‘WE ARE ALL ANIMALS’: THE EMERGENCE OF THE GRASSROOTS NONHUMAN ANIMAL RIGHTS MOVEMENT IN İSTANBUL by SILVIA ILONKA WOLF Submitted to the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts SABANCI UNIVERSITY AUGUST 2015 © Silvia Ilonka Wolf 2015 All Rights Reserved ABSTRACT ‘WE ARE ALL ANIMALS’: THE EMERGENCE OF THE GRASSROOTS NONHUMAN ANIMAL RIGHTS MOVEMENT IN İSTANBUL Silvia Ilonka Wolf Turkish Studies, M.A. Thesis, 2015 Supervisor: Prof. Dr. Ayşe Öncü Keywords: nonhuman animal rights movement, veganism, conversion, activism, alliance politics Within merely a few years time a radical nonhuman animal rights movement with an explicitly vegan character has appeared on the activist scene in Istanbul and in other locations in Turkey. This thesis looks into some of its characteristics. How does a carnist turn into a nonhuman animal rights activist; what are the patterns that characterize the transition to a vegan lifestyle and recruitment into the animal rights movement? And what do these findings imply for the collective action frames that vegan missionaries in Istanbul employ to convert and recruit new people? Generally internal divisions within the nonhuman animal rights movement in Istanbul are based on differences regarding collective action frames, which lead activists to apply certain tactics and reject others. I suggest that the relatively late emergence of the animal rights movement in Turkey has enabled activists to look critically at what has gone wrong in the animal rights movement elsewhere. The critical perspective by animal rights activists in Turkey has led to the movement’s radical character and the concern on the part of activists to apply the “right” tactics. This also explains the high degree of awareness regarding other forms of discrimination than speciesism, such as sexism, heterosexism, racism, nationalism, and misanthropy. Nevertheless, internal frame disputes reveal that work remains to be done when it comes to avoiding other forms of discrimination within the movement. Critical intersectional voices are on the rise; pushing the movement for further self-improvement. iv ÖZET ‘HEPİMİZ HAYVANIZ’: TABANLI İNSAN OLMAYAN HAYVAN HAKLARI HAREKETİNİN ORTAYA ÇIKIŞI Silvia Ilonka Wolf Türkiye Çalışmaları, Yüksek Lisans Tezi, 2015 Tez Danışması: Doç. Dr. Ayşe Öncü Anahtar Sözcükler: insan olmayan hayvan hakları, veganizm, dönüşme, aktivizm, ittifak siyaseti Sadece birkaç yıl içerisinde, özellikle vegan bir karaktere sahip radikal bir insan olmayan hayvan hakları hareketi İstanbul’un aktivist ortamında ve Türkiye’nin diğer bölgelerinde ortaya çıktı. Bu tez hareketin bazı özelliklerini incelemektedir. Bir karnist nasıl insan olmayan hayvan hakları aktivistine dönüşür; vegan yaşam tarzına ve hayvan hakları hareketine dahil olma sürecini niteleyen biçimler nelerdir? Bu bulgular İstanbul’daki vegan misyonerlerin harekete yeni insanlar katmak için uyguladıkları kolektif eylem planları hakkında ne ifade eder? Genellikle İstanbul’daki insan olmayan hayvan hakları hareketi içerisindeki fikir ayrılıkları kolektif eylem planları üzerinden şekillenmekte ve bu durum bazı aktivistlerin belli taktiklere yönelirken diğerlerini reddetmesine yol açmaktadır. Benim görüşüm, Türkiye’deki hayvan hakları hareketinin göreceli olarak geç ortaya çıkışı aktivistlerin eleştirel bir bakış açısıylaş diğer bölgelerdeki hayvan hakları hareketlerinin hatalarını incelemelerine olanak tanımıştır. Türkiye’deki hayvan hakları aktivistlerinin eleştirel bakışı hareketin radikal bir yapıya bürünmesine ve “doğru” taktikleri uygulama konusunda daha dikkatli olmalarına neden olmuştur. Bu durum aynı zamanda türcülük dışındaki cinsiyetçilik, eşcinsel ayrımcılığı, ırkçılık, milliyetçilik, misantrofi gibi diğer ayrımcılık formlarına dair yüksek farkındalığı da açıklamaktadır. Bununla birlikte, hareket içi planlardaki anlaşmazlıklar hareket içindeki diğer ayrımcılık formlarından kaçınmak için hala yapılması gerekenler olduğunu ortaya çıkarmaktadır. Çevreler arası eleştirel sesler yükseliştedir ve hareketi gelişme adına ileriye götürmektedir. v I dedicate this thesis to my beloved parents. To my father, Andre Wolf, who is physically not with us on Earth anymore but whom I always carry in my heart. And to my mother, Eva Zsuzsanna Tuboly, whose unconditional support and presence I deeply appreciate and enjoy. vi ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS In the two years that I spent at Sabancı University I have learned much more than I could imagine. I thank Sabancı University for this life-changing opportunity: for offering me a scholarship that enabled me to live for free at the campus, for the travel grant when I participated on the ASCA (Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis) workshop 2015, and for giving me the wonderful experience of being a teaching assistant in SPS (Humanity and Society). SPS truly broadened my horizons and I often recall Metin Kunt’s and Saygın Salgırlı’s inspiring lectures about world history. Another professor that I am highly indebted to is Halil Berktay. I thank him for every single lecture that he gave and for everything else that he has helped me with. His passion for history, his infinite knowledge on so many topics, and his exceptional teaching skills will always be an example for me. I thank Ersin Kalaycıoğlu for introducing me to Turkish Politics and for indirectly motivating me (through the final paper for the course) to participate on the WOCMES (World Congress for Middle Eastern Studies) 2014 in Ankara. I am grateful to Banu Karaca who encouraged me to write about the nonhuman animal rights movement in Turkey. Also Leyla Neyzi, whose passion for and dedication to sociological research I so admire, has greatly inspired and motivated me. Of all the professors at Sabancı University I owe the most to Ayşe Öncü, my thesis supervisor. Her expertise in sociological research, her clever insights, and her endless enthusiasm have been invaluable for me. Without her this thesis would not have been written. I thank her deeply for introducing me to sociology in a practical way. She taught me things that I could not have discovered just through books. I also want to thank Ayşe Gül Altınay and Ozan Zeybek for reading and commenting on my thesis. Their insightful feedback and suggestions regarding my research will certainly guide me in my journey to a PhD position. The staff of the journal Interface has also greatly contributed to this thesis. I thank them, and in particular Laurence Cox, for giving me a chance to publish my paper. Moreover, the comments that I received on the draft version did not only enable me to significantly improve that paper, they also guided me through the research for my thesis. I am forever thankful for this assistance and encouragement. I would like to express my gratitude to ASCA (Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis) for letting me participate on their 2015 workshop themed ‘Politics of Attachment’. There I met Eva Meijer, who gave me useful comments on my paper. Besides, by reading Eva’s impressive work on human-animal relations (and also thanks to her suggestions and things she shared with me) I came across academic sources that have highly influenced my thesis. I would like to thank her for that. Special thanks to Priscilla Andrea Alamos Concha for letting me present my paper in her panel at WOCMES 2014 in Ankara. Not only did she give me an amazing opportunity, she also vii encouraged me a lot in my academic ambitions. And even though we spent very little time together, I found in her a wonderful friend. I sincerely thank Oğuzhan Çolak for helping me in the final days of the thesis with transcriptions and translations. Without his punctual work my thesis would have been left unfinished and incomplete. I thank Emine Arı for helping me with standardization issues and Ali Alipour for helping with style-related issues. From the bottom of my heart I want to thank all the wonderful friends that I have met in Sabancı for supporting me, for having been on this Sabancı journey together, or for just being there. In particular Sona Khachatryan with whom I have numerous times shared my enthusiasm for Sabancı’s education. Sona, thank you for helping me with translations from Turkish (I hope one day my Turkish will be as good as yours!) and thesis standardization issues. Thank you for always believing in me and for encouraging me to think outside the box and to push the limits of what I thought was possible. But most of all thank you for being the wonderful person you are and for having been part of my Sabancı time. It would not have been the same without you. My dear friend Sultan Toprak: thank you for the fun cooperation as my teaching assistantship partner in my first year of study. How I miss those times. And Aslı Unan, I really enjoyed our working together in my second year of study. Thanks for everything. Laleh Eskandarian, I am so grateful that we became roommates. Thank you for your friendship and for the delicious Iranian rice cakes and other dishes. You introduced me to a whole new world. Handan Balkan, we started at Sabancı together and I am so happy to know you. It was fun to pass through all the different stages together. Thanks for your friendship and for helping me out with Turkish when I needed help. Robert Alan Elliot, your enthusiasm for history and languages along with your ambition and positive energy truly inspire me. It was great to work with you during the summer semester for SPS. Thanks for all the good times; your company has certainly contributed to a joyful final semester at Sabancı. Serkan Ilaslaner, thank you for all the interesting conversations and for giving me useful suggestions for one of my thesis chapters. Without your advice that chapter may have failed. I would like to thank other Sabancı friends too, among them Kübra Iyiiş, Fahad Sohrab Yousafzai, Marloes Cornelissen, and Bahar Imaanlou, for bringing color to the campus (and other people whom I met here and whom I do not all mention by name, thank you all!). I also want to thank Kübra for being so kind to translate my abstract to Turkish.