Ömer Turan
Ömer Turan is a faculty member at Istanbul Bilgi University, Department of International Relations. He received his PhD from the Department of Sociology and Social Anthropology at Central European University in 2012. His major research interests focus on genocide denialism in Turkey, militarism, the anthropology of compulsory military service, and social movements. For the last ten years, he has been teaching undergraduate and graduate level courses on Turkish politics, social theory, and political sociology. He co-authored the book Devlet Aklı ve 1915: Türkiye’de “Ermeni Meselesi” Anlatısının İnşası (Raison d’Etat and 1915: The Construction of the “Armenian Question” Narrative in Turkey) with Güven Gürkan Öztan (İletişim Yayınları, 2018). He co-edited the volume The Dubious Case of a Failed Coup: Militarism, Masculinities and 15 July in Turkey with Feride Çiçekoğlu (Palgrave Macmillan, 2019). He edited the volume 1968: İsyan, Devrim, Özgürlük (1968: Revolt, Revolution, Freedom) (Tarih Vakfı Yurt Yayınları, 2019). He has published articles in various journals including Focaal: The European Journal of Anthropology, Philosophy and Social Criticism, International Review for the Sociology of Sport, Birikim, Toplum ve Bilim, Toplumsal Tarih and Praksis.
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Books by Ömer Turan
Bu kitabı derlemekteki ana amacımız, en uç biçimlerinde kapitalizm ile demokrasiyi özdeş gösteren hâkim küresel ideolojinin bir eleştirisini sunmak. Dolayısıyla kitabın, kapitalizm ile demokrasinin tarihsel ve kavramsal olarak nasıl ilişkilendiğine dair bir döküm sunarken, özdeşlik bir yana karşımızda birbirini dışlayan iki sosyal gerçeklik olduğunu göstermeye yönelik çabalara da katkı sağlamasını umuyoruz.
Can Cemgil ve Ömer Turan
Papers by Ömer Turan
communities. Then it offers a series of criticisms of the paradigmatic shift proposal. The first criticism is that the paradigmatic shift proposal interprets the literature by constructing a post-Kemalist ideal type placing a diverse group of academics in the same pre-determined category
despite stark differences in their methods, levels of analysis, their ways of generalizations. The second criticism underlines that the paradigmatic shift proposal is unfair to the literature when it portrays the existing scholarship as inattentive to the factors that gave birth to the Unionism
and Kemalism, respectively. Moreover, it argues that the paradigmatic shift proposal privileges an unusual way of doing longue durée analysis, establishing an unwarranted causal link between the modern tutelage problem and Seljuks, Göktürks, and other historical political entities, in
order to downplay the role of Kemalist elites on tutelage. Against this approach, this article suggests adapting insights from historical sociology, and more specifically Charles Tilly’s perspective, and it highlights the role of war in state-building, namely the impact of the war decade of 1912-1922. Third, the claim that post-Kemalism paved the way for regime change after 2007 is interpreted here as an overestimation of the power of an academic perspective. Additionally, it is emphasized that the tone of the language with respect to past episodes of collective violence should comply with academic rigor. All in all, this article suggests reflecting
on the possibilities of new research agendas to understand how the macro projects of the state intersect with social reality and thinking about the gradual transformation of studies on Turkey, by taking seriously the space that existing critical literature has opened up against official /
Kemalist / mainstream studies.
The chapter is comprised of three sections. It starts with Taksim Square’s historical background. This section includes a brief overview of the Prost Plan of 1939 and the significance of Taksim and Gezi Park in regard to implementing a new type of urbanism in Istanbul. Moreover, this section deals with potential explanations for the prime-minister Erdoğan’s personal insistence on erecting a shopping mall in the park, replicating a demolished artillery barrack. It is argued that the shift from the Taksim mosque project of the mid-1990s to a barrack replica functioning as a mall is a good instance to showcase the transformation of Islamist politics in Turkey, and their cooptation by the neoliberal order.
The second section emphasizes that Gezi was a protest movement, including many amateurs of politics, who were for the first time on the streets for demonstrations. In this sense, a good sum of Gezi protesters was not anti-capitalist, as such. Here, it is argued that the world of gift-giving is helpful to understand and conceptualize the alternative, established at Gezi for two weeks, by the supports of these recently politicized protesters. Following an overview of Mauss’s “Essai sur le don” and Godbout’s L’esprit du don, two points are emphasized as the main contributions of gift-giving literature: first, gifts are important ties in modern society, and utilitarian approaches fail to understand the modern society in its complexity. Second, in the modern world, gift-giving is an important tool for people to both construct and manifest their identities.
The third section is the longest one and is based on participatory observation at Gezi and in-depth interviews conducted in the aftermath. This section describes various instances of gift-giving at Gezi. It starts by making a distinction between gift-giving and solidarity, which is based on immediate need and simultaneous usage. In this framework, the act of distributing medication to ease the effect of tear-gas, when the distributing activist is also in the position of being affected, corresponds to solidarity. When ten boxes of the same medication are donated to an informal infirmary, this is considered a gift, as there is no necessity of simultaneous usage. This section narrates how some activists could exist at Gezi for days without spending any money. The gifts of food and kitchen items is a primary focus of the section. Then, different informal units established at Gezi, namely the library, infirmary, and fire brigade are taken as collectivities established through gift-giving relations. This section also discusses the spirit, the hau, accompanying these gift ties. It states the extraordinary condition, caused by brutal police violence, and the spirit of resistance to both police violence and the government’s plan to demolish the park, as the main components of this spirit. All in all, this chapter adds gift-giving to the repertoire of contention, analyzed by the social movements literature.
be understood via the tension between the processes of system integration and social integration.
This article, based on J¨urgen Habermas’ conceptual framework, draws the sources of such tension
with reference to the Kurdish identity in Turkey since the early republican era. For this purpose, from
the 1920s to the 2000s, policies and discourses of system integration aiming at a certain degree of
ethnic homogenization to eliminate ‘possible threats’ to territorial integrity and national unity are
discussed in detail. While system integration processes reflect an exclusionary and assimilativesecuritist
logic of state practices regarding the Kurdish question, this article argues that the Kurdish
challenge to republicanismand to its systemintegration logic promisesmore for the dynamics of social
integration. Especially since the 1990s, while processes of system integration are still in force; national,
regional and diasporic achievements of Kurdish politics and its call for a democratic transformation of
the republic based on decentralist, participatory and multiculturalist values have become much more
visible. This new focus on democratic transformation demands more for social integration through
internalization of roles as well as through promotion of an active communication between citizens by
raising the claims of active participation to social and political spheres as well as by making identity
visible in different aspects of socio-cultural life. Degree of social integration and its success vis-a`-vis
system integration will be decisive in the democratic transformation of Turkey in the future.
has the plurality of participants and orientations been possible to attain, and how could this pluralism be contained without any major conflict at Gezi? We propose to provide an answer by
focusing on the manners of everyday life at Gezi Park during the time of dissidence, which we conceptualize as ‘manner of contention’. It was the manner of contention that characterized the specific ways in which contentious politics took place at Gezi and prevented the formation of clashes among the plurality of contenders. The ethnographic research delineates at least 4 components of manner of contention in the case of Gezi: an ethos of collective work; a spirit of exchange and gift-giving; politeness; and non-violence.
Bu kitabı derlemekteki ana amacımız, en uç biçimlerinde kapitalizm ile demokrasiyi özdeş gösteren hâkim küresel ideolojinin bir eleştirisini sunmak. Dolayısıyla kitabın, kapitalizm ile demokrasinin tarihsel ve kavramsal olarak nasıl ilişkilendiğine dair bir döküm sunarken, özdeşlik bir yana karşımızda birbirini dışlayan iki sosyal gerçeklik olduğunu göstermeye yönelik çabalara da katkı sağlamasını umuyoruz.
Can Cemgil ve Ömer Turan
communities. Then it offers a series of criticisms of the paradigmatic shift proposal. The first criticism is that the paradigmatic shift proposal interprets the literature by constructing a post-Kemalist ideal type placing a diverse group of academics in the same pre-determined category
despite stark differences in their methods, levels of analysis, their ways of generalizations. The second criticism underlines that the paradigmatic shift proposal is unfair to the literature when it portrays the existing scholarship as inattentive to the factors that gave birth to the Unionism
and Kemalism, respectively. Moreover, it argues that the paradigmatic shift proposal privileges an unusual way of doing longue durée analysis, establishing an unwarranted causal link between the modern tutelage problem and Seljuks, Göktürks, and other historical political entities, in
order to downplay the role of Kemalist elites on tutelage. Against this approach, this article suggests adapting insights from historical sociology, and more specifically Charles Tilly’s perspective, and it highlights the role of war in state-building, namely the impact of the war decade of 1912-1922. Third, the claim that post-Kemalism paved the way for regime change after 2007 is interpreted here as an overestimation of the power of an academic perspective. Additionally, it is emphasized that the tone of the language with respect to past episodes of collective violence should comply with academic rigor. All in all, this article suggests reflecting
on the possibilities of new research agendas to understand how the macro projects of the state intersect with social reality and thinking about the gradual transformation of studies on Turkey, by taking seriously the space that existing critical literature has opened up against official /
Kemalist / mainstream studies.
The chapter is comprised of three sections. It starts with Taksim Square’s historical background. This section includes a brief overview of the Prost Plan of 1939 and the significance of Taksim and Gezi Park in regard to implementing a new type of urbanism in Istanbul. Moreover, this section deals with potential explanations for the prime-minister Erdoğan’s personal insistence on erecting a shopping mall in the park, replicating a demolished artillery barrack. It is argued that the shift from the Taksim mosque project of the mid-1990s to a barrack replica functioning as a mall is a good instance to showcase the transformation of Islamist politics in Turkey, and their cooptation by the neoliberal order.
The second section emphasizes that Gezi was a protest movement, including many amateurs of politics, who were for the first time on the streets for demonstrations. In this sense, a good sum of Gezi protesters was not anti-capitalist, as such. Here, it is argued that the world of gift-giving is helpful to understand and conceptualize the alternative, established at Gezi for two weeks, by the supports of these recently politicized protesters. Following an overview of Mauss’s “Essai sur le don” and Godbout’s L’esprit du don, two points are emphasized as the main contributions of gift-giving literature: first, gifts are important ties in modern society, and utilitarian approaches fail to understand the modern society in its complexity. Second, in the modern world, gift-giving is an important tool for people to both construct and manifest their identities.
The third section is the longest one and is based on participatory observation at Gezi and in-depth interviews conducted in the aftermath. This section describes various instances of gift-giving at Gezi. It starts by making a distinction between gift-giving and solidarity, which is based on immediate need and simultaneous usage. In this framework, the act of distributing medication to ease the effect of tear-gas, when the distributing activist is also in the position of being affected, corresponds to solidarity. When ten boxes of the same medication are donated to an informal infirmary, this is considered a gift, as there is no necessity of simultaneous usage. This section narrates how some activists could exist at Gezi for days without spending any money. The gifts of food and kitchen items is a primary focus of the section. Then, different informal units established at Gezi, namely the library, infirmary, and fire brigade are taken as collectivities established through gift-giving relations. This section also discusses the spirit, the hau, accompanying these gift ties. It states the extraordinary condition, caused by brutal police violence, and the spirit of resistance to both police violence and the government’s plan to demolish the park, as the main components of this spirit. All in all, this chapter adds gift-giving to the repertoire of contention, analyzed by the social movements literature.
be understood via the tension between the processes of system integration and social integration.
This article, based on J¨urgen Habermas’ conceptual framework, draws the sources of such tension
with reference to the Kurdish identity in Turkey since the early republican era. For this purpose, from
the 1920s to the 2000s, policies and discourses of system integration aiming at a certain degree of
ethnic homogenization to eliminate ‘possible threats’ to territorial integrity and national unity are
discussed in detail. While system integration processes reflect an exclusionary and assimilativesecuritist
logic of state practices regarding the Kurdish question, this article argues that the Kurdish
challenge to republicanismand to its systemintegration logic promisesmore for the dynamics of social
integration. Especially since the 1990s, while processes of system integration are still in force; national,
regional and diasporic achievements of Kurdish politics and its call for a democratic transformation of
the republic based on decentralist, participatory and multiculturalist values have become much more
visible. This new focus on democratic transformation demands more for social integration through
internalization of roles as well as through promotion of an active communication between citizens by
raising the claims of active participation to social and political spheres as well as by making identity
visible in different aspects of socio-cultural life. Degree of social integration and its success vis-a`-vis
system integration will be decisive in the democratic transformation of Turkey in the future.
has the plurality of participants and orientations been possible to attain, and how could this pluralism be contained without any major conflict at Gezi? We propose to provide an answer by
focusing on the manners of everyday life at Gezi Park during the time of dissidence, which we conceptualize as ‘manner of contention’. It was the manner of contention that characterized the specific ways in which contentious politics took place at Gezi and prevented the formation of clashes among the plurality of contenders. The ethnographic research delineates at least 4 components of manner of contention in the case of Gezi: an ethos of collective work; a spirit of exchange and gift-giving; politeness; and non-violence.
Açık Radyo'da Peri Efe ve Ahmet Akşit'in hazırladıkları Fikri Takip programında Toplumsal Tarih'te çıkan "Gezi Parkı Direnişi ve Armağan Dünyası" başlıklı makalem üzerine konuşmuştuk.
O programın kaydı. (14 Ekim 2013)
http://www.agos.com.tr/tr/yazi/11539/devletin-akli-kendi-suclarina-kolektif-ortaklar-bulmasiyla-isliyor
https://www.evrensel.net/haber/386762/doc-dr-omer-turan-akpnin-cozumu-saray-burokrasisini-guclendirmekten-ibaret