On 19-20 October, istos hosted a two-day conference that you co-organised on the theme of “Racism in Turkey: Context, Questions and Stakes”. What was the aim of the conference and how did you come up with the idea?

The aim of the conference was very simple – to start an open dialogue on racism in Turkey. The concrete realities, and ramifications of this aim are less simple. A lot of our attention in organising the event was directed towards trying to find a frame which could channel that dialogue, rather than predetermine it.

As very brief background – I was awarded a small fund by my university, the London School of Economics, for public engagement related to my doctoral thesis. The fund is specifically oriented towards non-academic, public exchange. My research is an ethnographic account of a few Syrian friends living in Istanbul, and the subject of racism – how we can understand it and how we can mobilise against it – is an ever-present question in my work.

The collaboration with istos emerged because they have established a space for critical knowledge production in the city, under very difficult conditions, which is opening dialogues on questions of exclusion, dispossession and historical violence. They pay a serious attention to collaborative engagement, they have an interdisciplinary approach, and they understand these questions as being fundamentally political in nature. The very idea for the conference was inspired by their work, their determination and the critical space they have managed to open.

The conference’s subtitle seems to reflect this interdisciplinary and political angle to tackle the issue of racism. Could you elaborate on this?

The subtitle “Context, questions and stakes” was key. The “Context” refers to the need to situate and historicise any discussion of racism. We were not looking to narrowly identify it, so much as understand the conditions of society out of which it is emerging. The “Questions” refers to paying attention to what must be considered for anti-racist strategies – but also questions over the very applicability of a racialising discourse in Turkey in the first place. We wanted to open the floor to perspectives which questioned the validity or the grounds of invoking the category of “race”. Relatedly, the “Stakes” refers to the wider implications of how racism is conceptualised. This is the most crucial aspect since, as we can clearly see in other countries, discussions of racism have the potential to be politically subverted if they treat racism or “race” as an isolated question of “othering” – particularly liberal approaches to identity politics which don’t consider the fundamental entanglements between racism, capitalism, imperialism and patriarchy. The “Stakes” of our title demands tracing out the full political implications of any conception of racism and asking – what does this mean for anti-racist strategies and for politics more widely?

Can you tell us more about the theoretical framework or orientations underlying this approach?

The theoretical framework emerged out of a collaborative approach. Everyone involved in conceptualising the framework has their own particular understanding of racism, which may not be exactly the same – although we share key commonalities. Speaking personally, I’m inspired by a few thinkers of anti-racism who were active in shaping the field of study in the UK and North America in the 1960s and 70s. Their conceptualisations of racism may not be directly applicable to Turkey but I’m inspired by the way they expanded the fields of action and critical thinking through which its very study should be considered – with important implications for anti-racist action. In the UK, Stuart Hall is recognised as one of the founders of Cultural Studies. He was a co-author of an influential report released in 1978, “Policing the Crisis”, which employed the methodology of Gramscian conjunctural analysis to examine how “race”, “crime” and “youth” became articulators of “crisis” in the UK at that time. In North America, Ruth Wilson Gilmore has been instrumental in her development of abolitionist thinking.

For these scholars, and for many more besides, anti-racist thinking is a matter of praxis. It is not a question to be confined to the classroom, or the policy report, or the NGO workshop but it lies at the heart of society itself – indeed, for them, it forms the fundamental basis of politics. Our event was a very humble acknowledgement of this fact. We tried to create a space, however fleeting, of thinking on this subject collectively. As Foti Benlisoy mentioned at the beginning of the event, we could only ever hope to scratch the surface of such a vast subject. But it was an open invitation to clarify the important lines of inquiry together, hopefully so that the conversation can continue in more depth.

Can you talk more about this collective conception and organisation?

This was truly a collaborative initiative from the beginning – it could only come into existence in the form of a collaboration. Our first meetings, between myself, Annamaria Aslanoğlu, Ayça Çubukçu, Foti Benlisoy and Seçkin Erdi were just to clarify the collaborative aspect and the “frame”.

We decided to organise it around concrete dialogues between 3-4 participants in a panel format, oriented around a specific theme. The idea was that participants would present a short critical reflection of the subject of racism, and then there would be a discussion between the panellists, facilitated by the questions from the moderator.

The role of the moderators was central to our collaborative approach. We envisioned them as playing an active role in intervening in the dialogue, and shaping the field of discussion. We met with them before the event, as part of the collaboration, to discuss the lines of inquiry to trace within each panel. My own moderator, Pınar Öğünç, was active in engaging with her panellists before the event, discussing our contributions with us, and prompting us with critical questions which emerged from her own work as a journalist.

Finally, the subjects of each panel themselves. These emerged out of collective brainstorming but broadly correlate with the wide spectrum of concerns which we believe the question of racism should be considered in relation to – without being prescriptive about the exact nature of those relationships, which are subject to fraught debate. We included a historical perspective on Turkish nationalism and class structures; interrogations of distinct formations of capital and ownership structures, and how these are intertwined with gender dynamics and social reproduction; questions over the figure of the “migrant”; forms of difference being produced in the city and public space; and anti-racist strategies and dilemmas. Taken together, these form a broad methodological approach (one approach) towards how to conceptualise racism – as an assemblage of relations rooted in structures, materials and practices of power, which must be historically situated.

Despite its theoretical background, you mentioned that the conference was aimed at a wider audience, also including the participants based in different countries. What were the challenges and difficulties encountered?

The main challenges we faced were logistical ones – primarily related to organising a bilingual and hybrid conference. The intention from the beginning was that it would be open to an international audience. We wanted to triangulate the political issues and questions being asked in Turkey with an international perspective, with the aim of finding connections between them. This required simultaneous translation into English (provided by our translators Fulya Özlem and Züleyha Yılmaz) and online access to allow people to join from abroad.

There was also a challenge in translating our vision for the event into the working reality – but this is the nature of praxis itself!

The participants come from a wide range of disciplines and backgrounds, not just academics. How were the panellists and moderators chosen, and on the basis of what criteria?

Everyone involved in the organisation of the event has been thinking about racism in various ways for some time – thinking, writing, speaking, singing about it and acting against it. But one of our important interventions was to invite people to speak who might not have directly engaged with the subject of racism in their work before – but who are, crucially, critical thinkers. Critical thinkers ask questions based on what is happening around us, rather than based on a narrow allegiance to dusty texts and abstract theory. They have the capacity to question the hierarchies and to establish relevant lines of inquiry which don’t extrapolate from other contexts but which emerge from our present, painful, conditions.

It was important to include a range of critical voices from different disciplines – not just from academic disciplines (historians, anthropologists, sociologists, political scientists, geographers) but also journalists, lawyers and activists working in the field. We did not intend to be exclusionary in our selection – there are many other excellent thinkers who we were not able to invite or who weren’t able to participate. We rather tried to include within each panel a range of approaches, disciplines and backgrounds which would provide a spark for thinking in new ways together.

This plurality of voices and perspectives is articulated around a strong point of convergence, which is the focus on Turkey. Why racism in Turkey?

I will give a very crude summary of Foti Benlisoy and Özgür Sevgi Göral’s opening remarks to answer this question, although I cannot hope to speak for them. A comprehensive essay based on their introductory comments was published at the end of last year.

Firstly, they situated the motivations for the conference within the contemporary conditions in Turkey, in which there is a political normalisation of racism or a denial that it exists. They then drew the broad outlines of racism as a structural systemic issue. Anti-racism is not a struggle around discourse, they argued, but a struggle concerned with transforming the social structures that produce racism – a fundamentally radical struggle. Such an approach requires asking what those social structures are. Özgür Sevgi and Foti rooted them in the forms of patriarchal power which manifest in Turkey’s imperialism and militarisation practices; the way colonialism permeates every aspect of life, from class to urban space across Turkey; and the violence produced by capitalism, homophobia and transphobia.

Secondly, they demanded a historical approach which does not fix racism as something unchanging from past to present. Thirdly, they called for paying attention to temporality, spatiality, actors, circulating rhetorics and material structures. Understanding the animating role of these registers, they suggest, can infuse political theories with more nuanced perspectives. Fourthly, they positioned Turkey in a global context in which new forms of racism and fascism are emerging in specific ways across the world – which Özgür Sevgi described as “diversified, fortified, structural, systemic”.

I should mention here that the speakers were sitting next to the flag of Palestine, which was hung throughout the event in solidarity with the people of Palestine being subjected to ongoing genocide. It’s not possible to hold a conference on racism without drawing attention to, and standing in solidarity against, the racism being enacted against them on a global level. More particularly, as Foti drew attention to, anti-Arab racism is taking very specific forms in Turkey which is impeding Palestine solidarity efforts in the country. Connections to Palestine were also raised by many speakers throughout the sessions.

The first panel, “Towards a History of Racial Capitalism in Turkey”, set an historical framework for the conceptualisation of racism in Turkey, going back to the Ottoman period. What characteristics emerged from these contributions?

This panel, moderated by Foti Benlisoy, focused on tracing the genealogies of dispossession and situating these within historical moments in which a certain form of Muslim nationalism has been shaped interchangeably with ethnic hierarchisation. Speakers drew a tight link between forms of property dispossession, the development of a particular Muslim and patriarchal nationalism, the dispossession of the body itself (particularly the female body), and racism.

Doğan Çetinkaya traced historical moments where the development of a “Muslim nationalism” has emerged in relation to racial practices, which he argued can only be understood alongside the transformation of capitalism in Turkey. He identified two key moments of this development – the first being the split within the capitalist classes in the Ottoman Empire in the nineteenth century, particularly between Muslims and non-Muslims. The second being the development of the National Economy in the early Republic era, what he termed the “construction of the state of national interest”. In other words, he argued, there is a Muslim capitalist class behind the “anti-Muslim” Muslim nationalism.

Seda Altuğ examined the late Ottoman and early Republican periods through the confiscation of the land of the Armenian population, arguing that the production of Turkish nationalism was a political project which cannot be separated from property regimes. She detailed the multiple methods through which Armenian peasants were dispossessed of their land – through debt created by high interest rates, through the law, through killing and appropriation – and linked these practices to the creation of a Muslim nation. She located the period between 1908 and 1915 as being the first time that a national hierarchy developed which was based on religion, which was in turn based on ethnicity. This hierarchy was rooted in the claim to property, she argues – a claim which was related to whether the claimant was Armenian or not. As such, she continued, it should be understood as a fundamentally racialised process. Crucially, she also argued that dispossession should be considered more expansively in the Turkish context, not just as the taking of property from people but additionally as their forced displacement – which has implications for questions of sovereignty.

Nazan Üstündağ drew on feminist, necropolitical and Black studies frameworks in her discussion of Kurdish lives (and deaths) – arguing that it is only upon death, and burial in the soil, that certain people are able to “become” a subject, and a citizen, for the first time. She rooted her discussion in processes of accumulation and dispossession, arguing that the entry of workers who are left with no choice but to sell their labour, and, relatedly, the “enslavement of women” and their bodies, is fundamentally related to processes of racialisation – in which, what is being stolen is their means of production and reproduction. She called for abandoning the discourse of marginalisation since it is based on a process of ‘othering’ which is produced by the symbolic world of any given individual’s construction. Ultimately, she outlined, this is not a position that can be understood on the basis of rights, but one which can only be understood in terms of punishment – and as a struggle for existence itself. She called for alertness to the joy of this struggle, of living, moving, breathing.

You moderated the second panel, entitled “Labour Relations, Migration and Social Reproduction”, which provided an opportunity to reflect further on practices of dispossession and the social reproduction of labour in the current social context. What are the key issues that emerged?

Sinem Kavak discussed the seasonal labour markets, and their gendered formations. Sinan Birdal drew attention to the ideology of the heteronormative family structure in reproducing forms of “race”. Cenk Saraçoğlu situated the distinct position of the Syrian worker in the contemporary capital landscape. Bahadır Özgür called for widening the lens through which to consider dispossession to include its intrusion into the social reproduction of labour power. The main questions to emerge centred an expanded conception of social reproduction and dispossession, connecting it to the production of social difference, and asking what this offers for a critical analysis of racism.

Social reproduction was approached in different ways by the speakers. Sinem Kavak drew on research she conducted with Zeynep Ceren Eren Benlisoy, to argue that the seasonal migrant labour force is being produced by intersecting forces of marketisation, family, community, and the authoritarian state. The exploitation of the labour and bodies of women and youth is crucial to this process, they argue. Sinan Birdal asked the question of what privileging the patriarchal heteronormative family unit as being the centre of socio-political life in Turkey, says about the forms of social differentiation being produced. Cenk Saraçoğlu examined the exploitation of the Syrian worker and argued that ideological and coercive mechanisms, emerging from within society itself, have produced them as a surplus labour force, who form the very basis of capital’s ability to reproduce itself in the country.

Bahadır Özgür drew a framework which connected the interrelated crises of labour reproduction in Turkey. He made links between the crisis of care, the crisis in the rental landscapes, the crisis of ongoing ecological destruction (which he linked to forms of colonisation), and the crisis of the dissolution of social safety nets, resulting in responsibility shifting away from the state and onto families. In his conception, these should all be considered as forms of dispossession. Moreover, he argued that a crucial aspect of dispossession is the role it plays in reorganising the infrastructure of production in Turkey – including through the production of a surplus labour force. He also situated the changes in Turkish capitalism within a global division of labour in the field of production. He ended his discussion with the observation that racism cannot be understood “only by looking at production and the factories – it also needs to be framed by political power.”

The third panel, “Turkish nationalism and the question of racism”, examined the relationship between the foundation of Turkish nationalism, racism, colonialism and modernity – both from historical and systemic perspectives. Can you tell us about the cases considered, as well as the conceptual and methodological interventions?

This panel, moderated by Stefo Benlisoy, threw up dilemmas around techniques of power, violence, and the production of consent, drawing attention to their multiplicities, intersections and relationalities.

Erol Ülker traced how the relationship between racism and Turkish nationalism has traditionally been understood in two interrelated forms – as the nation being defined through ethnic references; and as marginalised groups being defined on the basis of race. He located his argument within the shortcoming he perceives within these categorisations, suggesting the question should instead focus on what the source of Turkish culture and religion is. Such a framing, he suggests, would reveal overlaps between the two. He situated different conceptions of Turkish nationalism propagated by specific figures in conjuncture with international events, from the Nazism of the 1930s and 40s to the Cold War era, suggesting they can’t be understood in isolation from each other.

Barış Ünlü situated his discussion within parallel studies – the formation of the Turkish nation and state (crucially, separate entities in his formulation) as a “contractual” phenomenon; and the techniques of colonial governance over Kurdistan. His current point of interest is analysing the exact relationship between the two, between the “contract” of Turkishness and the colonial techniques of power, animated by the question – “is the temporal overlap between the two a coincidence?” Such a question requires grappling with two logics of sovereignty that constantly produce each other, which are in constant tension, and which work simultaneously. It is the relationality and synchronicity between the two, the “contract” and the colony, which concerns Ünlü – the way they activate and feed each other.

Yael Navaro presented an account of intersectional racisms that have historically overlapped with each other in the region. Specifically, she traced a genealogy of the contemporary anti-Arab racism in Antakya, arguing that its particular historical trajectory has produced a “ready-made environment” for contemporary forms of racism. Starting her excavation in the early Republican era, she suggests the cultural, social and political “Turkification” of the Antakya people must be connected to Kemalist modernism and what she terms the “antiracist” racism embedded within it. She called for situating anti-Arab racism in Antakya within the broader region – connecting it to the anti-religious racism practiced in Istanbul against Arab Orthodox and Arab Jews; the intersection between Syria-based forms of sectarianism and forms of racism in Turkey; the regional anti-Alevi racism. It is this attention to the intersectionality of racisms which she suggests is required if thorny questions at a broader level can be confronted. In particular, she asks how we can be active in anti-Zionist Palestinian solidarity while addressing the forms of anti-Semitism emerging in the wake of Israel’s ongoing genocide. She raises the dilemma of how we can open spaces to read these intersecting histories, and their present-day manifestations, together.

The second day started with a panel on “Migration and Racialisation”, which reflected on the figure of “the migrant” both in the Turkish context and from a transnational perspective. Can you tell us about the approaches adopted here?

Evrim Hikmet Öğüt opened this panel with a reflection on the position of “the migrant” in Turkish society – as a produced figure whose production is closely entangled today with forms of racialisation. Speakers focused their attention towards tracing the conditions which have contributed towards this production. Ayşe Parla, who was unfortunately unable to join us, was planning to interrogate the historical figure of the bantukhd, a term for Armenian men who migrated seasonally to Constantinople in the early twentieth century. She is currently exploring whether this figure is a historically pivotal concept that might shed light on contemporary modes of migrant racialisation.

İrfan Aktan gave an insight into the production of the Kurdish migrant figure in the context of Japan. He traced the genealogy of the “outsider” figure produced at particular moments of Japanese history, and the sets of conditions animating such productions. Today, he argued, this migrant figure must be situated within the collapse of the social welfare state and a highly alienated young population. He drew attention to the power of discourse in normalising and reproducing attributes of criminalisation.

Cavidan Soykan reflected on the active refusal of discussions of racism in her experiences of academic and migrant research spaces in Turkey – drawing attention to the role of knowledge production in normalising racist discourse through the failure to interrogate, critique or acknowledge it. She suggested that the discourse of “populism” has replaced that of “racism” internationally. Ercüment Akdeniz discussed the current labour transfer of migrant labour and argued that “a new migration regime strategy is already being built internationally, which is intertwined with war”. Crucially, he suggested that European asylum policies, which are turning Turkey into a “migrant warehouse”, are also strengthening forms of racism within Turkey. Cavidan Soykan also drew attention to the role of the EU in funding the deportation regime in Turkey, and turning the country into a “a city of prisons”. Their positions raise questions over the reproduction of racisms being produced through the figure of “the migrant”, who is being produced by an entanglement of actors working at international scales.

You took part in the next panel on “Policing, Race and the City”, which focused on the city of Istanbul as a place to investigate experiences of racialisation and violence. Could you give us an overview of the discussions and the key points they raised? 

As Pınar Öğünç mentioned in her introduction to this panel, the city is the place where different kinds of social differences are experienced, reproduced and normalised through direct encounters. Waseem Ahmad Siddiqui discussed such experiences of his own in Istanbul. He called for vigilance against politics based on humiliation, and delineated practices of criminalisation which label some people as being “unfit” to be part of society, regardless of their citizenship or legal status. A more lethal round of exclusion, he suggested, will be the direct result of such criminalisation practices.

Begüm Özden Fırat traced the use of property relations as a tool for the production of consent and the creation of an “acceptable” citizenship in more recent urban and racialised dispossession practices. She situated her contribution within her activism against processes of mass dispossession in Beyoğlu. She clarified how the functioning of the property regime in Turkey has not only been based on racial differentiation, but has also been productive of racial differentiation. Property relations, she outlines, are not only established through legal bureaucracy but are animated in the social sphere, within power relations, and should therefore be thought of in terms of their practice. Such practices involve ambiguity, uncertainty and contradiction which are forged through different socio-political cleavages. This perspective draws the question of “race” into the frame.

I also foreground practices of property in my own approach – in which I suggest punitive property relations are part of a wider repertoire of dispossessions enacted against Syrians in Istanbul, in which multiple techniques of discipline work to exploit, criminalise and ultimately deport them. In my argument, deportation to North Syria should be considered as the fundamental threshold of Syrians’ life in Turkey – and the practice which has produced them as racial subjects in the present moment. I situate these practices of deportation within a wider landscape, operating at multiple scales, which encompasses European asylum policies, global capital markets and layers of policing mechanisms. I argue that an entanglement of actors and techniques of power is working to simultaneously displace and contain Syrians – a contradiction which works to fragment, hierarchise and therefore differentiate them. I argue that the category of “race” is produced precisely at the matrix of this entanglement and should be thought of in terms of praxis.

Begüm raised the most important point during this panel in her call to redefine what is meant by “public”. She made this call as a warning to avoid the trap of defending private property when discussing dispossession from ownership – but it has far wider implications. In the context in which the policing of legal categories (including citizenship), is an active tool of power, spatial control is being used to discipline certain individuals, certain “publics” are defined by slippery political rhetoric, and overlapping “publics” exist in virtual and material realms and certain historical narratives, the stakes of this redefinition should be scrutinised. Moreover, it raises the question of how anti-racist organising can position itself in ways which do not re-affirm practices which are ultimately exclusionary – not just of property, but of certain liberal conceptions of citizenship and the bounded nation state. How, in the words of Begüm, can we establish links between critical thinking and social movements in terms of anti-racist organising?

The final panel continued this reflection on activist and anti-racist organising, addressing directly the question of “The Politics of anti-Racism in Turkey”. What lines of thought can we draw from this for action against racism?

The final panel was oriented more explicitly around anti-racist politics, hearing from panellists who are actively engaged in different areas of struggle and concluding with an open forum. Müge Yamanyılmaz, is a migrant rights activist, Başak Kocadost is an activist with Birlikte Yaşamak İstiyoruz, Levent Pişkin is a critical human rights lawyer and Mehmet Türkmen is a trade unionist and president of BİRTEK-SEN (United Textile Weaving and Leather Workers’ Union).

The critical lines of inquiry raised here have emerged out of the messy realities of activist work. Questions include the relationship between class struggles and anti-racist action, how to position the law in fields of anti-racist struggle, and the difficult work of building solidarity between subordinated groups. Müge discussed how current migration policies undermine anti-racist politics, or are actively racist themselves, and the absence of mechanisms at grassroots level to enable shared engagement with migrants.

Başak highlighted the absence of migrants in any conversation about their conditions, leading others to speak on their behalf. She argued that perpetuating the language of victimisation lacks credibility – and can be politically dangerous. Levent Pişkin discussed how forms of nationalism and racism are deeply embedded in the legal system itself – particularly in the citizenship law. He gave an account of the tangled hierarchies of subordination being produced in the context of the urban transformation project in Tarlabaşı and the inability to forge a common ground between migrants from various African countries, Kurdish migrants, the trans community and sex workers living and working there. Summarising this dilemma, he suggested that “we continue to focus on the wrong places by producing the wrong discourses” and argued that an intersectional approach is missing.

Mehmet Türkmen drew on his long years of unionising in Gaziantep to make a critical observation about the conference itself – “we will not be able to convince the masses and labourers whose ideas have been poisoned by racism by discussing it in this framework”. He raised the question – “if racism is our issue and we need to fight against it, then we need to answer this question: Who will fight against it, who is the subject of it, and what are we fighting against?”

Özgür Sevgi Göral, who was the moderator of this panel, summarised the main issues raised as follows – the tense relationship between political struggle and knowledge production; questions related to speaking on the behalf of other, of representation, of language; and the interrelatedness of struggles. She highlighted the ongoing tension between recognising the limits of the language of rights, on the one hand, while also positioning them as a field of struggle on the other. This paradox emerged through various poles of the contributions and questions.

The conference ended with an open forum for discussion with the audience, both on-site and online. Can you tell us about this participation and what was raised in the discussion?

Over 700 people registered to attend the conference online or in person – a number which far exceeded our expectations. We had many people joining online internationally, and also many from within Turkey, particularly from central Anatolia.

One of the most critical points was raised by a Syrian friend, who drew attention to how “academics and activists who oppose the racism we are facing are also being racist without realising it”. Their intervention reminds us all to be aware of the frames of references, assumptions, languages we use in our work and our positioning towards others. Framing any discussion of racism through anti-racism demands a more precise consideration of the concrete implications of how we understand its production.

Pınar Öğünç asked me an integral question, which I’d like to repeat because I think it is central to this conversation – “Do the Syrians in Istanbul you focus on use the word “racism” when describing their own victimisation?” This addresses what remains, to me, the fundamental dilemma about a racialising discourse. If we understand “race” as a socio-political category, I suggest it should only be mobilised politically if it is claimed by those people who are being racialised. We’ve seen long and careful debates unfold in other contexts which trace how “blackness” has been either taken up, or rejected, as a political category in specific political moments. I think these provide important textures which are relevant to any conversation about racism in Turkey, and which expose some of the political stakes at play.     

One of our Syrian friends responded to this question – “we are too afraid to talk about racism”. This fear is the knot which lies at the heart of our contemporary socio-political formation. Knowledge production is key, but so too is the methodological approach used to produce such knowledge, which does not flatten, abstract or patronise.

What would you say are the concrete results of the conference and the new prospects for the future?

The concrete result was that people gathered, listened, spoke and asked questions about racism in Turkey. We will continue this conversation on racism in the form of a book – although the exact format of this is still in the early phase of preparation.

It’s clear from the depth of conversations presented here, which could only be touched on in a cursory way by this conference (and in an even more crude way in this summary), that ongoing lines of inquiry should aim to both deepen and clarify the range of ongoing and historical violent practices, and their entanglements. The most crucial part will be trying to organise this knowledge production in ways which are practically useful.