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Umut Korkut
Umut Korkut is Reader at Glasgow School for Business and Society at Glasgow Caledonian University. Previously, I was Research Fellow in the School for Politics and International Relations at the University College Dublin (2007-2010). I completed my DPhil (magna cum laude) at Central European University in Budapest in 2004. In 2009, I was awarded Associate Professorship by the Turkish Higher Education Council. Since 2007, I have carried professional service and international roles for Political Studies Association as convenor of Comparative European Politics Specialist Group. In 2016, I was appointed as a Trustee for the Executive Committee of PSA. For the academic year 2015-2016, I have been a visiting fellow of the Slavic-Eurasian Research Centre at Hokkaido University (http://src-h.slav.hokudai.ac.jp/index-e.html) as part of a research group on interwar Eurasianism and Japan’s involvement in international politics.
I have an established research agenda, spanning a number of areas to which I apply discursive research tools. I have international and national reputation first in European politics, with specialisation in East European and Turkish politics; second in migration and forced migration with specialisation in East Mediterranean and Eastern Europe; and third in religion, gender and politics. In studies of these three fields, my research is quite distinctive in its use of different theories spanning from social representation theory, dialogical analysis, and comparative historical analysis to institutional analysis.
At the moment, I am writing a new monograph entitled “Politics and Gender Identity in Turkey: Centralised Islam for Socio-Economic Control” for Routledge. I have recently signed a monograph contract with Lexington Books for a new book on Hungary entitled "The Consolidation of Illiberal Politics in Hungary: Christianity, Anti-Modernism, Conservatism, and Europe". I am also a Co-investigator for an AHRC funded “The Aesthetics of Protest: Visual Culture and Communication in Turkey” project which started in September 2016.
Address: Glasgow Caledonian University
Glasgow School for Business and Society
Cowcaddens Road
G4 1PD Glasgow
I have an established research agenda, spanning a number of areas to which I apply discursive research tools. I have international and national reputation first in European politics, with specialisation in East European and Turkish politics; second in migration and forced migration with specialisation in East Mediterranean and Eastern Europe; and third in religion, gender and politics. In studies of these three fields, my research is quite distinctive in its use of different theories spanning from social representation theory, dialogical analysis, and comparative historical analysis to institutional analysis.
At the moment, I am writing a new monograph entitled “Politics and Gender Identity in Turkey: Centralised Islam for Socio-Economic Control” for Routledge. I have recently signed a monograph contract with Lexington Books for a new book on Hungary entitled "The Consolidation of Illiberal Politics in Hungary: Christianity, Anti-Modernism, Conservatism, and Europe". I am also a Co-investigator for an AHRC funded “The Aesthetics of Protest: Visual Culture and Communication in Turkey” project which started in September 2016.
Address: Glasgow Caledonian University
Glasgow School for Business and Society
Cowcaddens Road
G4 1PD Glasgow
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This book looks at how centralized religion has turned into a means of controlling and organizing the Turkish polity under the AKP (Justice and Development Party) governments by presenting the results from a study on Turkish hutbes (mosque sermons), analysing how their content relates to gender roles and identities. The book argues that the political domination of a secular state as an agency over religion has not suppressed, but transformed, religion into a political tool for the same agency to organise the polity and the society along its own ideological tenets. It looks at how this domination organises gender roles and identities to engender human capital to serve for a neoliberal economic developmentalism. The book then discusses the limits of this domination, reflecting on how its subjects position themselves between the politico-religious authority and their secular lives.
Written in an accessible format, this book provides a fresh perspective on the relationship between religion and politics in the Middle East. More broadly, it also sheds light on global moral politics and illiberalism and why it relates to gender, religion and economics.
Table of Contents
Introduction
1. Moral politics, neoliberal governmentality, and gender
2. Discourse to Emotion Framework: How to read hutbes as data sources?
3. How do public narratives serve for neoliberal governmentality?
4. Manipulation, Discipline and Regulation: The Discursive Construction of Expertise and Social Policy
5. Deliberation, Contestation, and the boundaries of neoliberal governmentality
Conclusion
Appendix
See the link below for sample chapter for more information:
http://www.palgrave.com/PDFs/9780230114593.pdf"""
Key findings include:
- The major emphasis of the Hungarian pre-entry policy has been on the facilitation of kin-state politics and the so-called “Eastern Opening” (Keleti Nyitás) Programme;
- The border control regime has been significantly reinforced since 2015 coupled with an extensive deployment of police and military personnel;
- The Hungarian border and migration management’s sole aim has been to prevent irregular migrants from entering the country irrespective of their protection needs;
- The implemented policy and the applied measures are often at variance with, and depart from Hungary’s human rights obligations;
- The Hungarian political discourse is overwhelmed by security-focused narratives with a total lack of solidarity towards asylum seekers;
- The cooperation between civil society organisations and the government is nonexistent; NGOs involved in migration management face criminal liability.
One of the most evident societal impacts of illiberalism and its various social, economic and/or political crises is the polarised tone of online communication. Social media users tend to form less heterogeneous ‘in groups’ and ‘out groups’ on these platforms. Although social media users tend to follow like-minded individuals, groups or pages on social media platforms, and are typically not exposed to content that may contradict their existing views, identity issues still attract a diverse set of Twitter users and enable their engagement with each other in explicit and vocalised ways.
Beyond political issues, however, these identity issues increasingly find mundane, everyday events as platforms for self-expression, camp-making and the inevitable delineation of enemies. The splits cut across political lines illustrating sharp divisions on norms and key values including everyday attitudes, lifestyles and identities. Even based on mundane events and issues, polarised social media discourses, triggered by everyday events and situations, can inform macro-politics. Therefore, what we call as digital polarisation over mundane events ranges across the life of celebrities, everyday expression of sexual and ethnic identities, work practices or consumption of goods. While our case study captures the Turkish Twitter content on everyday events and the polarisation it triggers, we argue that digital polarisation on everyday events speaks out to other political contexts as well.
The early 2010s marked the rise of global social movements including Arab upheavals and the Occupy movements. In the existing academic literature, some of these movements have been defined as the ‘Twitter revolutions’. In the aftermath of these widely popular dissident movements against authoritarian regimes, austerity, poverty and the neoliberal order, protest movements have dissipated except for a few notable examples such as the recent French political mobilisation Gilets Jaunes. In the climate of rising illiberalism and lesser movement mobilisation today, sharp divisions on Twitter and Facebook shape online political communication rather than building solidarity toward collective action. Especially in the global political atmosphere, following the so-called ‘refugee crisis’, we can see that Twitter revolutions have been increasingly replaced by digital polarisation and ‘Twitter Fascism’. Looking at cases of mundane polarisation in Turkey for over a year on Twitter, we have observed the proliferation of political reactions to mundane events rather than critical political goals.
In Turkey, particularly, we are recently coming across mundane events becoming trending topics such as the coming out of a pop-singer, everyday lives of Syrian refugees in Turkey including their celebrations or work relations, or even the marketing around an over-priced new book on Kemal Ataturk’s life. These reactions to mundane events are informed by the macro-political fault lines in Turkey. Yet, it is interesting to follow how macro-politics affect digital politics and the reactions to everyday events follow ones’ political position. It is certainly interesting to see reactions to coming out of a pop singer could either be positive to vouchsafe modernity in Turkey and negative to safeguard the AKP regime from foreign elements.
The Tweets we have collected so far shows that members belonging to one pole believes that the other group should not be allowed in the country, should not be eligible to work or at the very least should immediately stop expressing themselves publicly. References, otherwise characteristic of political polarisation, such as one’s position on the Kurdish conflict and the civil war, Turkey’s hosting Syrian refugees, the Gezi Park protests, the Istanbul Pride, and the July 15 coup, are also evident but furthered by online reactions springing out from mundane everyday events.
A considerable amount of everyday hashtags such as #Intizar (a pop star), #NevsinMengu (a dissident journalist), #YilmazOzdil (a controversial journalist) or #Suriyeliler (Syrians) includes discussions on everyday life situations informed by norms about Turkishness, Islam, the Turkish regime, Kemalism and the governing party AKP. Reactions to everyday events – such as a leaked video, New Year’s Eve celebrations or the publishing of a book – turn into manifestations of polarisation in the form of attachment to Turkish national identity, Islam, AKP party politics and the ideology of Turkish state.
In using these hashtags and mentions, Twitter users engage with each other based on a notion of idealised femininity and nationhood, which outcasts dissident views, women, +LGBTI communities and/or the Syrian identity and existence in Turkey. While these texts might be seen as products of local dynamics in Turkey, our findings on the digital mundane and online political voice today resonate with the global political atmosphere that constitutes the campaigns of Brexit, Trump, Bolsonaro, Orban, which are simply based on outcasting not only immigrants and refugees but also dissident views, women and +LGBTI communities. This is what we are seeking to develop conceptually as digital polarisation over mundane everyday events.
Professor Umut Korkut has expertise in how political discourse makes audiences and recently studies visual imagery and audience-making. Prof Korkut is the lead for AMIF-funded project VOLPOWER assessing youth volunteering in sports, arts, and culture in view of social integration and Primary Investigator for Horizon 2020 funded RESPOND and DEMOS projects on migration governance and populism.
Dr Ozge Ozduzen is a British Academy's Newton International postdoctoral fellow in the Institute for Diplomacy and International Governance at Loughborough University London. Her research focuses on new social movements, aesthetics of protests, urban conflicts, digital methods and geographies and audience and reception studies. Currently, she also works on digital polarisation in Turkey with regards to mundane situations, particularly on Twitter.
The man was verbally attacked by the Hungarian family whose car was damaged during the accident. They called him a “stinky migrant”, among other things, due to his skin colour.
While the Hungarian prime minister claims to defend the European borders from “invading herds of migrants”, it looks as if the population has become equally vigilant and ready to attack their fellow EU citizens if they do not represent the European appearance they imagine.
Later in September, the local government of Tápiógyörgye, a small village not far from capital city Budapest, posted a warning to the village folk on Facebook that some foreigners would be visiting the village from Saudi Arabia on visas granted by the Republic of Hungary. In a country much famed for its natural beauty, culture and cuisine, and which is also seeing increased tourism, why is there such fear of foreignness?
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has officially proclaimed the country to be the first illiberal democracy in Europe. Orbán considers liberal politics a failure, blaming it for bringing racial, gender and religious ambiguities to Europe.
The European Parliament, however, has voted to trigger Article 7 against Hungary, which could see its voting rights suspended on EU decisions. The Sargentini Report produced earlier this month presented in detail how Hungary is in breach of the Treaty of European Union on many fronts, such as rule of law, elections, freedom of expression, corruption and the treatment of asylum seekers in the country.
An eventual suspension of Hungary’s voting rights is highly unlikely, given that there needs to be unanimity across all EU members to decide on this matter at the European Council.
The Hungarian Government has already secured support from Poland, which is also fighting the European Commission on judicial independence. The Polish Government has been referred to the European Court of Justice by the Commission, which believes that rule of law in an EU country is in danger. The enactment of Article 7 has also seen much debate in the United Kingdom, with most of the discussion centred around how Conservative MEPs voted against the Sargentini Report and whether the position that the European Parliament has taken against Hungary implies an incursion into domestic political affairs of an EU member state.
Currently, Hungary is running two reception centres for asylum seekers at its borders with Serbia. They operate as “transit zones” for arrivals of asylum seekers through the Serbian territory.
The asylum seekers must first gain the favour of the smugglers on the Serbian side of the border in order to approach the gate on the Hungarian side and present themselves. It is not clear what happens when families arrive, as Hungary accepts only one person at a time into the transit zone.
The asylum seekers are put in containers, which serve as housing while their asylum applications are in process. There is limited outdoor space for children and adults while they are in the zone. There is also limited monitoring of human rights standards within this area, while entry by observers is impossible.
Only those presented with entry cards extended by the Hungarian Government can enter into the zone. This group includes social workers from religious organisations in collaboration with the government, government-approved lawyers engaged to work with the applicants to help them prepare their paperwork, one independent lawyer representing the Hungarian Helsinki Committee and the UN’s human rights agency UNHCR.
The Hungarian Government is seeking further regulation of these facilities.
The illiberal turn in the country has implications for the European Union as it could infect the rest of Europe.
Orbán sees a natural ally in Matteo Salvini, the leader of Lega Nord who became the Italian Minister of Interior Affairs in June 2018. According to Orbán, Italy has a major role to protect the maritime border.
After the recent change in governments in Italy and Austria, Orbán hopes to consolidate a core European alliance that will become the harbingers of illiberalism in Europe. All sights are set towards dominating the European Parliament after the May 2019 election.
Dr Umut Korkut is GCU’s principal investigator in a £3m study entitled RESPOND: Multilevel Governance of Mass Migration in Europe and Beyond. He has recently returned from fieldwork in Hungary.
Among other things, the parliament accuses Orbán’s government of extensive corruption and of stifling freedom of expression and religion. OLAF, Europe’s anti-fraud office, has carried out ten investigations into how Hungary spends EU funding – making recommendations for change in seven of these.
Transparency International describes Hungary as having “a centralised system of legalised corruption”, with 90% of the media controlled by the ruling Fidesz party and all major Hungarian institutions serving its interests.
The government silences dissent with punitive taxation threats and attacks against NGOs and academic institutions. It is now even planning to ban gender studies within its higher education institutions.
Unapologetic
Orbán has proudly declared Hungary the first illiberal country in Europe. The question from here must be whether the parliament’s vote will have any effect on him at all. Following the parliamentary vote, the European Council – which brings together the heads of member states – must decide whether to sanction Hungary through Article 7. At the extreme end of the spectrum this could include suspending its voting rights as a member state.
A full reprisal is unlikely, not least because of Hungary’s strong alliance with Poland. And Orbán clearly has a strategy. Ahead of the European elections next year, he has been working to build alliances with Matteo Salvini, head of Italy’s Lega alongside his traditional Bavarian, Austrian and Polish allies. With the UK leaving the EU, there will be an extra 27 seats up for grabs in the next European parliament. Orbán hopes to build an anti-migration alliance to shield European civilisation against “invasion” from the east and south.
MEPs vote to sanction Hungary. EPA
Hungary and its allies in Europe have tried to frame the debate as being about the difficulties that countries on the periphery of Europe have been experiencing as a result of the increase in the number of asylum seekers. They accuse the EU of interfering in the internal affairs of a member state and argue they are being attacked by the “pro-migration lobby”.
Hungary recently made it a criminal offence to facilitate or support irregular migration – including initiating procedures on behalf of an asylum seeker. Our fieldwork in the southern provinces in Hungary has exposed serious breaches of European asylum procedures in migration management.
In its alleged defence of European borders, the Fidesz government has established transit zones for asylum seekers at its southern border with Serbia to which it accepts just one applicant per day. In August, it stopped sending food to the border in the hope of “encouraging” failed asylum seekers to leave before their appeal cases had been considered. The conditions in the transit zone and “push-backs” to Serbia put Hungary in breach of its obligations to the European Convention on Human Rights.
All in all, the Hungarian situation presents a complete reversal of democratisation and Europeanisation and their replacement by illiberal alternatives.
Will the Hungarian situation infect the rest of Europe? Orbán is keen to expand his anti-migration platform in cooperation with extreme right forces in Europe. Instead of absorbing the parliament’s decision and using it to make changes, he is likely to go on the counterattack. He wants to build a new European order, pushing for a new definition of Europeanisation that hinges less on equality, diversity and humanitarian principles.
The European parliament election in May 2019 will see the clash of two alternative courses for the future European integration. Will Europe stand by its founding principles of openness or will it fall into the trap of fear and populism?
The Syrian-born Canadian author and refugee activist, Danny Ramadan has been reported to be physically and verbally insulted due to his assumed Roma ethnicity at Sziget Festival in Budapest on 16th August 2018. The news perhaps comes with a shock to the general audience of the Festival, that is widely known for its cultural openness, the tolerance and respect for national diversity above all else. The assault may, nonetheless, be less surprising for those who are familiar with the current socio-political atmosphere of Hungary. The Fidesz government’s firm anti-immigrant stance and “hate campaign” brought a landslide victory for the governing party at the April 2018 General Election. Since that election the propaganda seems to have become incorrigible as the legislative machinery further curtails the rights of asylum seekers, targets civil society organizations, and threatens to dissipate the voice of dissent against the government. The most recent legislation creates a new criminal offence (‘Facilitating Illegal Migration’) that provides for the imprisonment of individuals, who extend legal assistance or humanitarian support for those third country nationals seeking asylum in Hungary. Notwithstanding the protest of a plethora of civil society organizations, including Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and the European Council on Refugees and Exiles, the Hungarian Parliament adopted the so-called “Stop Soros” Bill and the Seventh Amendment to the Constitution on June 20, World Refugee Day.
While the government has sought the opinion of the Venice Commission on the draft proposal for the legislation, spectacularly in the end the government has passed the Bill without even waiting for that very opinion. The Venice Commission, however, approached the Hungarian authorities to withdraw the new Bill eventually as it establishes criminal liability for advocacy activities, threatening members of civil society organizations who provide lawful assistance to asylum seekers. In doing this, as per the opinion of the Venice Commission, the law not only constitutes a violation of the right to freedom of association and expression, but also criminalizes the initiation of an asylum procedure on behalf of migrants. Furthermore, an earlier draft proposal of the bill, submitted in February, included a 25% tax on foreign-funded civil society organizations. While this tax was later dropped from the draft Bill, the Finance Ministry was still outspoken to impose the special tax on civil society organizations whose activities involve “organising migration”. They have asked for the introduction of this tax as a separate piece of legislation. According to the Ministry, the tax is necessary as the fight against illegal migration puts an “extra financial burden” on the state.
There have been a series of amendments to the Hungarian Constitution some of which referred to the issue of migration. The most recent, the Seventh Amendment of the Fundamental Law went further than the previous one to ascertain that “no alien population would be settled in Hungary”, and it would be the responsibility of all public authorities to protect the “constitutional self-identity” and “Christian culture” of the state. As of now, it is unclear whether the EU is considering imposing sanctions of any sort against the new provisions of the Fundamental Law. According to its critics, however, the Amendment contradicts EU Law, and undermines human rights and the rule of law. Moreover, it provides that asylum seekers arriving at Hungary through the territory of a country “where they would not be exposed to persecution or a direct risk of persecution” shall not be entitled to receive asylum in Hungary. The Amendment further provides for the establishment of administrative courts. The new court system would fully substitute for the authority of regular courts in administrative cases, including asylum issues, and the President of the Administrative High Court shall be elected by the Parliament. This leaves the new court system to be monopolised by the government as it holds a two-thirds majority in the Parliament.
The EU has not been complicit with the developments in Hungary adversely affecting human rights of asylum seekers and the functioning of NGOs assisting asylum seekers. The most recent infringement procedure against Hungary by the European Commission is a response to the “Stop Soros” Bill and its incompatibility with the EU law, including the Treaty on the Functioning of the EU and the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights. (N.B. further infringement procedures are ongoing against Hungary due to its non-compliance with, inter alia, the Asylum Procedures Directive, Return Directive and the Reception Conditions Directive.)
To make matters worse, those civil society organisations and activists who stand up for migrants’ rights are becoming increasingly under attack in Hungary. In June 2018, Hollik István MP, member of the governing coalition from KDNP Christian Democratic People Party, openly incited against Amnesty International right in front of its offices in Budapest. The politician marked the entrance with stickers, an action similar to when the Refugee Centre where the Jews lived during World War II was “signed” with a yellow star.
While at fieldwork in Southern Hungary in June 2018, we came across the impact of the fear and hatred campaign on everyday life. During our visit to Szeged, a county capital in Southeastern Hungary, we witnessed the complete oblivion of the locals of their proximity to the transit zone where asylum seekers are kept since September 2015 and the asylum seekers’ experience within. What is even more startling is that Szeged and the surrounding villages used to be at the forefront of the management of the 2015 refugee crisis, given its close proximity to the Western Balkan route across the Serbian border. During our visit many people expressed their relief that the city was no longer “occupied” by asylum seekers.
In conclusion, it looks as if despite the 2016 refugee quota referendum being inconclusive, the government has achieved its goal to foster a general feeling of fear among the public. While, on the one hand, the general public opinion on the European Union remains positive in Hungary, the anti-immigrant propaganda that has simultaneously bolstered anti-EU sentiments resulted in a victory for Fidesz, on the other. Witnessing these dual trajectories, we, therefore, raise the question, whether the conflicting attitudes towards EU policies are symptoms of the emergence of a new concept of Europeanisation that privileges the pursuit of certain conservative principles as opposed to those core liberal values the EU was founded upon and is to stand for.
Cilt / Volume 19 Sayı / Number 1
225
HOW DOES COGNITION WORK IN MOSQUE SERMONS? CONTEXT, DELIVERY, AND PERCEPTION
ABSTRACT
This article examines what affects the cognition of hutbes (mosque sermons) by the attendants during their delivery. In order to discuss this question, we use data from an empirical research over 20 weeks from 2012 to 2013 in 10 Turkish counties. We argue that there are two stages of cognition, alluding to the mode that hutbes are generated and perceived: first, the discourse that the imams generate within sermons on thematic issues and second, the comprehension of such discourse by the attendants at the Friday prayers. Our research question is how cognition evolves from the first stage to the second. We have two working hypotheses to test such evolution. First, cognition among the listeners evolves to an extent that imams relate the religious discourse in their sermons to the particular socio-economic context where communities are situated. Second, the form and the setting in which religious discourse is formulated and delivered affect cognition. After the discussion of empirical evidence, the article shows that rather than the external factors such as the socio-economic context where the parishes are situated and socio-economic background of the listeners to the sermons, it the role of the imams as authoritative figures that affect what the listeners state as their cognition of hutbes.
This book looks at how centralized religion has turned into a means of controlling and organizing the Turkish polity under the AKP (Justice and Development Party) governments by presenting the results from a study on Turkish hutbes (mosque sermons), analysing how their content relates to gender roles and identities. The book argues that the political domination of a secular state as an agency over religion has not suppressed, but transformed, religion into a political tool for the same agency to organise the polity and the society along its own ideological tenets. It looks at how this domination organises gender roles and identities to engender human capital to serve for a neoliberal economic developmentalism. The book then discusses the limits of this domination, reflecting on how its subjects position themselves between the politico-religious authority and their secular lives.
Written in an accessible format, this book provides a fresh perspective on the relationship between religion and politics in the Middle East. More broadly, it also sheds light on global moral politics and illiberalism and why it relates to gender, religion and economics.
Table of Contents
Introduction
1. Moral politics, neoliberal governmentality, and gender
2. Discourse to Emotion Framework: How to read hutbes as data sources?
3. How do public narratives serve for neoliberal governmentality?
4. Manipulation, Discipline and Regulation: The Discursive Construction of Expertise and Social Policy
5. Deliberation, Contestation, and the boundaries of neoliberal governmentality
Conclusion
Appendix
See the link below for sample chapter for more information:
http://www.palgrave.com/PDFs/9780230114593.pdf"""
Key findings include:
- The major emphasis of the Hungarian pre-entry policy has been on the facilitation of kin-state politics and the so-called “Eastern Opening” (Keleti Nyitás) Programme;
- The border control regime has been significantly reinforced since 2015 coupled with an extensive deployment of police and military personnel;
- The Hungarian border and migration management’s sole aim has been to prevent irregular migrants from entering the country irrespective of their protection needs;
- The implemented policy and the applied measures are often at variance with, and depart from Hungary’s human rights obligations;
- The Hungarian political discourse is overwhelmed by security-focused narratives with a total lack of solidarity towards asylum seekers;
- The cooperation between civil society organisations and the government is nonexistent; NGOs involved in migration management face criminal liability.
One of the most evident societal impacts of illiberalism and its various social, economic and/or political crises is the polarised tone of online communication. Social media users tend to form less heterogeneous ‘in groups’ and ‘out groups’ on these platforms. Although social media users tend to follow like-minded individuals, groups or pages on social media platforms, and are typically not exposed to content that may contradict their existing views, identity issues still attract a diverse set of Twitter users and enable their engagement with each other in explicit and vocalised ways.
Beyond political issues, however, these identity issues increasingly find mundane, everyday events as platforms for self-expression, camp-making and the inevitable delineation of enemies. The splits cut across political lines illustrating sharp divisions on norms and key values including everyday attitudes, lifestyles and identities. Even based on mundane events and issues, polarised social media discourses, triggered by everyday events and situations, can inform macro-politics. Therefore, what we call as digital polarisation over mundane events ranges across the life of celebrities, everyday expression of sexual and ethnic identities, work practices or consumption of goods. While our case study captures the Turkish Twitter content on everyday events and the polarisation it triggers, we argue that digital polarisation on everyday events speaks out to other political contexts as well.
The early 2010s marked the rise of global social movements including Arab upheavals and the Occupy movements. In the existing academic literature, some of these movements have been defined as the ‘Twitter revolutions’. In the aftermath of these widely popular dissident movements against authoritarian regimes, austerity, poverty and the neoliberal order, protest movements have dissipated except for a few notable examples such as the recent French political mobilisation Gilets Jaunes. In the climate of rising illiberalism and lesser movement mobilisation today, sharp divisions on Twitter and Facebook shape online political communication rather than building solidarity toward collective action. Especially in the global political atmosphere, following the so-called ‘refugee crisis’, we can see that Twitter revolutions have been increasingly replaced by digital polarisation and ‘Twitter Fascism’. Looking at cases of mundane polarisation in Turkey for over a year on Twitter, we have observed the proliferation of political reactions to mundane events rather than critical political goals.
In Turkey, particularly, we are recently coming across mundane events becoming trending topics such as the coming out of a pop-singer, everyday lives of Syrian refugees in Turkey including their celebrations or work relations, or even the marketing around an over-priced new book on Kemal Ataturk’s life. These reactions to mundane events are informed by the macro-political fault lines in Turkey. Yet, it is interesting to follow how macro-politics affect digital politics and the reactions to everyday events follow ones’ political position. It is certainly interesting to see reactions to coming out of a pop singer could either be positive to vouchsafe modernity in Turkey and negative to safeguard the AKP regime from foreign elements.
The Tweets we have collected so far shows that members belonging to one pole believes that the other group should not be allowed in the country, should not be eligible to work or at the very least should immediately stop expressing themselves publicly. References, otherwise characteristic of political polarisation, such as one’s position on the Kurdish conflict and the civil war, Turkey’s hosting Syrian refugees, the Gezi Park protests, the Istanbul Pride, and the July 15 coup, are also evident but furthered by online reactions springing out from mundane everyday events.
A considerable amount of everyday hashtags such as #Intizar (a pop star), #NevsinMengu (a dissident journalist), #YilmazOzdil (a controversial journalist) or #Suriyeliler (Syrians) includes discussions on everyday life situations informed by norms about Turkishness, Islam, the Turkish regime, Kemalism and the governing party AKP. Reactions to everyday events – such as a leaked video, New Year’s Eve celebrations or the publishing of a book – turn into manifestations of polarisation in the form of attachment to Turkish national identity, Islam, AKP party politics and the ideology of Turkish state.
In using these hashtags and mentions, Twitter users engage with each other based on a notion of idealised femininity and nationhood, which outcasts dissident views, women, +LGBTI communities and/or the Syrian identity and existence in Turkey. While these texts might be seen as products of local dynamics in Turkey, our findings on the digital mundane and online political voice today resonate with the global political atmosphere that constitutes the campaigns of Brexit, Trump, Bolsonaro, Orban, which are simply based on outcasting not only immigrants and refugees but also dissident views, women and +LGBTI communities. This is what we are seeking to develop conceptually as digital polarisation over mundane everyday events.
Professor Umut Korkut has expertise in how political discourse makes audiences and recently studies visual imagery and audience-making. Prof Korkut is the lead for AMIF-funded project VOLPOWER assessing youth volunteering in sports, arts, and culture in view of social integration and Primary Investigator for Horizon 2020 funded RESPOND and DEMOS projects on migration governance and populism.
Dr Ozge Ozduzen is a British Academy's Newton International postdoctoral fellow in the Institute for Diplomacy and International Governance at Loughborough University London. Her research focuses on new social movements, aesthetics of protests, urban conflicts, digital methods and geographies and audience and reception studies. Currently, she also works on digital polarisation in Turkey with regards to mundane situations, particularly on Twitter.
The man was verbally attacked by the Hungarian family whose car was damaged during the accident. They called him a “stinky migrant”, among other things, due to his skin colour.
While the Hungarian prime minister claims to defend the European borders from “invading herds of migrants”, it looks as if the population has become equally vigilant and ready to attack their fellow EU citizens if they do not represent the European appearance they imagine.
Later in September, the local government of Tápiógyörgye, a small village not far from capital city Budapest, posted a warning to the village folk on Facebook that some foreigners would be visiting the village from Saudi Arabia on visas granted by the Republic of Hungary. In a country much famed for its natural beauty, culture and cuisine, and which is also seeing increased tourism, why is there such fear of foreignness?
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has officially proclaimed the country to be the first illiberal democracy in Europe. Orbán considers liberal politics a failure, blaming it for bringing racial, gender and religious ambiguities to Europe.
The European Parliament, however, has voted to trigger Article 7 against Hungary, which could see its voting rights suspended on EU decisions. The Sargentini Report produced earlier this month presented in detail how Hungary is in breach of the Treaty of European Union on many fronts, such as rule of law, elections, freedom of expression, corruption and the treatment of asylum seekers in the country.
An eventual suspension of Hungary’s voting rights is highly unlikely, given that there needs to be unanimity across all EU members to decide on this matter at the European Council.
The Hungarian Government has already secured support from Poland, which is also fighting the European Commission on judicial independence. The Polish Government has been referred to the European Court of Justice by the Commission, which believes that rule of law in an EU country is in danger. The enactment of Article 7 has also seen much debate in the United Kingdom, with most of the discussion centred around how Conservative MEPs voted against the Sargentini Report and whether the position that the European Parliament has taken against Hungary implies an incursion into domestic political affairs of an EU member state.
Currently, Hungary is running two reception centres for asylum seekers at its borders with Serbia. They operate as “transit zones” for arrivals of asylum seekers through the Serbian territory.
The asylum seekers must first gain the favour of the smugglers on the Serbian side of the border in order to approach the gate on the Hungarian side and present themselves. It is not clear what happens when families arrive, as Hungary accepts only one person at a time into the transit zone.
The asylum seekers are put in containers, which serve as housing while their asylum applications are in process. There is limited outdoor space for children and adults while they are in the zone. There is also limited monitoring of human rights standards within this area, while entry by observers is impossible.
Only those presented with entry cards extended by the Hungarian Government can enter into the zone. This group includes social workers from religious organisations in collaboration with the government, government-approved lawyers engaged to work with the applicants to help them prepare their paperwork, one independent lawyer representing the Hungarian Helsinki Committee and the UN’s human rights agency UNHCR.
The Hungarian Government is seeking further regulation of these facilities.
The illiberal turn in the country has implications for the European Union as it could infect the rest of Europe.
Orbán sees a natural ally in Matteo Salvini, the leader of Lega Nord who became the Italian Minister of Interior Affairs in June 2018. According to Orbán, Italy has a major role to protect the maritime border.
After the recent change in governments in Italy and Austria, Orbán hopes to consolidate a core European alliance that will become the harbingers of illiberalism in Europe. All sights are set towards dominating the European Parliament after the May 2019 election.
Dr Umut Korkut is GCU’s principal investigator in a £3m study entitled RESPOND: Multilevel Governance of Mass Migration in Europe and Beyond. He has recently returned from fieldwork in Hungary.
Among other things, the parliament accuses Orbán’s government of extensive corruption and of stifling freedom of expression and religion. OLAF, Europe’s anti-fraud office, has carried out ten investigations into how Hungary spends EU funding – making recommendations for change in seven of these.
Transparency International describes Hungary as having “a centralised system of legalised corruption”, with 90% of the media controlled by the ruling Fidesz party and all major Hungarian institutions serving its interests.
The government silences dissent with punitive taxation threats and attacks against NGOs and academic institutions. It is now even planning to ban gender studies within its higher education institutions.
Unapologetic
Orbán has proudly declared Hungary the first illiberal country in Europe. The question from here must be whether the parliament’s vote will have any effect on him at all. Following the parliamentary vote, the European Council – which brings together the heads of member states – must decide whether to sanction Hungary through Article 7. At the extreme end of the spectrum this could include suspending its voting rights as a member state.
A full reprisal is unlikely, not least because of Hungary’s strong alliance with Poland. And Orbán clearly has a strategy. Ahead of the European elections next year, he has been working to build alliances with Matteo Salvini, head of Italy’s Lega alongside his traditional Bavarian, Austrian and Polish allies. With the UK leaving the EU, there will be an extra 27 seats up for grabs in the next European parliament. Orbán hopes to build an anti-migration alliance to shield European civilisation against “invasion” from the east and south.
MEPs vote to sanction Hungary. EPA
Hungary and its allies in Europe have tried to frame the debate as being about the difficulties that countries on the periphery of Europe have been experiencing as a result of the increase in the number of asylum seekers. They accuse the EU of interfering in the internal affairs of a member state and argue they are being attacked by the “pro-migration lobby”.
Hungary recently made it a criminal offence to facilitate or support irregular migration – including initiating procedures on behalf of an asylum seeker. Our fieldwork in the southern provinces in Hungary has exposed serious breaches of European asylum procedures in migration management.
In its alleged defence of European borders, the Fidesz government has established transit zones for asylum seekers at its southern border with Serbia to which it accepts just one applicant per day. In August, it stopped sending food to the border in the hope of “encouraging” failed asylum seekers to leave before their appeal cases had been considered. The conditions in the transit zone and “push-backs” to Serbia put Hungary in breach of its obligations to the European Convention on Human Rights.
All in all, the Hungarian situation presents a complete reversal of democratisation and Europeanisation and their replacement by illiberal alternatives.
Will the Hungarian situation infect the rest of Europe? Orbán is keen to expand his anti-migration platform in cooperation with extreme right forces in Europe. Instead of absorbing the parliament’s decision and using it to make changes, he is likely to go on the counterattack. He wants to build a new European order, pushing for a new definition of Europeanisation that hinges less on equality, diversity and humanitarian principles.
The European parliament election in May 2019 will see the clash of two alternative courses for the future European integration. Will Europe stand by its founding principles of openness or will it fall into the trap of fear and populism?
The Syrian-born Canadian author and refugee activist, Danny Ramadan has been reported to be physically and verbally insulted due to his assumed Roma ethnicity at Sziget Festival in Budapest on 16th August 2018. The news perhaps comes with a shock to the general audience of the Festival, that is widely known for its cultural openness, the tolerance and respect for national diversity above all else. The assault may, nonetheless, be less surprising for those who are familiar with the current socio-political atmosphere of Hungary. The Fidesz government’s firm anti-immigrant stance and “hate campaign” brought a landslide victory for the governing party at the April 2018 General Election. Since that election the propaganda seems to have become incorrigible as the legislative machinery further curtails the rights of asylum seekers, targets civil society organizations, and threatens to dissipate the voice of dissent against the government. The most recent legislation creates a new criminal offence (‘Facilitating Illegal Migration’) that provides for the imprisonment of individuals, who extend legal assistance or humanitarian support for those third country nationals seeking asylum in Hungary. Notwithstanding the protest of a plethora of civil society organizations, including Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and the European Council on Refugees and Exiles, the Hungarian Parliament adopted the so-called “Stop Soros” Bill and the Seventh Amendment to the Constitution on June 20, World Refugee Day.
While the government has sought the opinion of the Venice Commission on the draft proposal for the legislation, spectacularly in the end the government has passed the Bill without even waiting for that very opinion. The Venice Commission, however, approached the Hungarian authorities to withdraw the new Bill eventually as it establishes criminal liability for advocacy activities, threatening members of civil society organizations who provide lawful assistance to asylum seekers. In doing this, as per the opinion of the Venice Commission, the law not only constitutes a violation of the right to freedom of association and expression, but also criminalizes the initiation of an asylum procedure on behalf of migrants. Furthermore, an earlier draft proposal of the bill, submitted in February, included a 25% tax on foreign-funded civil society organizations. While this tax was later dropped from the draft Bill, the Finance Ministry was still outspoken to impose the special tax on civil society organizations whose activities involve “organising migration”. They have asked for the introduction of this tax as a separate piece of legislation. According to the Ministry, the tax is necessary as the fight against illegal migration puts an “extra financial burden” on the state.
There have been a series of amendments to the Hungarian Constitution some of which referred to the issue of migration. The most recent, the Seventh Amendment of the Fundamental Law went further than the previous one to ascertain that “no alien population would be settled in Hungary”, and it would be the responsibility of all public authorities to protect the “constitutional self-identity” and “Christian culture” of the state. As of now, it is unclear whether the EU is considering imposing sanctions of any sort against the new provisions of the Fundamental Law. According to its critics, however, the Amendment contradicts EU Law, and undermines human rights and the rule of law. Moreover, it provides that asylum seekers arriving at Hungary through the territory of a country “where they would not be exposed to persecution or a direct risk of persecution” shall not be entitled to receive asylum in Hungary. The Amendment further provides for the establishment of administrative courts. The new court system would fully substitute for the authority of regular courts in administrative cases, including asylum issues, and the President of the Administrative High Court shall be elected by the Parliament. This leaves the new court system to be monopolised by the government as it holds a two-thirds majority in the Parliament.
The EU has not been complicit with the developments in Hungary adversely affecting human rights of asylum seekers and the functioning of NGOs assisting asylum seekers. The most recent infringement procedure against Hungary by the European Commission is a response to the “Stop Soros” Bill and its incompatibility with the EU law, including the Treaty on the Functioning of the EU and the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights. (N.B. further infringement procedures are ongoing against Hungary due to its non-compliance with, inter alia, the Asylum Procedures Directive, Return Directive and the Reception Conditions Directive.)
To make matters worse, those civil society organisations and activists who stand up for migrants’ rights are becoming increasingly under attack in Hungary. In June 2018, Hollik István MP, member of the governing coalition from KDNP Christian Democratic People Party, openly incited against Amnesty International right in front of its offices in Budapest. The politician marked the entrance with stickers, an action similar to when the Refugee Centre where the Jews lived during World War II was “signed” with a yellow star.
While at fieldwork in Southern Hungary in June 2018, we came across the impact of the fear and hatred campaign on everyday life. During our visit to Szeged, a county capital in Southeastern Hungary, we witnessed the complete oblivion of the locals of their proximity to the transit zone where asylum seekers are kept since September 2015 and the asylum seekers’ experience within. What is even more startling is that Szeged and the surrounding villages used to be at the forefront of the management of the 2015 refugee crisis, given its close proximity to the Western Balkan route across the Serbian border. During our visit many people expressed their relief that the city was no longer “occupied” by asylum seekers.
In conclusion, it looks as if despite the 2016 refugee quota referendum being inconclusive, the government has achieved its goal to foster a general feeling of fear among the public. While, on the one hand, the general public opinion on the European Union remains positive in Hungary, the anti-immigrant propaganda that has simultaneously bolstered anti-EU sentiments resulted in a victory for Fidesz, on the other. Witnessing these dual trajectories, we, therefore, raise the question, whether the conflicting attitudes towards EU policies are symptoms of the emergence of a new concept of Europeanisation that privileges the pursuit of certain conservative principles as opposed to those core liberal values the EU was founded upon and is to stand for.
Cilt / Volume 19 Sayı / Number 1
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HOW DOES COGNITION WORK IN MOSQUE SERMONS? CONTEXT, DELIVERY, AND PERCEPTION
ABSTRACT
This article examines what affects the cognition of hutbes (mosque sermons) by the attendants during their delivery. In order to discuss this question, we use data from an empirical research over 20 weeks from 2012 to 2013 in 10 Turkish counties. We argue that there are two stages of cognition, alluding to the mode that hutbes are generated and perceived: first, the discourse that the imams generate within sermons on thematic issues and second, the comprehension of such discourse by the attendants at the Friday prayers. Our research question is how cognition evolves from the first stage to the second. We have two working hypotheses to test such evolution. First, cognition among the listeners evolves to an extent that imams relate the religious discourse in their sermons to the particular socio-economic context where communities are situated. Second, the form and the setting in which religious discourse is formulated and delivered affect cognition. After the discussion of empirical evidence, the article shows that rather than the external factors such as the socio-economic context where the parishes are situated and socio-economic background of the listeners to the sermons, it the role of the imams as authoritative figures that affect what the listeners state as their cognition of hutbes.
This article examines what affects the cognition of hutbes (mosque sermons) by the attendants during their delivery. In order to discuss this question, we use data from an empirical research over 20 weeks from 2012 to 2013 in 10 Turkish counties. We argue that there are two stages of cognition, alluding to the mode that hutbes are generated and perceived: first, the discourse that the imams generate within sermons on thematic issues and second, the comprehension of such discourse by the attendants at the Friday prayers. Our research question is how cognition evolves from the first stage to the second. We have two working hypotheses to test such evolution. First, cognition among the listeners evolves to an extent that imams relate the religious discourse in their sermons to the particular socio-economic context where communities are situated. Second, the form and the setting in which religious discourse is formulated and delivered affect cognition. After the discussion of empirical evidence, the article shows that rather than the external factors such as the socio-economic context where the parishes are situated and socio-economic background of the listeners to the sermons, it the role of the imams as authoritative figures that affect what the listeners state as their cognition of hutbes.
The stakes are unimaginably high – with the EU already divided internally over its policy on refugees, failure in Syria risks making things worse. That could undermine the EU at a time when the terrorist threat needs the union to be as tight-knit as possible.
Second, it seeks to understand the theoretical proposition that new sources of external funding—including FDI and government bond purchases—can help enable a state to execute such a broad geopolitical shift. To do so, it develops empirical material from the fascinating Hungarian efforts to position themselves as a major beneficiary of Chinese engagement with Europe. The article concludes that Orbán’s policies have indeed been broadly consistent with his party’s new rhetoric, but it also concludes that the amount of Chinese investment is, in aggregate, still modest to date.
How does macro-discourse of the political elite on increasing external migration to the EU affect everyday micro-deliberations and projections over the course of Europeanization? Departing from the need for opening up space for ethnographical and geographical research to understand the impact of international relations on everyday deliberations on migration, current research needs to depict how macro politics of migration to the European Union is forging audiences among the citizenry.
LOOKING BACK TO SEE BEYOND: HUMAN MOBILITY RIGHTS’ LEGACIES IN THE EVOLUTION AND POTENTIALITIES OF THE EU’S ‘FREE MOVEMENT OF PERSONS’
Cristina Blanco Sío-López, University of Groningen
This paper critically analyses the role of the multilevel European Union (EU) institutions' players in articulating differential resilient responses to evolving modes of exclusion since the inception of the Schengen Area in 1985. Furthermore, it aims to recover empowering historical critiques towards the so-called 'Schengen Laboratory' which could be relevant today to find inclusive ways of responding to the asylum and migration external dimension challenges currently being posed with regards to the EU free movement of persons. More particularly, this paper focuses on the interplay between the free movement of persons and the crucial issue of migration. In this respect, it addresses the European institutions' proposals to constructively integrate third country forced migrants in the Community with a view to outlining changing notions of positive societal impact in periods characterised by crises and demands for systemic change. In a similar vein, it also tackles the European institutions' evolving positions towards the neglecting of the solidarity and diversity dimensions of European integration as part of different asylum crises. This contribution is based on a comparative approach to EU inter-institutional relations taking the European Parliament (EP) and the European Commission (EC) as paradigmatic observatories.
MIGRATION MANAGEMENT BETWEEN NATION-BUILDING AND EUROPE-BUILDING
Ruxandra Paul, Harvard University
This paper examines the nature of government and political elites’ responses to the current European migration crisis in fifteen migrant-receiving democracies from Western and Eastern Europe. It finds that these policies and the discourses surrounding them diverge from typical migration-management measures and previous debates on how to cope with irregular flows across the European Union’s external border. Instead of “business-as-usual,” responses at the national and supranational level invoke the idea of political community and identity, as well as the notion of sovereignty, implicitly or explicitly. Flows have dramatically reopened a range of fundamental questions about political community, identity and belonging, territorial boundaries, the nation, and the state. In other words, the Mediterranean migration crisis has reopened the “stateness problem” in Europe, in democracies thought to be long past their nation-building phase. This project analyzes policy responses and discourses surrounding the ongoing European migration crisis at the national and supranational level. In doing so, it challenges the established view of nation-building as a thing of the past, and instead reveals it to be an ongoing process advancing in fits and spurts. The paper shows that migration management involves varieties of political integration that can be located on a spectrum ranging from nation-building to Europe-building, mirroring the demarcation-integration continuum previously identified in the literature on political cleavages.
LEGAL CATEGORIES IN EUROPE AND THE PSYCHOLOGY OF INCLUSION / EXCLUSION
Magdalena Smieszek, Central European University
The phenomena of crises, identity politics, polarization and cognitive dissonance in European policies concerning migration could use some psychoanalysis. Taking an interdisciplinary approach that draws on both legal and social psychology scholarship, the paper will explore legal categorization in Europe by examining the social psychological underpinnings of laws that distinguish rights of humans placed in the categories of citizens and non-citizens within the European Union legal frameworks. Laws with a purpose of inclusion and exclusion that rely on categories, such as European citizenship and asylum, have a psychological source and impact that is both direct and far-reaching. Legal categories of citizen, European citizen, and non-citizen (many, but the focus here is on asylum-seeker, refugee, beneficiary of international protection) are based on mental evaluations that involve giving of value to human beings via status recognition and provision of rights. This process is largely identity-based and psychological because it involves emotionally laden positive and negative assessments that result in either social inclusion or exclusion via legal categories. The categories are hierarchical based on this evaluation and the content of rights with the result that social and economic rights are attached in a discriminatory manner as extensions of these positive/ negative and inclusionary/ exclusionary psychological evaluations. A cross-fertilization of conceptual approaches allows for a deeper understanding and updated articulation of rights of citizens and non-citizens within the European Union that can from there makes way for possible reformulations of policies both at the micro and macro levels.
(RE)NEGOTIATING EUROPEANISATION IN POLAND: DISCOURSE ON MIGRATION AND CONFLICTING VISIONS OF EUROPE
Justyna Szalanska, University of Warsaw
The paper aims to present the Polish discourse on migration and its production and or/reproduction of conflicting visions of the European Union. The main objective is to present what are the perspectives on visions and roles of the European Union negotiated through the prism of the discourse on migration to Europe. The paper is based on the preliminary results of studies on Conflicting Europeanisation in Poland as part of the Horizon 2020 project RESPOND. The analysed timespan is from 2011, the year of the outbreak of war in Syria, to 2018, dictated by the commencing of the project. The discourse of migration in Poland begun in 2015, what was an effect of the so called ‘refugee crisis’ (or ‘migration crisis’) in Europe coinciding with the electoral campaign before the parliamentary elections in Poland. The discourse was triggered not so much by the influx of refugees to Poland, which was minimal in numbers, but by the European debate on relocation quotas of refugees among the EU Member States. Although there were debates on migration, refugees’ admission and the principle of solidarity before 2015, their publicity was of minor significance. I will present the map of the Polish rival political actors reflecting on Shorthouse and Kirkby’s (2015) categorizations: social conservatism, social liberalism, economic conservatism, and economic liberalism. Basing on the mentioned clusters I will use the public claims analysis in order to present how political actors identify themselves and the entities they represent in terms of political ideology and their parties’ stance towards migration and the European Union. In the next step, with a method of media discourse analysis I will examine how elite discourse on increasing external migration to the EU is framed in Polish media.
FROM EUROSCEPTICISM TO CONFLICTING EUROPEANISATION: ANTI-MIGRATION DISCOURSES OF EUROPE AFTER THE “REFUGEE CRISIS”
James Foley, Glasgow Caledonian University
This paper aims to capture the variety of anti-migration reactions to the question of Europe, focusing specifically on narratives of increasing external migration to the EU and drawing on multi-country data analysis from RESPOND. Conventionally, Europeanisation has referred to the normative ideal of advanced Europe and its transformative impact on the domestic policy and practice of peripheral nations. In this context, parties that explicitly oppose multiculturalism, “openness” and migration, and are thus opposed to this shared European imaginary, are often cast either as Eurosceptics or Euro-rejects. I argue that this fails to capture the complexity of contemporary political alignments. While Brexit clearly belongs explicitly in the sceptical or rejectionist category, the rise of conservative-nationalist parties in Europe has had an uneven impact on the idea of Europe, with many supporting the existence of the EU, further economic integration, and the concept of “Europe”, but framing these around hard external borders and a white-Christian European demos, presenting a “clash of civilisations” narrative. This rival framing has grown significantly on the European periphery, particularly in nations that form European borders, but it has an increasingly transnational character and has shifted political discourse in the core of the European system. The result is that, while the outright Euroscepticism and rejectionism remain marginal movements, there is growing prospect of endogenous ideological changes, and the hardening of existing “fortress Europe” policies. Moreover, although the rise of populism and the imaginary of the “refugee crisis” has undoubtedly precipitated a shifting balance of forces, I will also examine how this closed idea of “Europe” was already implicit in much of pre-2011 mainstream politics.