Politics of Space and Pathways of Resistance: Contested National Identities in Landscapes of Turkey

All theories of national development attempt to explain how diverse communities with disparate interests consolidate into larger people groups under the banner of a new, shared political identity. The ability of nations to transcend local interests directed most theoretical attention away from the local context. However, local social environments are essential mediators in the character of state-society relations, and the interactions that members of the nation have in the routines of daily life must be instrumental in shaping the national imagination. This study examines the interaction between the public and the state in the context of Turkey and the Justice and Development Party’s new nation-building project. Taking a hyperlocal perspective, I compare the politics of the urban landscape in two of Istanbul’s districts- one in the city center, the other in the periphery. One district has centuries of historical memory, and the other was established only in the last several decades. One is an opposition stronghold; the other has overwhelmingly and consistently favored the JDP and its vision for a New Turkey. My findings show that the state, limited in its capacity to penetrate the urban environment, must strategically choose public spaces to stage its spectacle and production. The urban landscape is the most concrete domain of the public sphere. So, these strategic calculations exhibit the structure of the national contest, the rules of the game, and the privileged vision and interests within them. I then look at the conflict within this domain and find that the public has a remarkable agency to resist state interventions even when the opposition has little institutional power. Perhaps most importantly, the local context produces the transcendent nation when the public begins building broad coalitions to contend with the state's power. The product is an account of that ever-present variable in the theories of nations – the local – and how it is an ever more significant contingency in the building of modern nations.