessities, Turkey has more pragmatic reasons. During our interview, İnci refers to Montesquieu’s (1823) work The Spirit of Laws, in which Montesquieu argues that law must be appropriate to society's habits and culture. In Turkey, the concept of personal data is neither a part of everyday life nor the culture.

Familiarization is one of the primary reasons behind this problem, and consequently vulnerability regarding personal data. Europeans were familiarized with the discussions regarding offline and online personal data for almost forty years. In contrast, when considering this long history of top-down attitudes by the Turkish legal authorities, KVKK is also a

35 reflection of the top-down attitude of the Turkish legal system. In contrast to Europe, where the concept of privacy goes up to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and issues around personal data has been discussed for years, most Turkish professionals and citizens have only met the concept in 2016. The general consensus among Turks is that online data is inherently public, which leads to a disinterest in what personal data and its protection entails. Following excerpt from an interview highlights the contrast between Europe and Turkey:

“Usually, everything happens from top to bottom in Turkey. When they released Personal Data Protection Law, people said “What is happening, what is personal data?”. On the other hand, in Europe, people became aware of their personal data and privacy as a part of a 35-year process...from 1948 onwards, in fact, the European society is becoming conscious of it...So it's supposed to be a bit of a process, not a stroke. So in 2040, we could be talking about other things related to this issue in Turkey, of course, I think. Time must pass” (Kerim, Istanbul, February 2019)

Turkey is significant to study in terms of the awareness regarding personal data on digital environment. Turkish people become more vulnerable to internal or external violations of privacy as they are not aware of the possible consequences of their data, and it is hard to catch up with the technological changes. “Turkish society accepts what is given to them by the authorities” says Kerim and he adds “this prevents them from understanding the logic of the issue and makes individuals easily manipulable”. These sentences are critical. Kerim associates the law making system in Turkey with stroke, and therefore he is well aware of the problematic nature of state-citizen relations in Turkey. These sentences are critical. Kerim associates the law-making system in Turkey with a stroke, and is therefore well aware of the problematic nature of state-citizen relations in Turkey. However, by referring Turkish society as manipulable, he clearly emphasizes the passivity of the citizens rather than the cruelty of the state.

Conclusion

Industry cruelly uses personal data, and the laws regarding this data in some ways cannot be internalized by Turkish society. This results in irresponsible attitudes towards internet usage, and consequently makes individuals vulnerable. As individuals do not internalize online data, it becomes impossible to discuss the possible consequences of digitalization and the deserved protection. As the owner of the data becomes uncertain, individuals become detached from their online information. This is even more complicated when the owner of the data is deceased,

36 leaving a digital trail that blurs the rights of ownership. In light of this, I will review the transformation of mourning practices in Turkey with the Internet in the following chapter and elaborate on the ways through which “being-mourner-in-the-digital-world” make them vulnerable.

37 Chapter 3:

On left-behinds

“Dying is probably one of the hardest realities to accept or even understand. It is even harder to know that, although death is the common destiny of every human being, I'm one step closer to it. So, as I am aware of this inevitable end, I decided to leave some written text to my family and my friends, besides the photographs. Although it is very difficult to do this, I am happy that I’m writing […] I understand that I am getting closer to the finale as I feel the palpitations in my heart, numbness in my arm and dizziness every morning I wake up. I want to leave something to those I will leave behind rather than sitting and crying […] Family is the only truth I have in life. I owe them everything, even the keyboard that allows me to write to you right now, and the shorts I’m wearing. My family, especially my mother, took very good care of me. That's why they shouldn't shed tears after me. All in all, it is better to get rid of this world, rather than living every moment as if my heart will come out of my mind. I can't question God's will for my life […] I don’t know when you’ll read these lines. Maybe next year, maybe earlier…That's what I want from my family: My heart will always be with you. Don’t cry, because I won’t rest in peace if you do so. Support each other for me [...] My aunts, my brothers, my sisters loved me so much since I was a child, so they shouldn't cry after me. Life is not long enough to be sad. So, let Mesut remind you of happiness, strength, resistance and perseverance […] September 4, 2014 – 11:00 Thursday! I'm heading to the hospital soon; I can't take care of my body, I'm out of breath, my head falls down all the time. I miss eating, and I don't have much energy to do so. Be smart, don’t deal with worldly things; you have come in this world and you will go back soon. Take care of yourself in your health. Forgive me and I even forgive the person hurt me most. Remember me well. If I survive, it will be a miracle. But in this world, I've learned how to truly appreciate my life” (Yasin, 2014)

Yasin dies of a heart attack less than a month after writing those lines. After his death, his sister Bihter posts this on Facebook as his last words. This letter reveals how being closer to death feels both physically and psychologically. Yasin is quite aware of this reality, the most important thing for a person who feels like this is to leave his mark on this world. Yasin also

38 lists all the people who are characterized as being "left-behind" throughout this thesis, asking for certain things from her ex-girlfriend to his family and friends.

The common funerary processes in present day Turkey are highly influenced by religious and societal norms, which limit grief in terms of sequestration, place and time. The introduction of social media has changed mourning practices, just as it has done to most daily activities. As I detailed in the previous chapter, this increased usage of internet creates new vulnerabilities among the population. However, when it comes to death, both facilities and vulnerabilities become more crucial due to the sensitivity and cultural dependence of the issue.

The funeral

Losing a close family member in Turkey means responsibility, because there are religious, social and cultural norms and expectations that guide the funerary processes from the beginning to the end. The following extract from my field notes taken during my grandfather’s funeral sums up the initial preparations before the official burial ceremony:

“I wake up at seven o’clock, and I think it is too early to wake up after a busy week. I lift the curtain and look outside; it is a cloudy and foggy February morning in Istanbul. A few minutes later, I get a call from my father, saying that my grandfather passed away. As soon as I get these unexpected news, I quickly get ready and head to my grandmother’s, to the house where my grandfather died. Before entering the house, I remind myself that I will have two different identities in the following days: a left-behind as the granddaughter of the deceased person but also a researcher doing participant observation. For the last year, a couch in the hall of the house had been turned into a bed for my grandfather. Therefore, when you walked in from the front door, the first person you encountered was him. When I enter the funeral house for the first time after receiving the news, I notice that my grandfather's bed is set to be used as a couch again. I greet my grandmother and Gülnare, my grandfather’s caretaker for the last three years, with hugs without saying anything and sit down. After a moment of silence, my aunt asks ‘Isn't it cold in here?’. Although she doesn’t wait for an answer to close the window, my grandmother talks for the first time and answers ‘I opened it so that fresh air sweeps through the house’” (Istanbul, February 2019)

My grandfather was eighty-five years old, and had been suffering from Alzheimer's for the past six years. He had also had a more than one stroke in the past few years. He wasn’t able to walk, talk or even eat without the help of his nurse. His social life had died long before he actually

39 died. I see his death as a comfort since he would no longer be in pain, however the feeling when I started realizing the physical absence of him was odd. One very specific moment that makes me feel this way is the quick transformation of his bed into couch again. Although nobody in the house mentioned it, changing the bed of the deceased is one of the common rituals practiced in Turkey just after death. The real motivation is to “clean” the house from any manifestation, real or perceived, of death. Likewise, leaving the windows open on a freezing February day also implies efforts to make death and the deceased invisible in the house where he lived for fifty years until his death.

Closing the eyes of the deceased, changing the bed, cleaning and ventilating the room by opening the windows are several common rituals practiced among the close family of the deceased just after death (Örnek:1971:46). Various sayings among Anatolian people regarding the beliefs behind those customs are “to let the spirit go out of the room” or “to remove the smell of death” (ibid:47). Hence, the primary purpose of the preliminary customs is to sever the ties between the dead and the house.

“I gather my courage and ask my grandmother and aunt about the day’s plan. As my aunt takes a breath to answer my questions, the doorbell rings and I rush to the door to welcome my father. He looks hurried rather than being sad. He doesn’t even step in the house; he simply pauses outside and informs us about the plans. ‘Haluk is coming tonight, so the funeral will be held tomorrow’ he says and adds, ‘As it was in my father’s will, he will be buried in Mimarsinan’. I steal a glance at my grandmother and see the relief in her eyes as if a burden has been lifted off her shoulders. He says “Now, I will meet Sabo and we will arrange the funeral” and leaves the house” (Istanbul, February 2019)

Haluk is my uncle who has lived in Sweden for the last ten years. Although in Islamic tradition a person should be buried as soon as possible after his/her death, we decide to wait for my uncle and hold the funeral on the next day. The following step after the preliminary rituals is the preparation of the body for the burial as a religious and traditional obligation for the families and the community (Iltar:2003). The surviving friends and family are obliged to fulfill their responsibilities to the deceased as a symbol of respect. he men of the extended family take the responsibility to ‘arrange the funeral’; which includes washing the body and covering it with cerements according to Islamic rituals, informing the government about the death and finding a cemetery. The women; me, my grandmother and Gülnare stay at home to welcome the other members of the family. As exemplified by the washing and covering processes that my

40 grandfather went through, today, funerary processes are carried out in the cemeteries or hospitals in the cities, and mostly in private yards in the villages in Turkey (ibid:5). According to Mellor and Shilling (1993), as a reflection of the modern era, “the organization and experience of death have become increasingly private, separated from mainstream society” (as cited in Walter:2018:1). As my father emphasized when informing us of my grandfather’s burial place, I understand it was his will. Later on, I learn from my grandmother that he had two reasons behind this wish to be buried in the Mimarsinan Cemetery. Firstly, it is close to the house where my father lives, and secondly, the cemetery has a view of the Sea of Marmara.

Alone in the crowd

The last procedure before the burial is the funeral prayer which should be performed in accordance with Islamic norms and principles. What makes funeral prayer and burial different from the preliminary preparations is that this phase isn’t exclusive to close family members, or chief mourners as Tony Walter (2007) suggests. Today, online platforms create a space where diverse groups of people can meet and share ideas on almost any topic, from life to death. Publishing an obituary to inform everyone of a loved one's passing has become a ‘fashionable’ way of announcing a death, especially in big cities with high populations (Örnek:42). My father follows this fashion and shares the following obituary post on the day of his father’s death:

“My dear father passed away on 13.02.2019. His funeral will be held on 14.02.2019, from the Canfeda Hatun Mosque, at midday prayer” (2019)

My father informs his Facebook friends of the death via a standard obituary post (Roberts and Vidal:2000). The post also includes details of the funeral service, such as the date, time, and location. This example reveals that a post from a close relative makes the death official for the Facebook friends. Social media sites facilitate funeral organization as they gather diverse networks of relationships on one platform, and become mediators between the chief mourners and the co-mourners, therefore extending the scope of death. My father notifies hundreds of people about his father’s death in only a few seconds. It is even possible to see the reflections of digitalization during the funeral ceremony. The following excerpt comes from my field notes during the funeral prayer and burial ceremony of my grandfather:

“When I go to the mosque for the funeral prayer, I realize that people are standing in groups of three or more, talking to each other. Suddenly, I overhear a man talking about her daughter’s university experience and turn around to notice that he is wearing a suit. I assume he is a colleague of my father, so there is very little possibility of him knowing

41 my grandfather. My father, as the son of the deceased, moves among people standing in groups. He constantly greets people I don’t know, and after a few seconds of short chats, he kindly leaves them and repeats the same thing with another group of people. After a few minutes, he takes me along and introduces me to some of those people, including his high school friends, co-workers, college friends, and the people of the neighborhood. This chaos of constant interaction lasts until the men divide into rows behind the imam and the coffin for the funeral prayer. At the end of the funeral, the imam poses a question to the congregation: ‘Do you forgive the deceased?’ They answer in unison: ‘I do’ The Imam repeats his question for two more times and gets the same answer from the congregation. As the prayer ends, my father, uncle and brother-in-law of my grandfather immediately move towards the coffin and lift it to carry to the funeral car to go to the cemetery. It is nearly impossible to perform this in such an ‘automatic’ way and I assume that was something they have learnt in the other they attended before. As a last step, men bury the body of my grandfather, fill the grave with soil and the religious attendant ends the ceremony by reading passages from Qur’an” (Istanbul, February 2019)

Dozens of people who do not know each other, or even the deceased, are in the small yard of the mosque, just for this ceremony. This scene where people who probably have not met each other before and will not come together again shows the fragmented pattern in modern societies, ones that are “characterized by urbanization and geographical mobility, leading to more complex and fragmented social circles” (Walter:2007:124). Walter (2007) suggests longevity, geographical mobility and separation of home and work as three reasons behind fragmented social and geographical lives in modern era becoming apparent during funerals (124). In terms of longevity, neither my father nor my uncle have lived with their parents for nearly thirty years. Moreover, my father lives forty kilometers away from my grandmother’s house and , my uncle lives in Sweden. Therefore it is possible to see geographical mobility as another factor influencing my father’s and my uncle’s friends and neighbors to be completely separated from their parents. The people standing in groups and talking about daily issues to kill time until the prayer starts is an example of social mourning (Walter:2007), in which the general rule for attendance at funerals is to “knew the deceased” or “know one or more of the chief mourners” which is more likely (125). Turkey deals with the fragmentation of social relations through social mourning.

42 Besides the quality of the funeral, the number of attendants is important as this makes prayer more effective. The aim of this prayer is “to request pardon for the deceased and all dead Muslims, and to wrap them all in Allah’s Mercy” (Biçer:2009:28). Hence, the rites performed during the prayer and burial ceremonies are reflections of the belief that honors the dead. An example of this is the way attendants align behind the coffin and “forgive him”. Moreover, the way coffin is lifted and “carried to the cemetery by a long fleet” (ibid:28) is a sign of respect towards the dead. Also, the automatic performance shows the socially constructed organization of funerals where people learn how to behave through personal experiences and oral tradition.

Overall, this passage shows that social support and communal activities have crucial roles during funerals, especially for close relatives and friends of the deceased. Social media serves as a tool to thoroughly honor the deceased by fostering communication among mourners. In the following section, I will firstly focus on the meaning of grief in Turkish culture. Secondly, I will elaborate on the way online platforms lure users into interaction concerning the death.

When and where to mourn?

“May God give you patience”

In Turkish culture the word yas is used to “define the emotional situation, the deep sadness experienced after a death” (Aksoz-Efe et al.:2018:580) and it begins as soon as one hears of the death. However, the rituals regarding grief usually start after the burial. Condolence visits are the gatherings at the deceased’s house on certain days after death. According to Biçer (2009) celebrating the first, 7th, 40th and 52nd days after the passing of the deceased is an ancient Turkish practice that we can see nowadays both in rural and urban areas. However, “the variable is the Islamic statement” and today, there is Qur’an to be recited during the ceremonies rather than “the elegy organized in the yuğ” (ibid:35). Of course, there are various meanings behind the certain days on which mourners gather at the funeral house and pray for the deceased. In fact, these days have become important and settled as the main elements of grief process because of the religious, magical and traditional qualities that have been given to the numbers (Iltar:2003:6). The main belief and “ancestral cult” regarding these dates is that the “soul of the deceased visits home until the corpse is buried, or in forty days after the death or on holy days and in holy months” and “asks for dua itself” (Biçer:2009:30). In Turkey, those days are regarded as days for condolence visits where people visit the chief mourners and engage in various practices together. It is on the day of the funeral that I observed the condolence visit:

43 “As I come back to the funeral house after the funeral ceremony, I encounter a crowd of approximately thirty people. The men sit at the regularly used section of the living room. The veiled women are closer to the kitchen: some of them chat while others read prayer from the Qur’an in silent whispers. I see a friend of my father coming closer to my grandmother. She tells her: ‘I just cannot find right words to convey my condolences. May God give you patience and forgive his sins’. My grandmother replies ‘Thank you! Thank you for being with us and your wishes’. After two more people give condolences to my grandmother, she tells me to check the kitchen. They haven’t cooked that day but there are boxes of store-bought pastries and baklava on the counter. I later find out that these were gifts from the guests. As I begin to serve pastries and desserts to the guests, I notice the diversity of the people, as in the cemetery. However, this time I know almost all of them. After they eat, the imam begins to read the Qur’an again. He ends with a long prayer, to commemorate my grandfather and all those who have died. As he mentions my grandfather, I hear a stifled sound from where my grandmother sits. She is crying. Her sister takes her hand and tries to console her, loud enough for others to hear and says ‘He lived dutifully on this earth and he shall find peace on the other side’” (Istanbul, February 2019) The need for a community to overcome grief is reflected in the condolence visit following my grandfather’s funeral. Hence, they affirm “not the deceased as an individual, nor even the nuclear family, but the diverse networks of relationships in which family members are enmeshed” (Walter:2007:126). The explicit motivation behind condolence visits is the common belief that the deceased visits funeral home on certain days after his or her death and praying is needed. On the other hand, condolence visits have implicit functions. Meeting the physiological (i.e. cooking and cleaning) and psychological needs (i.e. social support, condolence) of the chief mourners is one of them (Aksoz-Efe et al.:2018:583). As the visitors bring pastries and dessert to my grandmother’s house, they offer physical care to us, the chief mourners. Moreover, “It is a Muslim’s responsibility to offer condolences, comfort, and sympathy to the family and the relatives of the deceased” (Biçer:2009:23). Hence, my grandmother’s sisters, father’s colleagues, my uncle’s friends relatives and friends do not leave us alone; showing social support through condolence messages and wishes regarding recovery from grief (Ersoy:2002:98).

Back to (fake) traditional communities

44 Besides its organizational power, social media offers a place to mourn after the burial ceremony. The maintenance of the connection between the mourners is important in the funeral ceremony and grief process, especially when considering the fragmentation of life in the modern world. Social media platforms make death more visible by allowing people the opportunity to connect with the deceased regardless of traditional rituals that govern when and where connections with the dead can occur. This means that there are no traditionally defined days such as 7th day or 40th day after death--friends can write on the wall of the deceased whenever they want. Walter makes an analogy between church bells in the traditional village and news story in the global village, which is “fundamentally different from modern mourning (Walter:2007:130).

The process through which social media turns into a place for memorializing the deceased usually starts with a post, most probably by a close relative, indicating various details about death. In my grandfather’s case, online grief starts with my father’s standard obituary. Following the death announcement, Facebook friends convey their sympathies and condolences to the chief mourners. Religion is one of the most prominent themes, “May God rest his soul in heaven” writes a high school friend of my father. I stumble upon a comment by a German friend while scrolling through the replies to the post: “I am very sorry to hear that your father passed away. I am sure he will have a peaceful place in heaven. My thoughts and prayers are with you. Big hug my friend!” Social media’s ability to bring geographically and socially disparate individuals with common interests together makes it an effective medium for overcoming grief.

Technology makes death more and more public. This increased publicity helps people in their grief processes by increasing the opportunities to remember the deceased and to grieve wherever they are and whenever they want. However, the irresistible expansion of the internet leads to the emergence of new threats concerning death related practices and understandings. Walter asserts that “co-mourners, as in the pre-industrial village, are ever present; you do not need to travel to meet them, not even travel to your desktop pc, for they are there any time, any place, on your mobile device – whether or not you wish their presence” (Walter:2015:13). The uncontrollable characteristic of online information sometimes influences the left-behind psychologically. Increase in visibility and interaction enables what Michael Wesch calls context collapse, the situation when there is “an infinite number of contexts collapsing upon one another into that single moment of recording” (2009:23). Online platforms bring “audiences that might

45 not otherwise have the opportunity to interact on an ongoing basis after the initial funeral or meeting” together (Marwick and Ellison:2012:393).

Güney, who loses her girlfriend Ömür in a car accident, experiences problems regarding context collapse in a very sensitive way. The grief process becomes even more difficult for Güney because of Ömür’s activist personality before her death. Ömür was visible while she was living and social media led her to be even more visible after her death. Therefore, she has became a public figure through the help of social media platforms. This leads problems in Güney’s acceptance process mostly because of the rising public discourse over Ömür. Güney emphasizes that it is not easy to mourn after a very visible person. Collapsing contexts leads social media to feel fake to the chief mourners. Following excerpt from my interview with Güney reveals the fakeness of social media mourning:

“N: Do you share about her on social media?

G: I don’t usually share about Ömür on Facebook because I am not sure about to whom to address the post. Even in everyday life, I prefer sending personal messages to people on their birthdays, rather than writing on their walls. So I am still hesitant about social media. But I remember thinking about sharing a photo of us and writing something about my feelings for her. I wanted to do it back then, but I didn't. I guess I didn't do it, because I wasn’t sure that the people who were going to see the post would really share my feelings. But I've written something like an obituary about a month later. It was like a newspaper obituary. I wrote this because I felt like I was out of the process, I felt like people weren’t aware that I was really in that pain. So I've posted it on Facebook. I can say one more thing about my relationship with social media. I didn’t share anything for a long time after losing Ömür. It seemed to me that there could be no mention of anything other than her death. That was the strangest part of social media. At the same time, people seem to mourn about her, and they're sharing about a lot of other things in their lives” (Güney, Izmir, March 2019)

Ömür’s death obliges Güney to deal with various people who knew or heard about Ömür. Güney reports a time when she was angry and felt uncomfortable after getting a notification for a like by a person whom she doesn’t like. Güney’s major concern about mourning through social media is the addressee of her posts. Social media leads people who were simply supporters of the chief mourners before to become co-mourners (Walter:2015:13), and

46 consequently, hundreds of people write and share about the death. However, Güney doesn’t feel as if she shares the same experience with other mourners of her ex-girlfriend, Ömür.

That is why she chooses to post something more formal, like an obituary. Because, on the one hand, she is aware of the Facebook community and feels isolated when she doesn’t get involved; on the other hand, she doesn’t know other members of this community and this causes anxiety. It is interesting that, Tony Walter mentions isolation as a result of modern death (2007) and states that modernity isolates “the mourner who in daily life is surrounded by non-mourners” (ibid:123). Hence, this strongly contradicts the idea that social media can produce the same bereaved community that pre-modernity did. For some mourners, it doesn’t strengthen the social support but weakens it and Güney reflects on this as:

“I remember how I felt on my way to the funeral; it was like pursuing a goal… After all, funeral and commemoration were the activities where I could live my pain. I mean, it was also good to read the one-to-one notes, messages, and comments under our photos. But I think the community activities were definitely much better. They weren't about me or my personal pain, but it was good to feel as if everything in life stops and everywhere becomes Ömür for a group of people. They were not fake as Facebook” (Güney, Izmir, March 2019)

The activities that one engages on the website -especially if they are not a chief mourner- do not remain limited to posting the condolence message. That means, they usually do not close the page after sharing the condolence post, and continue posting about their daily lives at the background. Therefore, social media makes the co-mourner’s activities that are not related to death more visible and this appears to be the main barrier preventing a communal experience of mourning through digital platforms.

This section discovered the ways through which mourners interact with and affected from the other mourners, both in offline and online worlds. Following this, I will focus on the ways through which chief mourners deal with the deceased person’s left behinds (both in real life and on social media) and how are they affected by them.

Hidden or not?

Physical belongings of the deceased

Islamic and national laws -as well as superstitions- strongly suggest that the belongings of the deceased (i.e. clothing, furniture, jewelry) must be disposed of. Turks believe that if these

47 belongings are not disposed of,, the soul might disturb the left-behinds. In terms of the rituals around avoiding death, firstly, Islamic law refers to the responsibilities that should be performed after a person dies (i.e. giving the examples of payment of debts and distribution of the belongings amongst heirs), a practice that was highly encouraged by the Prophet Muhammad (Biçer:2009:23). Secondly, state law allows for the personal belongings of deceased people to be distributed among the heirs in accordance with Turkish inheritance law. Thirdly, and probably most effectively, superstitions have crucial role in contemporary rituals in Turkey around personal belongings of their dead relative or friend. Following conversation between by father and my brother mirrors these perfectly:

“Selim: What will happen to my grandfather’s clothes now?

Hakan: We will throw the old ones away, and those that could be used can be given to those in need [waits for a while]. Of course, you can take his rings as memories, if you want” (Istanbul, February 2019)

Although my father does not state this explicitly, “Turkish people believe that if the left-behinds don’t get rid of the personal belongings of the deceased, the spirit of the deceased comes back or invites a new death” (Örnek:1971:76). However, throwing my grandfather’s belongings away does not mean his complete removal from our lives. Following field notes taken during my grandfather’s funeral week show the role of objects, places, smells, and even behaviors in mourning process:

“On the night of the funeral, my father, my brother, my uncle and my cousin go to the house where my father lives now. Although the last few days were both physically and emotionally intense for all of us, my uncle, cousin, and brother gather in the living room and start looking at a bundle of black and white photos taken at different ages along my grandfather’s life. I see a wallet in my uncle’s hand, and I assume those are the photos in it. As we talk, my uncle starts telling a story about my grandfather, and he uses the word rahmetli2. Then, he interrupts himself, and adds in an undertone ‘It is very strange to mention him as rahmetli’. Following a few seconds of silence, my father shows the checkered shirt on him and tells ‘You know what… This belonged to my father and it

2 Turkish word that means “being with god's mercy and grace”. In Turkey, people use this word at the beginning of the name of the deceased when they commemorate him/her.

48 was very important for me to attend the funeral with this on me’” (Istanbul, February 2019)

My grandfather, one more time, makes us gather around him. Although my grandfather is now rahmetli, and he isn’t with us physically, his photos allow us to continue our bond with him. But my uncle and my father stay in touch with their father through various means. My father is well aware of the relief that comes from wearing his dad on him, but this does not stop him from complying with the beliefs that he has internalized starting from a young age.

Güney also tells about her interaction with Ömür’s physical personal belongings:

“Ömür had a lot of stuff in my house. I have never slept in the house we were staying together after her death. I went into the house, I removed all her stuff, even her toothbrush. I put the remaining items in two boxes. You know, humankind wants to relieve the burden to move on. I don't know…For example, after a point, I washed the sheets on the bed she slept and started using it, and also I’m wearing some of her clothes. There was a dressing gown that she used to love, I gave it to a transgender friend before leaving Istanbul. So I have just one box now and I don’t think I will throw it out. The stuff in that box are really special for our relationship, they are really symbolic and can't be used by anyone else. I believe, I will carry that one box with me as much as I can. Humans, naturally need to throw the burden on them to be able to move” (Güney, Izmir, March 2019)

Güney’s view of Ömür’s physical belongings as a burden supports the ideas of modern grief psychology, in which what should be done to be healthy is to get rid of them the personal belongings of deceased people (Freud:1917; Bowlby:1961). Also, it corresponds with the traditions and Islamic thought. Although Güney sees avoidance as the only viable option regarding physical left-behinds, she does not do anything to remove Ömür’s social media accounts or digital assets. Hence, the internet allows new rituals to emerge regarding the relationship between the deceased and the left-behind.

Following section will focus on the difference between the way physical and digital traces feel for the mourners.

Less sequestration, harder comprehension

It is also possible to see the reflections of traditional Turkish beliefs and practices on social media. For instance, the first response towards anything that reminds people of their loss is

49 usually avoidance. Social media platforms, images and videos that pop-up anywhere and at any time lead people to somehow block them. Unfriending the account, unfollowing but not unfriending, and deleting the videos and photos are some of the ways through which people avoid being notified about their beloved ones just after their loss. So, at the very beginning of the grief process, being exposed to the deceased is something that makes the left-behind feel worse. Emel describes this feeling as if he was “standing in a corner and I was disrespecting him”. Although people feel uncomfortable with digital traces, especially with the social media accounts left by deceased people, they do not find permanent solutions to overcome their pain and discomfort. This shows that traditional notions influence the way left-behinds deal with digital traces of their beloved ones, but only to some extent After a while, online platforms enable new mourning practices to emerge, especially regarding the continuation of bonds between the chief mourners and the deceased: “Every once in a while, reading about her and looking at the pictures make me feel better. How do I feel? I remember those days, for example. I always remember the beautiful things […] In the past, for example, we used to have real photo albums. Now we don't need albums to keep our photos in. For example, when I bought a new phone, a lot of my photos were deleted. Now, when I look for a photo, I can login to Facebook and I immediately find the picture I want. Receiving notification about anniversaries is wonderful, I love it” (Aybike, Izmir, March 2019) New mourning practices that have emerged around digital traces do not always feel bad. Aybike reflects on the way technology extends the limits of her access to memories of the deceased, and consequently mourning becomes easier as a result. In another case, Güney explains her feelings after reading her Whatsapp messages: “I felt so good, when I read the good things she wrote to me. It was good to see that we were there as two people who tried to make each other happy”. Moreover, following is Yasin’s sister Bihter’s answer to my question regarding her brother’s online remains: “We still feel like we're writing to him when we write on his wall. We can't even close our own accounts as we don’t want to lose out memories with him. Sometimes when we get notification, we feel like he sent it as if he still lives. His soul and body are not with us, but there are videos, sound recordings, photos, memories. We can hear his voice in any record we open. Without technology, we couldn't keep so many memories in our minds, maybe they would fade away in time. Now, when I hear his voice recording, I feel like we just talked” (Bihter, Istanbul, March 2019)

50 Bihter believes that addressing her brother on social media is a way of continuing bonds with him. Although Bihter is aware that her brother is not alive anymore, she loves being able to reach him whenever she wants, and it is technology that allows this. However, invisibility brings about crucial problems regarding the comprehension of death. When there are tangible objects, the process of their distribution and appropriation continues over a group of people close to the deceased. That facilitates the left behinds to grasp their loss step-by-step. Although the left-behinds find ways to detach from the physical belongings of the deceased, it is not that easy to move away from the digital traces. Social media makes nearly impossible to take care of each and every digital asset of a deceased person. Once information is put online, it is no longer controlled by its owner. Güney tells me about an incident that happened just months after Ömür’s death: “The weirdest thing is that it's really hard to understand how a human being is now missing, and it's very strange. Two months after her death, I got a message from an unknown number. Something weird was written and I replied as ‘Ömür?’. It turn up that it was just a wrongly sent message but I thought it might be Ömür, how crazy I was… in the digital era, you are constantly waiting for her to reach you. There is always the feeling of ‘what if she isn’t gone’” (Güney, Izmir, March 2019) The internet transforms the way individuals connect with each other in their daily lives. We are in constant interaction with our families, friends and hundreds of other people through mobile phones, social media platforms, e-mail and many other digital tools. Almost all of these options just assume that the person we are talking to is there, because most of the time we communicate without seeing each other’s faces. As Güney’s case shows, these unlimited options somehow distort individuals’ perceptions and make the question that Güney asks “What if she isn’t gone” an unremovable idea.

Conclusion

Social media maintains the communal relations that are necessary in Turkish society, and consequently online platforms are now crucial spaces for mourning. In Turkish traditions around death, funerary rites, and burial, it is possible to observe that those who are left behind have certain responsibilities towards the deceased. Hence, online platforms aid chief mourners in organizing the funerary processes and keep connected with other mourners during their grief processes. However, digital platforms are more problematic than they are helpful in the grief process. As the scalability, that is to say the visibility, of death increases, it transforms the deceased-left behind relationship as well as the communication between those who are left

51 behind, therefore making the chief-mourners more vulnerable. In the following chapter, I will elaborate on the digital traces from another perspective and explore post-mortem privacy in the pervasive online world in Turkey.

52 Chapter 4: Post-mortem privacy

On being post-mortem

“Sibel: Hello, this is Sibel from Dune3. Is this Mehmet Tire? Hakan: No, this is sel Tire. Sibel: What is your relationship with him? Hakan: (rolls his eyes) I’m his son, but… Sibel: I’m calling to inform him about new services and promotions which might be a good fit for him. So, may I please speak to him?” (Istanbul, February 2019) Two weeks after my grandfather’s funeral, the phone at my grandmother’s house rang while we are together. After hanging up the phone, my father tells us about the conversation. The company first tries to reach my grandfather's registered phone number, and when they found that it was not possible, they decided to call his home. The attitude of the woman on the other side of the line shows the growth of the automatization of processes. Sibel interrupts my father before he could finish his sentence and tell her that Mehmet is not alive anymore. There are two remarkable points to note about this case. Firstly, in the online world, the end of life is extended. One possible reason behind this is technology’s inability to detect death. The mobile phone operator’s algorithmic system has the capability to determine the services and promotions which “might be a good fit for” for my grandfather. However, it cannot understand that my grandfather is physically gone. Secondly, this has serious consequences for privacy after death, or ‘post-mortem privacy’. The company is insistent on informing its client of the new promotions. Additionally, my father, as the religious and legal heir of the deceased, has not notified the company of the death. Overall, this case shows that, in addition to the mourners, deceased people becomes more vulnerable in the digital era. In the following section I will elaborate more on the technical limitations of post-mortem privacy and their possible consequences.

“You can never erase yourself from the world”

Death is impossible on internet. The following excerpt from my interview with Gencer, a data engineer, emphasizes this :

3 Pseudonym for the mobile phone operator company

53 “You can't die in the technological era. You can't really die. So your body may die, you can leave this world, but everything you do is ultimately in the world. So you're leaving a technological footprint. You can never erase yourself from the world. This conversation is being done now and you're recording. This conversation can now be saved even if you delete it. So, if we think of technology, we don't die. We can't really die because of technology. People can really forget you in their minds, but one day they will see you again” (Gencer, Istanbul, February 2019)

Today’s technology is not capable of detecting the accounts of deceased people. When Gencer refers to technological footprints, he emphasizes the persistent nature of online platforms (boyd:2010). He also refers to the same characteristic of online networks when he says “You can never erase yourself from the world”.

In addition to these technological limitations, the Turkish legal system does not acknowledge dead people within the scope of personality. The following excerpts from my interviews with İnci and Mustafa, two recently-graduated lawyers, make the legal problem regarding post- mortem privacy apparent:

“Let me explain very briefly what the personality is in the Turkish civil code; personality encompasses a person from birth to death. However, the birth part is a little controversial. In Turkey it starts from the moment the baby is born healthy and full. In the world, there are those who accept this from, for example, from the moment the baby falls into the womb, or from certain months of pregnancy” ( İnci, Istanbul, January 2019)

“But when the person is dead, his rights are over, and he is unable to enjoy them, since he is the only person who can enjoy the right here. In other words, in Turkey it is not possible to erase your data in a company in accordance with your brother's request. (Mustafa, Istanbul, January 2019)

Social network sites are the “mainstream sites of relational maintenance for those who already know one another” (Baym:2010:134). Digitalization strengthens real-life relationships, while simultaneously providing an environment through which completely new types of relationships can be established. However, as the definition provided by İnci and related-problem posed by Mustafa show, Turkish law disregards McLuhan’s (1964) phenomenon of technologies as an extension of human beings and leads people to become vulnerable in the digital era. Therefore, they play an equal role to technological limitations in the process through which deceased people to become vulnerable in the digital era.

54 The question to ask at this point is “Vulnerable to what?”. To be able to answer this question, the following sections will elaborate on the case of Facebook and will aim to discover the financial and social exploitation of deceased people. I chose to focus on Facebook because the company is well aware of technical limitations, and consequently introduces it’s own policy over post-mortem data. However, this policy is completely rooted in the ambiguous relations between the users and the authorities.

Insatiable desire for more data

Today, there are new motivations behind personal data which I have referred to in the first chapter. New technologies such as the cloud are ubiquitous, and make information available to users everywhere and anytime (Andrejevic:2007:295). In exchange for more space and mobility, the users allow various authorities to exploit them through increased monitoring, resulting in “unprecedented commodification of previously nonproprietary information” (ibid:297). Andrejevic (2007) conceptualizes this new model as digital enclosure, and suggest that there are similarities between the land enclosure movement of 16th century England and the digital enclosure model. They both aim to contribute to primitive accumulation and meet the requirements of the capitalist mode of production. Therefore, the capitalist movement has an important influence on both models. Additionally, both land enclosure and digital enclosure cause individuals to understand freedom differently. The movements steer individuals to a double-sided understanding of freedom, free from their own products (alienation), and freely entering into a labor contract that is advantageous the capitalist authorities. Through these practices, the workers feel themselves free and give power to the factory owners. Hence, this new space enabled by digital platforms hinder individuals comprehension of the internet. As the owner of the data becomes uncertain, individuals become detached from their online information.

In the following section I will refer to this process which is called as ‘vicious cycle’ by Andrejevic and place the dead people within this vicious cycle through Tero Karppi’s theorization of the role of memorialized accounts in Facebook’s money making process. Therefore, I will explain how Facebook becomes the only power over the deceased users’ accounts.

Stuck in the vicious cycle

Andrejevic (2007) refers to this as the “vicious cycle” in which the ubiquitous nature of new information environments makes individuals feel liberated, while giving company owners or

55 states the ability to use personal information in accordance with the purposes of economic advantages and capitalist progression. Following capitalist powers eager to exploit anything, vicious cycle does not come to an end after the producer of the commodity dies:

“Why would Facebook destroy the data after the user dies? Her data has already been categorized, profiled, put into a specific category after profiling. And even Facebook may want to get the knowledge of the following question; What kind of sharing do people make before ?...Going back to the Facebook example, if you're paying so much attention to personal data, erase that data. No, he still keeps making money over me, analyzing them on Facebook. In a reckless way. It continues as if nothing happens…Or very simple, think that a man has passed away, but he continues receiving SMS as a result of his data that remains on internet and the profiling activities by companies. So, some of the heirs remember that person as they see the message and continue to become sad about death” (Kerim, Istanbul, February 2019)

Kerim states that Facebook is one of the most cruel companies that recklessly manipulate user data, and that this does not change after the user’s death. Although Kerim mentions the possibility of tracking through post-mortem data, logically, the dead are “nothing more than waste “for the new business models as “they neither produce content nor provide activities, consumption habits or other information for the platform to track and monitor” (Karppi:2013:4).

To overcome this problem, some websites – even though they are few in number- offer various options to their users to arrange dead users’ accounts or personal information. For instance, Facebook offers its users two options regarding preparation of the accounts for the afterlife since 2015: removing or memorializing. If the account is removed, it completely disappears from Facebook. Alternatively, as soon as an account is memorialized, its privacy settings automatically change and limit interaction. If the account is memorialized, it does not receive any new friend requests. Therefore only those who were already friends with the deceased can view their former posts and write on their wall. Moreover, memorialized accounts do not show up in friend suggestions or ads, send out birthday reminders, or allow one to log into the account, thus preventing it from being hacked.

Facebook is a technology and a mean of production, where the workers are the audience, and at the same time it is a media and means of communication, through which the users produce the immaterial products of data (Fisher:2016). As opposed to the unidirectionality

56 characterizing mass media (from active producers to passive consumers), Facebook facilitates its members’ communication with each other. Expanded interaction reduces alienation but increases exploitation. Facebook’s attitude towards the two options it offers shows how this exploitation continues even after the user dies.

While Facebook provides two different options for its users, it favors the memorialization option over the deletion of the account, as this has more financial benefits for the company. Facebook always favors any activity triggering reactions and removing an account completely paralyzes this communication. Accordingly, the complete removal of the account requires much more documentation than which only requires a simple form. Ömür’s account has been memorialized since her death:

“I had all her passwords. Not to forget, I set a single password for all her accounts after the accident. Then I shared that password with her sister and she became the manager of the accounts […] They manage her accounts, but by managing I mean that they just mark it as a ‘Remembering’ page and that is it. That is the extent of this ’management’ and there is nothing else to do about the account anyway” (Güney, Izmir, March 2019)

Güney, at first, refers to Ömür’s sister as the new “manager” of the account. Then, she realizes that manager is not the proper word because memorialized accounts give very little authorization to the ‘heir’ of the user and therefore Facebook leaves very few things to manage. Besides, Güney tells that it takes very little effort to memorialize the account. This reveals an implicit encouragement of the memorialization practice (Karppi:2013). Removing the account is a tedious procedure that requires a friend or family member to provide a document verifying his or her relationship to the deceased and proof of the death. Instead, memorializing an account is very easy and involves only one simple step--filling the Memorializing Request form.

Contemporary society that is rooted in the “‘ambiguous’, ‘fuzzy’ or ‘plastic’” (Bauman:2000:117) structures and “the prime technique of power is now escape, slippage, elision and avoidance [and] the effective rejection of any territorial confinement” (ibid:11). Therefore, Michel Foucault’s discussion on the panoptical technique of power is insufficient in explaining digital surveillance. However, Adopting a Foucauldian lens offers a biopolitical approach to reveal the hidden driving motivations behind Facebook’s policy on dead users’ accounts. Removal of the account completely coincides with the biopolitical emphasis on the protection of individual life that eventually “pushes death into the shadows” and affirms the deceased as hidden (Karppi:2013:8). Memorializing is a way for Facebook to use its power to

57 differentiate between the living and the dead, and to organize, classify, and define the dead as a newly formed population (ibid:11). In this way, the dead literally become hidden from the public as the new privacy settings do not allow new interactions. However, memorialization “does not only hide the dead but also gives them a new role. Specifically, the dead as well as the processes of mourning become governed through platform applications known as memorialized user accounts” (ibid:10). A lack of national legal regulation over post-mortem privacy gives authorization to companies to create and manage the ceaseless immaterial labor of the deceased. As Karrpi’s explanation of Facebook’s policy and Güney’s example clearly demonstrate, once an account is memorialized, it becomes limited in terms of the left-behind’s control over the account and interactions over the deceased. However, the memorialization option also enables Facebook to gain authorization over it's dead users’ accounts. As I detailed in the first chapter, ‘data is the new oil’ and big companies do not want to waste any information. This process can be regarded as making the data forever ‘reusable’.

Even if Facebook does not become the only control mechanism in post-mortem cases - for instance when the left-behinds do not officially memorialize the account - they remain to be controlled by the left-behinds. In the following section I will explain how social media gives power to the left-behinds in the case of death, and how this makes the deceased vulnerable.

Post-mortem privacy and the left behinds

Following the real functions of the spaces through which digital traces continue to have rich afterlives, Marwick and Ellison (2012) differentiate between the SNS profile of the deceased, the memorialized profile, and the online memorial page. The SNS profile is constructed by the deceased people, is updated by the mourners, and remains dynamic after its creator’s death rather than becoming stale and stagnant. Neither officially memorialized nor removed profiles are included in this category. Hence, not officially memorializing the account leads the deceased’s life to be extended on these digital platforms. Aybike reflects on this extension:

“[My brother] used my mother's Facebook account for a while, but then he switched back to his own account […] I remember him sharing photos. But he was sharing his own photos, they would understand that it was him […] Me, my father and brother sometimes log in and out, still. We didn't feel the need to close because we didn't experience anything bad” (Aybike, Izmir, March 2019)

The SNS profiles of deceased people as well as memorialized profiles restrict mourning to a group of specific individuals: social media friends. However, they also extend the lives of the

58 dead. Aybike’s brother uses her mother’s Facebook account as if it was his own. The reason why Aybike does not see this as a problem is that his brother shares his own photos. This shows how important subjective definitions of privacy are in post-mortem situations. Besides, this example reveals one of the extreme cases through which the deceased becomes “subordinate to the different modes of user participation and cultural expressions performed by bereaved […] and other agents” (Karppi:2013:5) on digital platforms.

Individuals use impression management as a strategy to deal with “both different and concurrent” (Marwick and Ellison:2012:381) audience expectations on social media. As I focused on the previous chapter, context collapse is a problem in the case of digital afterlife as it leads chief mourners to interact with hundreds of people. In addition to the problems that the mourners face, post-mortem cases are unique to understanding context collapse because “none of these [impression management] strategies are available to the primary focus of conversation” on memorial pages (Marwick and Ellison:2012:380). The following excerpt from an interview shows this:

“There are thousands of applications and we all have personal data in applications. So let me give you a very simple example. Think about a person who has been using Instagram actively since 2012, a person who has posted about 10,000 photos since then, and then he dies and in fact he doesn’t. There might be some photos of him/her that he doesn’t like. There's no chance to change that after his death; he has no right, and somehow he has to do it” (Kerim, Istanbul, February 2019)

The public nature of memorial pages make the deceased more vulnerable to context collapse (ibid). Absence of the deceased means that they cannot conduct impression management themselves, and consequently various mourners selectively participate in impression management. Emel reflects on the possible social treats to the deceased while she explains why she deleted her boyfriend Çakır’s online account after his death:

Emel reflects on the possible social treats to the deceased while she explains why she deleted her boyfriend Çakır’s online account after his death:

“I deactivated Çakır’s accounts because I didn’t want anybody to see a person they don’t like, and I wanted him to rest in peace. Also, I didn't want to see him all the time. People who didn't really know me may have thought I didn't care Hamit, but I deactivated the accounts as was thinking myself, people in the neighborhood, and I was thinking about him. I removed them all because I care […] No one is liked by everybody. People may

59 be happy that he is gone […] People may swear behind his back” (Emel, Istanbul, March 2019)

This excerpt reveals Emel’s thoughts on the regulation of post mortem privacy. Emel emphasizes that Çakır’s absence makes him more vulnerable on social media and this vulnerability can be linked to any negative comment. This shows that not just “being-in-the- world” (Coeckelbergh:2013) but also “being-death-in-the-world” becomes a vulnerability factor in the digital era. It is possible to take a different approach towards this story and focus on the fact that Çakır’s absence has led Emel to become more involved in the management of his digital assets. Therefore, when Facebook accounts are memorialized, they become a part of the ‘vicious cycle’ of data farming and surveillance. When they are not memorialized, in addition to the power to control the social interactions about the deceased, digital technologies also give the technical power to control post-mortem traces of the deceased to another person.

In the case of Facebook, both in non-memorialized and memorialized profiles, the digital traces are mostly managed by a family member or a close friend. If a dead person’s profile remains a space to mourn and is not memorialized, then the person who controls the profile gains “the technical capabilities to delete comments, ban users, regulate privacy settings, and otherwise act in ways that leaves other participants powerless” (Marwick and Ellison:2012:396). For instance in Emel’s example, she has the power to deactivate Çakır’s profile.

The left-behinds do not only gain the power to control the social context on behalf of the deceased. Technological power is another major threat to post-mortem privacy. Once one has the passwords of the deceased person’s digital accounts, they are able to do anything they want with these accounts. Therefore, having the technical power to control social media accounts simply means having access and authority to control the digital belongings of the deceased. Having this power does not always require the violation of post-mortem privacy-- at least by the left-behinds. Emel confirms this, as well:

“I didn't read the messages. Because he archived them, I've never seen them before. So he was hiding them from me, I mean, he was hiding them from someone. I didn't want to get into it. Well, I wouldn't want this to be done to me” (Emel, Istanbul, March 2019)

Emel emphasizes that she didn’t read Çakır’s private conversations because they were already hidden. She acknowledges therefore Çakır’s continuing authority over his digital belongings. However, this is not always the case. Güney tells about her interaction with Ömür’s e-mail accounts after her death:

60 “No one deleted her email accounts. I had the passwords but I don’t know where I wrote them. But I've logged in to her mail for a while. I was looking at what's new, looking at the old messages between us… I was reading the mails that we sent to each other. Or I was checking if she mentioned me to someone. I remember searching my name […] I never thought of cancelling them. I, as someone who even threw her things so hard, I'd love to go in and look at it, I wouldn't want to close it. I wanted it to stay there” (Güney, Izmir, March 2019)

Although Güney tells me various incidents through which she had problem about Ömür’s social media accounts and phone, this time she reveals that she did not close Ömür’s email accounts and even used the accounts as she already had the password. Although it is evident from her actions during our conversation that her intention is only to remember her girlfriend, this is a clear example of the problems arise from ambiguity of the digital traces at different levels.

The case shows that digital traces are dangerous and having a national legal rule over them might be a solution.

Suggestions for post-mortem data regulation

Islamic and national laws -as well as superstitions- strongly suggest that the belongings of the deceased must be disposed of. Although inheritance of the physical belongings is very crucial in Turkey, neither the traditional rules nor the Turkish law protect post-mortem privacy. Massimi and Baecker (2010) suggest that passwords that prevent distribution of the digital belongings, easy ways to claim physical items (i.e. writing name on the objects), and uniqueness of the physical items (i.e. handwriting) make it easier for physical objects to be inherited than digital remnants (1825). Kerim indicates the importance of legally regulating post-mortem data in an interview, and offers an opinion regarding the possible regulation of the digital traces of the deceased against previously mentioned vulnerabilities:

“…if the information about the birth of an autistic child in the womb is the personal data of that fetus, and if governments discuss the necessity of protecting this fetus, it is also crucial to think about carrying out personal data after death […] I make an analogy between personal data and a hand lamp. I have the control of the light? Me. When I turn it on, the light has no limit. And when I turn it off, it comes back to me. Wouldn't that be good if the personal data were actually like that? If I could control when and with whom to share my data” (Kerim, Istanbul, February 2019)

61 The regulation that Kerim offers asserts the position of the user as the only owner of his or her personal data. The idea of giving full control of the data to its owner is problematic, however, when considering the discussions on the autonomy of the dead in the digital era. (I will add theory here)

Another possibility that my interlocutors mention is the notion of digital identity as an inheritable property. This understanding is based on the law of inheritance that regulates the responsibilities of the left-behinds to the deceased. Similar to the policy of Facebook, these regulations can allow people to pass on their personal data with a will, and data may be transferred to their heir if such a testament does not exist. Güney’s answer to my question regarding inheritance of SNS profiles is “These are things that I have as she was in my life for a while so I consider this as inheritance”. However, inheritance of the digital traces requires the heirs and the monetary value of the online personal data to be explained properly. Massimi and Baecker (2010) state that “We often think of computer files as assets which are owned by a single person or user. In reality, many assets are owned by the household of which an individual is a member” (1825). During our interview, Kerim asks the following questions to himself: “In the simplest way, how much is your personal data worth? How much do you sell your personal information for?”.

Conclusion

The majority of the studies about online mourning share a user-centric approach and focus on the communicative processes between the mourners. Instead of following this popular trend, adopting a deceased-centric approach that places the dead themselves at the center is also possible (Karppi:2013). This chapter have focused on the digital remnants of the dead and how their online presence becomes unclaimed. Analyzing the possible violation of post-mortem privacy, the chapter concluded with possible solutions to these problems of the digital afterlife.

62 Conclusion

During an interview, an interlocutor referred to the internet as “the system in which people are connected to each other by invisible ropes”. Hence, social actors such as social media connections have a role in individuals’ processes of digital identity creation. Digitalization strengthens real-life relationships, as well as providing an environment through which completely new types of relationships can be established. Therefore, the way digitalization extends the practices around the concept of death is crucial to understanding death and grief related rituals and discourses. It is important to note that grief over the internet almost always follows traditional forms of grief in Turkey, acting not as a replacement but a complement. This thesis has attempted to understand the transformation of the notion of privacy, in relation to the development of modernism and postmodernism, with a focus on technology and death. However, mourning as an online notion differs from its offline other in terms of the increased visibility of (and consequently interactions with) both the other mourners and the dead. To provide an answer to the research question “How does technology change rituals around the traces of deceased people and how does post-mortem privacy shed light on digital afterlife in İstanbul?”, this thesis have been centered on the transformation of the notion of privacy in relation to the development of modernism and postmodernism, with a focus on technology and death. In Chapter 2, I have shown how technology extends the human faculties physically, socially and psychologically and how those extensions interact with financial and legislative powers in Turkey. It is now almost impossible that we live and die without any digital assets. It is inarguable that the internet facilitates many aspects of everyday life, from businesses to interpersonal relations. As a consequent, individual lives are being extended through digital means. However, increased digitalization is not always an advantage. Pervasive nature of online platforms make it harder to internalize the importance of personal data in the digital era. boyd introduces the characteristics of online content as persistent, replicable, scalable, and searchable (2010). While these are helpful to the user in many ways, they also hint at the fact that online presence is not without its consequences. The internet blurs any sign of the sense of belonging between the user and their information. Therefore, willingly or unwillingly, individuals forget the fact that regardless of the validity of the information one provides to third parties, it still belongs to and is under the control of themselves alone.

63 Online personal data becomes more vulnerable than offline personal data in two more ways, in addition to the in intrinsic pervasiveness of the internet. Firstly, individuals become financially vulnerable as new technologies and motivations to surveil them emerge (Bauman 2000; Bauman and Lyon 2012). Online platforms such as social media and e-commerce sites allow surveillance to become a part of everyday life, and Big Data technology facilitates management of personal data. Moreover, “Data is the new oil” and the changing motivations make personal data into a property with material value that is vulnerable to manipulation. Secondly, following the increased internet usage, Personal Data Protection Law (KVKK) is how personal data is regulated legally in the country. The internet blurs any sense of belonging between the user and their information, and the widespread discourse among data privacy lawyers is that “Turkish people are not aware of their privacy rights.” Although they hold various events to raise awareness about privacy, there is very little effort to explore the causes of this internalization issue. The majority of the lawyers whom I interviewed propose two possible reasons. These are cultural and sociostructural influences on perceptions on privacy, and lack of familiarization to the concept of personal data as a result of the appropriation of KVKK from General Personal Data Protection law in Europe in a top-down manner. With regards to this scene, I have shown that individuals are at risk of losing their rights to the information that belongs to (and is produced by) themselves, as made possible by the violations of social, financial, and legal actors. My comparison of death in real life and death in digital platforms throughout Chapter 3 have shown that social media facilitates a larger number of mourners to come together and interact over death, makes death visible in contrast to modernist sequestration and remove the place and time related limitations of the real world. However, it also leads to feelings of fake community, makes death a concept that is harder to understand, and leads to privacy related issues. I have elaborated on the concepts of traditional death, modern death and postmodern death not as concepts that chronologically follow each other; rather, it is possible to see the reflections of each of them in the current Turkish society. It is hard to mourn in the modern era for various reasons. It is hard to mourn in the modern era for various reasons. Firstly, although Walter et al. modify the sequestration of death thesis and claim that “…though the dying and the emotions of grief may be secluded in modernity from everyday view, the dead themselves are not. There is a long history of new communication technologies giving the dead more, not less, social presence” (2012: 294). However, in Turkey, both the emotions of grief and the dead are sequestrated from everyday life throughout the history. I have shown that when analyzing the funeral and mourning processes in present day Turkey, it is possible to see the reflections of

64 fragmentation and sequestration of death and grief (Walter et al.:2012); as well as Turkish beliefs around communal experience (Biçer 2009; Ersoy 2002). Hence, modern death is maintained by reenacting both the pre-Islamic and Islamic Turkish funeral and grief traditions. As sequestration of death, under high influence of traditions, leads death-related anxieties to be formed and limits grief in terms of place and time. Therefore, grief processes are inevitably affected by the shift in privacy and digitalization. Walter (2007) emphasizes the way online platforms open new space for mourning and allow a more communal experience of death. As I have further argued, online mourning also makes it harder to mourn, especially for the chief mourners, through increasing the visibility of the deceased and other online mourners. Michael Wesch (2009) proposes the contest of context collapse as an insight into the possible risks of increased interaction and co-habitation through online means. Furthermore, Marwick and Ellison state that “Facebook memorial pages constitute a unique setting for exploring context collapse in SNSs” (2012:380). In the light of this, I have shown that context collapse makes the left-behinds at risk as online mourners. Secondly, grief is limited in terms of time and place. Traditionally, the only proper place to grieve is a funeral home, and the days on which the deceased should be memorialized are already defined by religion. Therefore, people who are already overwhelmed by the necessities cannot find a time or place to grieve or give condolences to those who have lost a loved one. In contrast, there are no limitations regarding time and place to write a condolence message on the wall of the deceased. I have shown that the chief mourners do not only reflect on the way online means facilitate grief process by allowing their bonds with the deceased to continue; but they also make it hard to comprehend the situation, because the mourners feel as if the deceased can somehow reach them through this magical space. Grief processes are inevitably affected by the shift in privacy and digitalization. The concept of privacy is influenced by the shift from modernism to postmodernism: it borrows the privacy of the body from modernism, and the from publicness of the private postmodernism. However, it also inevitably follows the digitalization of everyday life. As previously mentioned, this digitalization affects cultural processes like death, and impacts the left-behinds. In Chapter 4 I have argued that the digitalized life does not just affect the mourners but also the deceased. This is mainly because people continuously gain digital assets throughout their life, and the public and private become intertwined, they cause more complexity regarding the ownership of their digital footprint. Some major consequences of the ambiguity regarding the owner and management of the online data are: companies find new ways to make money of the

65 death (Andrejevic 2007; Karppi 2013), individuals are not aware of their rights to privacy regarding digital traces and laws do not protect personal data of the dead. Additionally, as I have shown in the case of online mourning, the left-behinds extend the digital afterlives of the deceased. All in all, I have shown that the end of digital presence outlasts the end of actual life. Therefore, it becomes increasingly difficult to define and protect post-mortem privacy in this setting. Following three months of interviews with data engineers, privacy lawyers and the left behinds, I propose an answer to my main question. Social media platforms extend death by creating a permanent existence in the digital world. Extended online presence after death is possible, not only through the digital traces that they leave behind but also through other people’s interaction over these accounts for the sake of memorialization. This also impacts interpersonal relations and cultural rituals, which begin spreading from the real world into the virtual world. In this context, death also becomes increasingly virtualized, and death-related rituals follow in its footsteps. Following Coeckelbergh’s suggestion that ‘being-in-the-world’ always means ‘being-at-risk’ (Coeckelbergh:2013), I have shown ‘being-mourner-in-the-digital-world’ and ‘being-dead-in-the-digital-world’ are also extensively risky situations. The novelty of this thesis relies on its integration of the fields of anthropology, law, data science, social psychology and religion under a common theoretical and methodological framework. Theoretically, although both the literature on the traditional death rituals (Örnek 1971; Biçer 2009; Iltar 2003) and social media usage in the context of Turkey is voluminous, few papers focus on the intersection of death and the internet. This research could have elaborated more on the subjective definitions of privacy to gain more insight into the internalization of current digital technologies as it has been emphasized by the majority of professionals. Methodologically, however, this research adds to the existing work on ‘the ethnography of the algorithmic systems’ (Seaver 2017) and consequently regards algorithms as a culture constructed by the people who engage with them. This thesis could have stretched itself further regarding participant observations. Although interviews have been crucial to my research, as my interlocutors were mostly professionals, spending more time with these people would enrich my understanding of the construction of power relations around privacy and big data. Death is considered one of the worst situations one can encounter. Therefore, both the deceased and the mourners are considered vulnerable by the people around them. Throughout my thesis,

66 I show that digitalization and newly formed digital power relations have made the dead a vulnerable demographic, often more so than the living.

67 References

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