INTERACTION AND AVOIDANCE: BEHAVIOR IN PUBLIC PLACES IN TURKEY AND THE CIVIC ARENA

Presented atThe International Conference on Turkey and Her Integration to

the EU, Istanbul, Turkey, Oct. 2009

INTERACTION AND AVOIDANCE: BEHAVIOR INPUBLIC PLACES IN TURKEY AND THE CIVIC

ARENA

By

CHARLES ALLEN SCARBOROFATIH UNIVERSITY, ISTANBUL

INTRODUCTION1

The scholarly literature is rich with studiesof the relationships between, on the one hand,activities in the public sphere and thosenorms and organizations shaping thoseactivities and, on the other hand, largerpolitical questions. Frequently described asstudies in civic culture, these analyses,shaped powerfully by such classics as Alexisde Tocqueville’s magisterial Democracy inAmerica2, most frequently link macro political

1 I want to thank Vassil Anastassov, John Basourakos,Mohamed Elged, and Cristofer Scarboro, who read earlierdrafts of this paper and offered helpful comments.2 Alexis de TOCQUEVILLE, Democracy in America, Issac KRAMNICK,(ed.), Gerald BEVAN, (trans.), New York: Penguin, 2003[1831].

structures (the state, nationalism, democracyor authoritarianism) to the possibilities andvitality of civic organizations and othervoluntary associations. Many scholars in this tradition examineTurkey from this perspective. For example,Jenny White3 examines the emergence ofIslamist parties in Turkey and theirrelationship to Turkish national politics,while Ali Mandipour4 is more concerned withthe relationships and tensions between publicand private spaces. Levent Koker5 focuses onthe relationships between local and nationalpolitics and social space. Other studies focuson the role of gender in public spaces andargue that patriarchy limits women’s access tothe public arena and its opportunities6 or onthe relationship between women’s religiosityand their involvement with public activities7

as well as on the interactions of ethnicity,3 Jenny B. WHITE, Islamist Mobilization in Turkey: A Study inVernacular Politics, Seattle : University of Washington Press,2003.4 Ali MANDIPOUR, Public and Private Spaces of the City, New York:Routledge, 2003.5 Levent KOKER, “Local Politics and Democracy in Turkey:An Appraisal”, in: Annals of the American Academy of Political andSocial Science, n° 540(1), 1995, pp. 51-62.6 Nilufer GOLE, “The Gendered Nature of the PublicSphere”, in: Public Culture, n° 10(1), 1997, pp. 61-81.Retrieved 24/09/2009.7 Anna J. SECOR, “The Veil and Urban Space in İstanbul:Women’s Dress, Mobility, and Islamic Knowledge”, in:Gender, Place and Culture, n° 9(1), 2002, pp. 5-22. Accessed22/09/2009.

gender, tenure in the city, and access topublic spaces8. Others link interaction in thepublic sphere to larger questions of meaningand the role of boundaries in constructingmeaningful space9 while urban planners andurban geographers have focused more closely onlifestyle and the use of public space10 or onthe ecology of civic space11. In this paper, I follow more closely thetradition established by Tocqueville and hisDurkheimian followers, of which the work ofRobert Bellah and his colleagues12 or the8 Anna J. SECOR, “’There Is an İstanbul That Belongs toMe’: Citizenship, Space, and Identity in the City”, in:Annals of the Association of American Geographers, n° 94(2), 2004,pp. 352-368. Accessed 24/09/2009.9 Vassil ANASTASSOV, “What Is Behind that Wall? Towards aSemiotic Model of ‘Walls’ as Signs of Self-Location inPolitical Space.” in: Real and Virtual Cities. Intertextual andIntermedial Mindsacpes, Asuncion LOPEZ-VARELA and Mariana NET,(eds.), Bucarest: Editura Univers Enciclopedic, 2009,pp. 111-119.10 Hatice Sonmez TUREL, Emine Malkoc YIGIT & Ipek ALTUG,“Evlauation of Elderly People’s Requirements in PublicOpen Spaces: A Case Study in Bornova District (Izmir,Turkey)”, in: Building and Environment, n° 42(5), 2007, pp.2035-2045.11 Serif HEPCAN, Adnan KAPLAN, Bulent OZKAN, Erhan VecdiKUCUKERBAS, Emine Malkoc YIGIT & Hatice Sonmez TURE,“Public Space Networks as a Guide to Sustainable UrbanDevelopment and Social Life: A Case Study of Mugla,Turkey”, in: International Journal of Sustainable Development andWorld Ecology, n° 13(5), 2006, pp. 375-389. Accessed2/09/2009.12 Robert N. BELLAH, Richard MADSEN, William M. SULLIVAN &Ann SWIDLER, Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in

ethnographic studies of American life by HervéVarenne13 are exemplars. Here the focus is on‘habits of the heart’. This phrase,appropriated by Bellah and his co-workers fromTocqueville, refers to those predispositionsthat shape our approach to the world, thatundergird our everyday interactions. Whilehabits of the heart are similar to the habitusof Pierre Bourdieu14, they are more about thoseframeworks of action than about theirproductions. And unlike Anthony Giddens’15

focus on structuration, with its emphasis onthe dynamic of structure and agency, thisapproach emphasizes the ways actors negotiatewithin a normative setting.My question focuses most specifically on therelationship among those habits of the heartwhich people in Turkey express in theireveryday life in public areas, those patternsof actions and negotiations which flow fromand express those habits of the heart, and themeanings of those actions and negotiations. Myparticular interest here is the connection

American Life, Berkeley and Los Angeles: University ofCalifornia Press, 2007.13 Hervé VARENNE, Americans Together: Structured Diversity in aMidwestern Town, New York: Teacher’s College Press, 1977 &Hervé VARENNE (ed.), Symbolizing America, Lincoln, Nebraska:University of Nebraska Press, 1986.14 Pierre BOURDIEU, The Field of Cultural Production, RandallJohnson, ed. New York: Columbia University Press, 1993.15 Anthony GIDDENS, The Constitution of Society: Outline of the Theoryof Structuration, Berkeley and Los Angeles: University ofCalifornia, 1986.

between the experience of the public sphereand the stances toward the political structurewhich correspond to those experiences. I argue for a homology between, first, thespheres of intimate actions in public spaceand, second, a set of attitudes towards thelarger structures of politics and the nationamong people in Turkey. I suggest that theseattitudes of members of the Turkish bodypolitic towards the political structurereflect deep distrust of the public sphereand, further, that these attitudes are asalient and important factor to be consideredas Turkey moves towards accession to theEuropean Union.

METHOD

This paper grows from a year long consciousobservation of public spaces in Turkey. Theproject originated from a foreigner’s attemptto learn how to navigate and negotiate thepublic arenas in İstanbul as I took upresidence in İstanbul. Since I do not have aprivate automobile, I was and am dependent onwalking and riding public transportation as Imake my way through the city, to and fromwork, shopping, dealing with municipal andnational bureaucracies, visiting friends,sightseeing, and other quotidian tasks of theeveryday. For my first year in İstanbul and Turkey, Ispent much of my time confused and frustrated,

stymied in my attempts to make my way, naïvein those everyday practices by which İstanbulresidents negotiate their paths andinteractions through the city. I erred againand again in navigating the city and itsmores. Such errors are a fruitful, ifsometimes painful, strategy for discoveringthe norms that shape actions in the publicsphere. I journaled extensively about my experiencesand tested my growing sense of the place withother foreigners, with my native friends, andwith my students. I began to develop afamiliarity and growing ease with movingthrough the city and carrying out myintentions, but my curiosity about the normsand practices through which people movedthrough the cityscape continued. I felt that Ihad moved from Georg Simmel’s role of‘wanderer’ to that which he called the‘stranger’—“ the person who comes today andstays tomorrow”16. Further, as a sociologist, Iwas comfortable in the stranger role, andvalued what Simmel saw as the role’s strengths—‘objectivity,’ receipt of ‘confidences,’ and‘freedom,’ particularly the freedom to see thesociety within which one lives from a ‘bird’seye view’ distinct from the enmeshed vision ofthe permanent resident17.

16 Georg SIMMEL, “The Stranger”, in The Sociology of GeorgSimmel, Kurt WOLFF (ed. & trans.), New York: Free Press,1950, p. 402.17 Georg SIMMEL, op. cit.

I sketched out a set of statements based onthat first year’s experiences. Then I began ayear-long more systematic period ofobservation, consciously looking foractivities that confirmed or challenged mylist of statements. I photographed publicareas and activities extensively (I now havetaken more than 5000 photographs in Turkey).Reviewing and analyzing these photographsbecame a further source of data.My observations are limited to public placesin Turkey—streets and sidewalks, streetmarkets and stores, malls and shopping areas,buses, trams, and ferries, lobbies andcourtyards, stairwells and hallways,pedestrian overpasses and tunnels, and otherplaces open to the public. I have focused onthe interactions and use of geographical andsocial spaces in those venues.The majority of my observations over the lastyear have taken place in İstanbul. Withinİstanbul, the greatest number of observationswere in Beyoğlu and in Avcılar, where I havelived. I have also observed in other areas ofthe city, such as Eyüp, Kadıköy, Adalar,Beylikdüzü, Büyükçekmece, Sultanahmet, Fatih,Aksaray, Eminönü, and other areas.My observations are weighted heavily in favorof İstanbul. However, I have also observed inEdirne, Konya, Busra, İskenderun, Adana, andsimilar larger cities. I have not observed inrural areas. I have also not observed in thenortheastern section of Turkey.

Observational studies have the strength ofimmediacy and context but they are limited andconclusions drawn must be taken asexploratory, perspectival, and tentative.Observational research invites replication byother observers in similar and dissimilarlocations and times as well as by othermethods.I have shared my list of observations withthree groups (n=16, 43, 39) of students at auniversity in Istanbul and asked for theirfeedback. They greet my list with wry smilesand state that I have caught some importantpatterns. They frequently offered commentssuch as, “Yes, you are right, but no one everput it to us like this.” They also insist that—while my list may fit with their experiencesof public places—behavior in private differsfrom what I have seen in public.

THE EVERYDAY PUBLIC IN TURKEY

I want to start with three images.There is nothing extraordinary about thefirst image. The scene happens to be ofshoppers in the weekly Wednesday street inAvcılar, a municipality within İstanbul,Turkey. The shoppers are not unusual nor aretheir actions out of the ordinary. In fact, Ihave observed and photographed scenes muchlike this in Mecidiyeköy, Fatih, Tarlabaşı,other sections of İstanbul and in other citiesin Turkey. The typicality, not the

unusualness, of this image is what draws myattention. Let us note what we see.

First Image

Second image

The second image is no more surprising thanthe first, but a careful examination leads me

to my first theme. But before I move to mytheme, a third image:

Third image

As you reflect on the three images, you maynote a movement in the focus of the images,from a panorama of the market to the marginsof that panorama. Although all three imagesare clearly of a public area, in the thirdarea we can detect two distinct socialsettings within the larger public arena. Inthe first image, the social setting is ashared space, while in the second we see theboundary of a private sphere marked off fromthe shared, and, in the third image, theprivate setting is clearly distinct from theshared, common area. We find distinct patternsof interaction in each setting.

I will return to these images, but first letme share my list of activities that pervadethe public spaces I have observed in Turkey.These activities to me are indicators ofimportant habits of the heart among the peoplewho move into and out of these common areas.

EVERYDAY INTERACTIONS IN TURKISH PUBLIC SPACES

1) People do not smile.People do not smile in public spaces. As Iwalk the sidewalks, I meet face after face setin serious mien or stoic solidity. Most facesare expressionless although often enough Imeet a scowl. Most often, faces in publicspaces give off a determined air, as if thewearer were moving towards a meeting with adisappointed bureaucrat or a determineddentist. On buses, faces show few emotionsother than fortitude, endurance, patience, ordisinterest. On stairways or lobbies, facesdiscourage dalliance but rather showindifference or studied disengagement. In themarkets or shops, faces do not inviteinteraction.

2) People do not make eye contact.People do not make eye contact. People movingin or through public spaces avoid making eyecontact with others. Erving Goffman offers ananalysis of interaction in public spaces which

he calls the ‘civil inattention ritual’18. Thisritual is a process of first noting thenavoiding others whom one meets in passing. Henotes that on American sidewalks, people whoencounter each other participate in aninteraction that begins with each recognizingthe presence of the other then, as the twoparticipants near each other, and enter whathe calls ‘social space,’ each glances off andavoids eye contact until each passes theother. Goffman argues that such practices ofpretending not to note the other make life incities possible. In cities, we encounter somany others that inviting interaction wouldopen us to so many interactions that we wouldcome to a standstill, a point made earlier byGeorg Simmel19 in his early analysis of urbanlife. Thus pretending not to see the other,while avoiding running into them, makesdealing with a large number of passersbytolerable. Turkey differs from the Americanpattern, a pattern common in European citiesand other Middle Eastern cities such as Cairoand Damascus: in Turkey, passersby omit theinitial recognition of the other through whichAmericans enter the inattention ritual. In the public arena, passersby avoid lookingat other passersby. Unlike in Goffman’s

18 Erving GOFFMAN, Behavior in Public Places: Notes on the SocialOrganization of Gatherings, New York: Free Press, 1966.19 Georg SIMMEL, “The Metropolis and Mental Life”, in:Donald Levine (ed.), Simmel: On Individuality and Social Forms,Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1971, pp. 11-19.

description of the civil inattention ritual inthe United States, people in public areas inTurkey avoid eye contact even at a distance—there is no initial recognition of the otheras she moves into the social zone followed byeye avoidance. Rather, eyes are downcast aspedestrians negotiate the streets, sidewalks,lobbies, bus and metro platforms, and othershared areas. The eye avoidance is moststriking in public conveyances. On buses,ferries, trams or the metro, passengers ridefor long distances studiously looking out thewindow, at their hands, or with unfocused eyesas they listen to music on earphones or simplystare into vacant space. While pairs of peoplewho know each other may engage in animatedconversations or share a set of earphones,there is little visual recognition of the non-familiar other.

3) People do not recognize you in public.The public sphere is a place of limitedinteraction. Persons who enter public areasaccompanied by another person—a friend, afamily member, a colleague—may engage inlively interaction with that companion, butthere is little initiation of interaction withothers one may pass in public areas. Anexample may make this clearer. For more than ayear I have ridden a ‘service bus’ to and frommy place of work. Everyone on the bus is alsoemployed by my employer and the same peopleride the bus day after day. At the bus stop

where I meet the bus, six to eight of mycolleagues wait with me each morning. However,while one waits for the bus, peers typicallydo not greet one another nor do they engage inconversation. As one enters the bus, no onegreets the entrant. As one rides the twenty orthirty minutes to and from work, there is verylittle conversation and passengers avoidinteraction. I have lived in my neighborhood for more thana year and walk the streets daily. As anAmerican, I nod at people I recognize or callout, “Merhaba” or “Salem aleikum.” Those Igreet look startled and confused. A theme thatunderlies these first three patterns is thatthe public sphere is a place of anonymity anddisengagement. A person enters it warily andindividually, detached and protective of onesspace and person. A fourth image sums up thistheme.

The Public Sphere, Wednesday Market, Avcilar. Fourth Image

4) People do not take turns.When people in İstanbul engage in activitiesin the public arena, it is every person forhimself or herself. Whether it be gaining theattention of a shop clerk, a vendor, or aclerk in a bureaucratic organization, eachperson pushes to the front, insisting onengagement. A person engaged in a transactionis shoved aside by someone else demanding theclerk’s attention. The suspension of deferenceto first-come first-served is even moreobvious as people board public transportation.Boarding a sea ferry is a pandemonium ofpushing and shoving, jostling and maneuvering,although the same scene unfolds on a smallerscale as the doors to a metro or tram car orbus open. The mad dash continues as bordersjoust for a seat—shoving past those persons

trying to disembark, crushing both thoseentering and those leaving into a sometimesalmost immobile crowd. One sees similarbehavior among drivers of cars, taxis, trucksand buses in intersections or the roadway.Pedestrian crossings bring vehicles andwalkers into a dance of precedence and verve.

5) People do not queue.The tournament of precedence shows itself ina related theme: people in Turkey do not formlines. Rather, requests for service orattention are winner-take-all games.Exceptions to this pattern can be found atATMs or in establishments like banks and theEmniyet which use a number system. Even inthose locales, people without a number ofteninterrupt ongoing interactions in attempts togain a clerk’s attention and often theseattempts are successful.

6) People bump into you.For foreigners, the violability of personalspace in Turkey comes as a surprise. In publicareas in Turkey, ones body is routinelytouched by passersby. Walking on the sidewalk,people bump into you. On stairways, on busplatforms, in stores, people bump into othersand continue on their way without notice. Twoexamples may make this clear. Yesterday, I waswalking up a wide stairway to the Metrobüsstop in Bakırköy. Simultaneously, I was bumpedinto in three different places on my body—my

left shoulder, my right ankle, and my back. Noone seemed to notice. Last week, I was sittingon a bench watching people pass on MamaraMarmara Cadesssi Caddesi in Avcılar. I noticedan elderly man carrying grocery bags in eachhand. Two young women passed him, one oneither side. Each woman ran into him, withsuch force that he dropped the bags he wascarrying. Neither of the young women stoppedas he scrambled to recover his groceries.

7) People do not apologize.Apologies are the lubricant of unintendedsocial infractions20 and strategies ofresolving conflicting claims21. They arerecognitions of a normative violation and seekto restore mutual recognition and validationof the parties of potentially damaginginteractions. Apologies are thereforeespecially useful signposts to normativeexpectations—they mark infringements andsignal appropriate interaction patterns andthe status of the participants.As one reflects on the interaction of the twoyoung women and the older man recounted above,20 Shoshana BLUM-KULKA & Elite OLSHTAIN, “Requests andApologies: A Cross-Cultural Study of Speech ActRealization Patterns”, in: Applied Linguistics, n° 3, 1984,pp. 196-213, athttp://applij.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/pdf_extract/5/3/196. Retrieved 12 October 2009.21 Nicholas TAVUCHIS, Mea Culpa: A Sociology of Apology andReconciliation, Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press,1993.

one notes particularly the lack of an apology.The interaction, which to me as an observer,seemed egregious, was seen by the participantsas not out of the ordinary. In none of the sixpatterns I have previously described do I findparticipants apologizing. Pushing, shoving,bumping, inattention to passersby,interrupting exchanges—all are seen as usualand most often not worthy of note by thoseparticipating in them.

8) People leap before they lookIn public areas, whether they be streets,sidewalks, aisles in stores, doorways, orother avenues, people enter the area withoutpause. One sees, for example, drives driversof automobiles move into intersections, thenlooking around to see if other drivers yieldthe right of way. People step into crosswalks,then look around to see if buses or cars arecoming. The venturing precedes scoping out thepossible presence of vehicles or otherpotential dangers. In intersections, driversclaim access and then wait to see if othershonor that claim. Pedestrians move into thecrosswalk, then pause to see if oncomingtraffic yields to them. Shoppers push into anaisle before looking to see if the aisle isclear. A pattern of claim-staking and one-upmanship characterizes these areas ofpotential ambiguity: who will yield and whowill prevail. Each interaction seems ambiguous

and contingent; the outcome is uncertain,dependent on nerve and verve.Let me offer a word of caution. What I amdescribing is behavior in public places. Inprivate, in a familial context, or ininteractions among friends, I have observed(and been party to) much conviviality,graciousness, and good humor. In fact, animportant division between actions in theprivate and the public realms bifurcatesTurkish life into two areas with verydifferent expectations and norms. Let me callyour attention again to the third image above.The vendor in this image stands in a sociallyprivate location while the shoppers stand in apublic one. We see in this image thecharacteristics of both the private and thepublic arenas and the line dividing the twoareas. That division is critical to life inTurkey.

THE PUBLIC SPHERE AS AN AREA FOR ACTION

So what sense do we make of these patterns?One might find many frameworks within which tointerpret these images, observations andthemes. However, I want to focus on the publicarea from the perspective of what Garrett

Hardin22 refers to as the ‘commons’23. Publicspace is the space shared by all, a resourceavailable to all, accessible to all. ForHardin, the phrase, the ‘commons,’ calls upimages of the New England town meeting and ofthe collectively owned resources governed bycooperation and mutual responsibility. İn Inhis essay, Hardin focuses on the question ofthe effect of the ‘free rider’ on thecommitment of citizen’s responsibility for thecommons. My focus differs.I am interested in seeing how peopleunderstand and relate to the commons and howthat understanding shapes their actions in thecommons. The patterns I enumerated aboverequire an interpretation. I find thefollowing interpretations most useful.

22 Garrett HARDIN, « The Tragedy of the Commons », in:Science, n° 162, 1968, pp. 1243-1248, athttp://dieoff.org/page95.htm. Retrieved 12 October2009.23 Cf. Robert Putnam’s application of the idea of thecommons to the contemporary political culture in theUnited States; drawing from Tocqueville’s analysis ofthe role of voluntary associations, Putnam finds thedecline of collective activities in the US to beindicators of a decline in the commitment to politicsas an effective shared public resource, in RobertPUTNAM, “Bowling Alone: America’s Declining SocialCapital”, in: Journal of Democracy, n° 6(1), 1995, pp. 65-78, at http://xroads.virginia.edu/~hyper/DETOC/assoc/bowling.html. Retrieved 12 October2009.

1) Rather than a venue of cooperation, peoplein Turkey see the commons as an arena forcompetition.2) Rather than a place for collective action,people in Turkey see action in the commons asindividualistic.3) Rather than a safe place, people in Turkeyfind the commons a location where wariness iscalled for.4) Rather than a resource sufficient to meetcommon needs, people in Turkey see a commonsinsufficient to meet everyone’s individualneeds or to meet social needs.5) Rather than a location where onespersonhood and status are recognized andvalorised, people in Turkey experience thecommons as a place where personhood and statusare challenged.6) Rather than a locale where norms aresupported and enforced, people in Turkey seethe commons as an arena where selfishness isrewarded.7) Rather than a nexus where deference topeers leads to cooperation and mutual goal-meeting, people in Turkey find the commons aplace where claims-staking leads to meetingones goals and needs.

My interpretation leads me to conceive of theactions in public spaces in Turkey, then, asexpressions of a specifically individualisticrather than social ethic. In a qualitativeanalysis, one cannot test causal chains or

hypothetical relationships. Qualitativeanalyses are, by their nature, exploratory andsuggestive. Thus I do not proffer an argumentof causation. However, some generalizationsare here tentatively put forward.The impact of the massive urbanization ofTurkey over the past century is often notedand its effects analyzed widely by bothscholarly and popular thinkers. The effects ofurbanization on society’s normative structurehave been highlighted for more than onehundred fifty years and are an ongoing motifin sociological studies of modernization and‘development.’ Turkey’s urbanization andmodernization, however, is far from unique andthey do not explain distinctive social andcultural patterns in contemporary Turkey. Forexample, my experiences observing other urbanareas—ranging from New York and Chicago in theUnited States, to Quito in Ecuador to Wuhan inChina—do not generate the same list ofbehaviors in public spaces that I find inTurkey. Nor do my experiences in other rapidlyurbanizing cities in Egypt or Syria, societieswhich share many cultural and social featureswith Turkey. While urbanization andmodernization do have large impacts on publicbehavior, they do not explain the patterns Isee in Turkey.

What I do see is a society whose members arenegotiating the misfit between a set ofexpectations and the realities where those

expectations are fitfully met. Two of thoseexpectations are particularly salient.

First, the Turkish Revolution promised to bringall citizens into a single comity whereearlier social distinctions and gradationswould be replaced by the equality ofcitizenship: the bonds in the past that bothguaranteed and governed access to the publicgood are replaced by atomistic individuality.While those previous insidious distinctionsmay well not have been egalitarian—there wasrecognition that specific groups might haveunequal access to the commonweal—neverthelessall did have access and the channels andproprieties for each channel were known andeffective. That certainty no longer holds.

Second, modernization and economic developmentpromised a plenitude of goods and services.Abundance would replace scarcity. Livingconditions would improve and all would meettheir needs. Consumption would support alifestyle that provided self-sufficiency andwork would be rewarded.

However, these promises do not seem to havebeen met. The commons is inadequate to meetneeds and an ethic of cooperation and sharedresponsibility does not seem effective. Thusan attitude of mistrust pervades publicspaces. Engagement in the public arena makesone vulnerable. Waiting in anticipation thatones needs will be recognized and met leads to

disappointment. One is, thus, left on onesown.

I want to suggest that this posture regardingpublic social and geographical space extendsas well to the larger national politicalsphere. If one cannot expect reciprocity,cooperation and satisfaction in boarding a busor walking down a sidewalk or moving through acrowd, then one also fails to trust thereciprocity and cooperation of theinstitutions of the state nor of stateworkers. Government and the bureaucracy thenare seen as a machinery of spoils—those whocontrol the machinery reap the benefits whileothers are shunted aside24.

Let me suggest, further, that these patternsconnect to the frequent question of “Turkeyand her integration process to the EuropeanUnion.” If I am correct that the aura ofmistrust and atomism in public spaces isfurther reflected in a general mistrust of thepolitical structures and processes within theTurkish national state, then it follows thatmany Turks are equally suspicious of the24 The classic argument for seeing the public good inthe body politic from a perspective where differenceleads to the protection of everyones benefitting fromthe commons is offered by the authors of teh theFederalist Papers, especially in essays 10, 39 and 40, cf.Alexander HAMILTON, James MADISON & John JAY, The FederalistPapers, Signet Classics, Clinton ROSSITER (ed.), New York:Signet. 2003 [1788].

possibility that accession to the EuropeanUnion would be beneficial to their everydaylives. Instead of seeing the EU as a source ofrealistic hope, they rather expect it tocontinue that pattern of disappointment in thepromises of the political and economic changesover the last century. For many in Turkey,integration into the Union would reiterate thespoils system writ on an even larger scale butwith their own needs and aspirations relegatedinto inconsequentiality.

“What is in it for me?” they seem to ask. Andthe answers they find to that questiongenerate neither enthusiasm nor commitment.

ADDITIONAL BIBLIOGRAPHY

CERTEAU, Michel de, “On the Oppositional Practices ofEveryday Life”, in: Social Text, n° 3 (Autumn), 1980,pp. 3-43, at <http://www.jstor.org/stable/466341>Accessed 24/09/2009.

POLAT, Necati, “Identity Politics and the DomesticContext of Turkey’s European Union Accession”, in:Government and Opposition, n° 41(4), 2006, pp. 512-533.Accessed 24/09/2009.