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POSTPONED: Workshop brings together scholars to discuss authoritarian drive in Turkey

A one-day workshop that brings together Turkish scholars to engage in a critical and in-depth discussion on the current authoritarian drive in Turkey will take place March 19 at York University’s Keele Campus.

Pinar Bedirhanoglu

Presented by the Global Labour Research Centre (GLRC) and the Department of Politics, “Contested Reproduction of Turkey’s Financialized Capitalism: State and Society in Crisis” will run from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. in Ross Building South 674. It is organized by Pinar Bedirhanoğlu, visiting professor in the Department of Politics, and associate professor in the Department of International Relations at Middle East Technical University with Luann Good Gingrich, director, Global Labour Research Centre, York University.

The workshop will problematize the following issues:

  • the constitutive role of financialization in authoritarian state transformation;
  • state policies that weaken the power of labour vis-á-vis capital; and
  • the enhancement of the coercive capacity of state and capital for social control.

Besides identifying the Turkey-specific determinants of authoritarianism, the workshop aims to situate the Turkish experience within its global context, and thus contribute to relevant debates in comparative politics.

The program includes:

Welcome and introductions – 9 to 9:30 a.m.

Politics of Labour – 9:30 to 11:30 a.m.
Chair and discussant: Angela Joya, adjunct research professor, Carleton University

  • Formation of the “classes of labour” in Turkey under neoliberalism and changing forms of rural class struggle – Coşku Çelik, postdoctoral Fellow, Department of Politics and Department of Social Science, York University
  • Syrian refugees as surplus population in Turkish labour market: Racialization, segmentation and exploitation – Canan Şahin, PhD candidate, Queens University
  • Social reproduction in crisis: Limits to reproducing labour power in neoliberalizing Turkey – Hilal Kara, PhD candidate, Queens University

State Transformation through Financialization – 12:30 to 2:30 p.m.
Chair and discussant: Barış Karaağaç, lecturer, Trent University

  • Responses to the 2018-19 economic crisis in AKP’s Turkey: Policy space and discipline by state-sponsored credit – Ali Rıza Güngen, Distance Fellow, Carnegie Mellon University
  • Financialization, debt, state and health care – İpek Eren-Vural, research associate, Dalhousie University; adjunct professor, Simon Fraser University
  • Financialisation, household indebtedness, and state crisis in Turkey – Pınar Bedirhanoğlu, visiting professor, Department of Politics, York University; associate professor, Department of International Relations, METU

Politics of Coercion – 3 to 5 p.m.
Chair and discussant: Ömer Özcan, visiting professor, Department of Anthropology,York University

  • “The law of the city?”: Social war, urban warfare, and dispossession on the margin – Çağlar Dölek, contract instructor, Carleton University
  • Policing the crisis in Turkey: The case of feminicides – Funda Hülagü, research associate, Philipps University of Marburg (via Skype)
  • Turkey’s authoritarian surveillance regime – Özgün Topak, assistant professor, Department of Social Science, York University

For more information visit the GLRC event page or the Facebook event page.

Those interested can register at http://tiny.cc/glrcturkey. All are welcome.

The event is supported by York University’s Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies, the Vice-President Research & Innovation and the Department of Politics.