Buket Türkmen

Buket Türkmen
01/01/2008
Résidents Labex RFIEA+
Résidents Programme EURIAS

dates de séjour

01/09/2018 - 30/06/2019

discipline

Sociologie

Fonction d’origine

Professeure associée

Institution d’origine

Université Galatasaray, Istanbul (Turquie)

pays d'origine

Turquie

projet de recherche

The actors of Democracy Watch in Turkey: towards a non-negotiated public sphere?

Since 2010, we are living in a new period in which new forms of activism are emerging in different societies. To the new social movements which had proposed a social imagination based on horizontality, autonomies, consensus and solidarist individualism, responded the counter-movements that now promote verticality, a hierarchical society, devotion to the leader and holistic citizenship. Populist regimes respond and support these counter-movements. Inviting part of the population to the streets and banning demonstrations of the others go hand in hand with this new type of populist authoritarianism which tries to provide an appearance of respect for Democracy, provided by the street. To be able to understand this phase of democracy and street politics, we will analyze the case of Turkey’s “democracy watches”, after the Coup attempt in 15 July 2016. We look at democracy watches and its actors to find the relevant keys to understand the new unitarian public space in Turkey. The public space, defined as a sphere of deliberation by Habermas, becomes the non-deliberative reflection of the government’s will in the new period. The new regime is consolidated today under the State of Emergency. I consider the case of Turkey, besides having its characteristics coming from its political history, as an exemple that reveals a shift in the global political imagination from democracy to the new authoritarianisms. In continuity with a previous research based on a fieldwork realized with actors of democracy watches in 2016, I aim to understand the relationship between the Street and the new authoritarian regime and its repercussions on today's political subjectivities.

biographie

Buket Türkmen has worked in the Sociology departments of Bordeaux University (2018) and of Galatasaray University in Istanbul (1997-2018). She holds her MA and PhD degrees of EHESS in Paris. Her thesis is focused on the reconstruction of the secular public space by Islamist and kemalist youth in Turkey. She was visiting scholar at the Center for Middle Eastern Studies in Harvard University in 2006. She has contributed to many comparative research projects on the Public Sphere, Islam and women studies, new social movements, identity movements. She is the editor of Laicités et religiosités : Intégration ou exclusion ? (Harmattan, 2010).