Retrieving the Dignity of a Cosmopolitan City: Contested Perspectives on Rights, Culture and Ethnicity in Mardin

Abstract

This article aims to contribute to the understanding of post-conflict processes in Turkey by focusing on the discourses and practices following the city of Mardin's bid to become a World Heritage Site. It intends to show how cosmopolitanism becomes a contested and dominant discourse for the locals of the city (Kurds, Arabs, and Syriac Christians) to re-articulate the history of the inter-communal relationships and to create a negotiating ground with the state, in order to recover from the moral and economic injuries of the military conflict during the 1990s. In doing so, the article discusses the effects of the accumulated events of past and present on the production of different forms of power relations between the state and its subject-citizens in the post-conflict context of Mardin, Southeastern Turkey.

The House Unbound: Refiguring Gender and Domestic Boundaries in Urbanizing Southeast Turkey

“…During my fieldwork, people talked constantly of the city's transformation during the decades of migration—a preoccupation also evidenced in an immense volume of locally produced writing and photography dedicated to recording the city's changing built spaces (e.g., Kürkçüoğlu ). I came to realize that, as people described the changing spaces of the city during the years of migration, they were simultaneously describing kaleidoscopic realignments of ethnicity, class, religiosity, and gender (see, relatedly, Navaro‐Yashin ; Biner ; Salamandra ). Consider those elderly men and women who today speak in fond, nostalgic terms of the “old city” of their youth, prior to the first waves of village‐to‐urban migration.…”

The Morality of Premarital Romances

“…Sunni Muslim Arabs, Kurds and Turks, and Syriac Christians all live near each other, in the same streets and in the same modern buildings of the new city. The town has experienced many political tensions, which are now embedded in inter-community relationships (Biner 2007). A history of political violence and events, such as the massacres of the Armenians in 1915 and the conflict between the pkk and the Turkish armed forces, have had lasting effects on the lives and relationships of the people of Mardin.…”

“…A history of political violence and events, such as the massacres of the Armenians in 1915 and the conflict between the pkk and the Turkish armed forces, have had lasting effects on the lives and relationships of the people of Mardin. In public spaces people do not talk about politics (Costa 2016), and 'public secrecy' (Taussig 1999in Biner 2007 dominates public life, facilitating the 'co-existence of oppositional and conflicting social forces' (Biner 2007: 40). However, everyday relationships are not always ruled by fear, dislike and antipathy.…”

Turkey and Europe: Locating Homeland Ties and Re-scaling Migration Scholarship

“…The 2001 World Heritage Site application to UNESCO flagged a city image where Mardin was depicted as a cosmopolitan, Babylon-like city in which multi-religious and multi-ethnic, multilingual communities coexisted peacefully. 44 The cultural and religious minorities and particularly the Christian Syriac population were the building stones for promoting the 'cosmopolitan' character and cultural heritage of the city (2007). On the other hand, the World Heritage application opened up new trajectories and dynamics for intra-communal relations in the city and created a 'a new negotiation ground' for those identified as Syriacs within the state 45,46 Moreover, this image and the policies and funds that came along established new grounds for the social and spatial transformations of the city.…”

“…44 The cultural and religious minorities and particularly the Christian Syriac population were the building stones for promoting the 'cosmopolitan' character and cultural heritage of the city (2007). On the other hand, the World Heritage application opened up new trajectories and dynamics for intra-communal relations in the city and created a 'a new negotiation ground' for those identified as Syriacs within the state 45,46 Moreover, this image and the policies and funds that came along established new grounds for the social and spatial transformations of the city. Restoration and the preservation work of the (religious) cultural and architectural heritage enabled by state and non-state funds became the motor for urban renewal and reconstruction as well as for the heritage tourism industry.…”