In the years following the Gezi Park protests of summer 2013, the AK Party, once hailed as a moderate Islamist party with aspirations to the European Union, has responded harshly to all forms of civil dissent. Meanwhile, state-led urban renewal projects demolish minority neighbourhoods and displace their residents. Paradoxically, Turkish Romanlar (‘Gypsies’) frequently appear in the public realm to represent the government’s tolerance of diversity and commitment to minority integration. This raises two important questions: first, why is Turkey’s Islamist government invested in representing the Romanlar as ‘happy citizens’? Second, why do the Romanlar accept their role as performers of pluralism, and do such performances result in any tangible benefits for them? Based on ethnographic fieldwork, this chapter argues that Turkey’s Romanlar engage in the ‘art of presence’ via public performance. An analysis of several public events in Istanbul demonstrates how Turkey’s urban Romanlar engage in public performance as a strategy to make their presence known without explicitly resisting the hegemony of the ruling elite.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.