Uses and Abuses of “State and Civil Society” in Contemporary Turkey

Abstract

The categories of “state” and “civil society” have too often been used as oppositional terms in the social sciences and in public discourse. This article aims to problematize the concepts of “state” and “civil society” when perceived as separate and distinct entities in the discourses of social scientists as well as of members of contemporary social movements in Turkey. Rather than readily using state and society as analytical categories referring to essential domains of sociality, the purpose is to transform these very categories into objects of ethnographic study. There has been a proliferation of discourse on “the state” and “the civil society” in Turkey in the 1980s and 1990s. This article emerges out of an observation of the peculiar coalescence of social scientific and public usages of these terms in this period. It aims to radically relativize and to historically contextualize these terms through a close ethnographic study of the various political domains in which they have been discursively employed.

Hometown associations, the rescaling of state spatiality and migrant grassroots transnationalism

“…The transformations that HTAs and migrant transnational formations in general are going through in the context of neo-liberal globalization underline the need to conceptualize state power and the relationship between the state and civil society beyond the dominant conceptual couplet of 'state-civil society' (Jessop 2000). Those who refuse to take this binary opposition for granted in their analyses, approach the state as a 'structural effect' of detailed processes including its discursive construction (Gupta 1995;Mitchell 1991Mitchell , 1999Navaro-Yashin 1998). Instead, they focus on how a boundary is drawn between the two 'entities' and its effects.…”

“…Instead, they focus on how a boundary is drawn between the two 'entities' and its effects. Failure to do this results in making these oppositions the basis of new ideologies of power (Navaro-Yashin 1998). An analysis of transnational grassroots networks requires an approach that will go beyond this binary opposition and explore how the presence of various state representatives and organs in these fields are made invisible in the discourses of the community activists as well as in transnational migration scholarship and to what effects.…”

Radical once more: the contentious politics of human rights in Turkey

“…The EU also supported various initiatives, the most prominent being the Civil Society Development Program/Centre (STGM) launched in 2002. This aimed to forge ‘a Western‐type of civil society’ by training CSOs on organisation, management, fundraising, public relations and financial sustainability (Navaro‐Yashin ; İçduygu ).…”

Ottomanism vs. Kemalism: Collective memory and cultural pluralism in 1990s Turkey

“…They believe that the pluralist example from the past can serve as an alternative model of citizenship to the faulty modern one. 50 In fact, a hierarchical ordering among different communal bodies constitutes the basis of the 'Islamic formula' -some communities are credited as being more virtuous, more faithful than other secular or non-Muslim ones.…”