The citizenship ideal of the Turkish republic has taken shape through the logics of alterity, defined by and through both a paradoxical understanding of Turkishness and the rise of Kurdish identity politics. Citizenship in Turkey represents an uneasy marriage between ethnic and civic conceptions of national identity and belonging. This article develops an analysis of citizenship and everyday spatial practice in Istanbul through the narratives produced in focus group discussions with Kurdish-identified, migrant women. Their stories explore how citizenship, as a hegemonic process that assembles identities, fixes power relations, and disciplines space, is encountered and contested through the spatial practices of everyday life, through what Michel de Certeau calls the tactics of “making do.” Viewing dominant discourses and practices of citizenship as techniques of spatial organization (“strategies,” in de Certeau's terms), this study focuses on how participants narrate their own spatial stories of r...

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“There Is an Istanbul That Belongs to Me”: Citizenship, Space, and Identity in the City

Transnational social spaces denote the circular flow of persons, goods, information and symbols across countries that have been triggered in the course of international labor migration and refugee flows. The question is how such transnational phenomena can be described, catagorued and explained. What are the implications for the adaptation of international migrants and their descendants in the economic, political and cultural realms in the countries of setdement? First, this discussion clarifies basic concepts, such as transnational social space and the main resources involved, such as various forms of social capital, the norm of reciprocity, solidarity, information and control. Second, the analysis outlines some causal macro-factors that may have opened up opportunities for migrants to build transnational spaces to a greater extent than before World War Two. Third, a few forays into the empirical realm serve to sketch the lineaments of the German-Turkish transnational social spaces: the emergence of Turkish niche businesses in Germany and transnational businesses spanning both countries; efforts of some Kurdish organizations to establish a homeland called ‘Kurdistan’; and collective identity among secondgeneration German-Turks in the religions realm, involving Islamic thought and organizations, but also secular forms of everyday culture. The article concludes with a discussion of factors that may limit the future growth of transnational social spaces.

https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/S0003975600007621

Transnational social spaces out of international migration: evolution, significance and future prospects

The objective of this paper is to make as accurate an estimate of the number of Kurds in Turkey and of their geographical distribution as the data permit....The question of the geographical distribution of the Kurds and non-Kurds in Turkey...gives an idea...of the extent of the likely population exchange should the Kurds ever form a separate state. Even in the case of the more likely prospect of Turkey remaining a unitary state within its present borders the distribution of Kurds is of interest from the standpoint of national and local politics inasmuch as recently some of the Kurds especially in large cities seem to have been voting in a bloc for certain candidates. They have been providing the swing vote thus gaining a degree of importance far out of proportion to their number and to their ratio vis-a-vis the total electorate in a locality. (EXCERPT)

https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/S0020743800063819

Ethnic Kurds in Turkey: A Demographic Study

This first publication of the TIES Project (Towards the Integration of the European Second Generation) examines the social stratification and views of the second Dutch generation of Turkish and Moroccan origin living in the Netherlands. Drawing on research carried out in 2006-7 the Dutch-born children of immigrants from Turkey and Morocco in Amsterdam and Rotterdam and a comparison group of young people whose parents were born in the Netherlands, this volume sheds important light on the lives of the second-generation Muslim youth coming of age and making a transition from education to the labor market.

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The position of the Turkish and Moroccan second generation in Amsterdam and Rotterdam: The TIES study in the Netherlands

Denna avhandling ar en komparativ undersokning av pagaende forandringsprocesser bland kurder i Marseillesregionen i Frankrike ochStockholmsregionen i Sverige. I fokus star skiftet fran en endimensi ...

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FROM VICTIM DIASPORA TO TRANSBORDER CITIZENSHIP? Diaspora formation and transnational relations among Kurds in France and Sweden

This volume represents a supplement to the first volume, which appeared in 1989, and provided the documentation on which TAVO maps A VIII 14 a-b (Republic of Turkey: Rural Ethnic Minorities) were based. The book remains the only comprehensive treatment of ethnic groups in Turkey yet attempted, and volume II brings it up to date. The new volume includes extensive documentation on areas for which material was not available in 1989, together with an index of villages, covering those referred to in both volumes, revised to include the administrative allocations in the latest census. The new material is concerned principally with Kurdish and Alevi villages in Central Anatolia, and differs from the lists in volume I in that it is provided mainly by the ethnic actors themselves, either in the form of regional surveys compiled privately by people from specific ethnic groups, or as lists culled from journals representing ethnic groups, in which surveys began to appear only in the course of the last ten years. In addition there are new surveys compiled by specialist outsiders, such as one on the Laz, one on the Daghistanis and one on Arab settlements in Hatay. Further listings by villages and administrative districts provide additions to the lists in volume I, and where necessary, corrections. The numbering of surveys and lists is consistent with that in volume I. One additional ethnic group is considered, bringing the total described to 48. Volume II also contains a reappraisal of the present ethnic situation in Turkey, and an evaluation of current attitudes towards it, together with a postscript on the latest dramatic developments in eastern Aantolia. Contributions on specific aspects of ethnicity in its latest manifestations are provided by R.Benninhaus on the Mhallami, L.Paul on the Zaza language and its ethnic implications, D.Shankland on an Alevi group in Central Anatolia, and G.Wiessner on the Kurds. As before, it is hoped that the book will provide the basis for a wide variety of future work in which the identification of local cultures is important. The new volume can be purchased as a supplement to volume I by those who already possess this, or together with volume I, which is reissued unchanged, as a complete set. The map can still be ordered separately. Vol. I (TAVO 60.1) reprint 2002, ISBN 3-9500-297-6: EUR 168,Vols. I & II (TAVO 60 1, 2), 2002, ISBN 3-89500-325-5: EUR 238,-

Rüdiger Benninghaus

Papers

Ethnic Groups in the Republic of Turkey