"There Is an Istanbul That Belongs to Me": Citizenship, Space, and Identity in the City Author(s): Anna Secor Reviewed

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"There

Is

an

Istanbul
and

That

Citizenship,Space,

Belongs Identity in

to

Me":

the

City

Anna Secor
of Department Geography, University Kentucky of The citizenship ideal of the Turkishrepublic has taken shape through the logics of alterity, defined by and of and the rise of Kurdishidentity politics. Citizenshipin throughboth a paradoxicalunderstanding Turkishness an uneasy marriagebetween ethnic and civic conceptions of national identity and belongTurkeyrepresents ing. This article develops an analysisof citizenshipand everydayspatialpractice in Istanbulthrough the narratives produced in focus group discussionswith Kurdish-identified, migrantwomen. Their stories explore how citizenship, as a hegemonic process that assembles identities, fixes power relations, and disciplines space, is encountered and contested throughthe spatialpracticesof everydaylife, through what Michel de Certeau calls the tactics of "makingdo." Viewing dominant discoursesand practices of citizenship as techniques of spatial in organization("strategies," de Certeau'sterms), this study focuses on how participantsnarratetheir own spain tial storiesof resistanceto and appropriation dominantcodingsof "the citizen"and "the stranger" the Turkish of context. This analysisbrings to the fore the ways in which focus group participantsencounter discoursesand and practicesthat position them as strangers citizens,their use of tactics of anonymityand strategiesof identity as they traverse city spaces, and the moments in which they situate themselves as political subjects in schools, neighborhoods,and workplacesin Istanbul,throughthe spatialenactment of the strategiesof citizenshipand the tactics of everydaylife. Key Words: Michelde Certeau. urbangeography, Kurdish citizenship, identity, Turkey,

We came to Istanbulin 1995. Our family broke up. We don't knowwho'swhere.We came to Istanbul.One or two of my sons have now escapedto Russia.We said, "There's no money here, no work, whateverwe do." We opened a telephone stand in Taksim[a centralpart of Istanbul].If I am a citizen,if my son has done his militaryservicehere, if my fathergave his blood at Canakkale[Gallipoli], sons my must also have rights. . . . Three times the TerrorPolice have takenmy son, and saidyou arenot goingto be able to eat breadhere, you are not going to stay here. They broke three of his ribs."Kurds, are all terrorists. . . " Night . you came and I had heard nothing fromhim, then they came to our house and raidedit, they searchedit. . ... Lastweek, I went to Taksim,and there were the Mothersfor Peace, peace protesters."Despite all this we want peace," they were saying.I also walked.I walkedfor peace. I said, "Let there be peace. Let neithera Turkish mothernor a Kurdish mother cry." Because we are all equal, because we are brothersand sisters.All of those living in Turkey have the right to claim this. But the police are alwaysholdingme! If you sawmyback,pitchblackwherethe billyclubwas.I was held by my hair,my throatwas purple.I got better-I mean, I went to a doctor, they gave me an ointment. All right, how has our life been here?They do not feed us one piece of bread here, yet we are in our homeland. ... . Every language is beautiful, my daughter.Look, I am speaking with difficulty; am having a hardtime speaking I [Turkish] acrossfromyou. Our languageis Kurdish. God createdit. It

is is something created God.The situation this:we have by difficult times. through passed fromthe Bismil district -(Semiha, age48, migrant focusgroup of southeastern Turkey, participant, Istanbul, 2001) is Becoming political that momentwhen one constitutes aboutjustandunof oneselfas a beingcapable judgment and for just, takesresponsibility that judgment, associates in that others fulfilling responsibility. withoragainst oneself added) -(Isin 2002,276;emphasis tical," the moment in which she lays claim to a Not only political subjectivityas citizen-mother. does Semiha find herselfjoining the Mothersfor Peace of in their appropriation publicspace in Istanbul,but in so she is articulatingher rights in the idioms doing availableto her,in defianceof the courseof her life. This articletakes one cut at the lived politicsof identity and spacein Istanbul.It exploreshow citizenship-as a hegemonic process that assembles identities, fixes power relations, and disciplines space (Laclau and Mouffe 1985; Natter and Jones 1997)-is encountered and contested throughthe spatialpracticesof everydaylife, through what Michel de Certeau calls the "tactics"of practicesthrough which making do, the "innumerable

her poliemihanarrates momentof "becoming

Annals of the Association AmericanGeographers, 94(2), 2004, pp. 352-368 C2004 by Association of American Geographers of Initial submission,November 2002; revised submission,August 2003; final acceptance, November 2003 Publishedby BlackwellPublishing,350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, and 9600 GarsingtonRoad, Oxford OX4 2DQ, U.K.

"ThereIs an IstanbulThat Belongsto Me":Citizenship,Space, and Identityin the City users reappropriate space organizedby techniques the of socioculturalproduction"(de Certeau 1984, xiv). Viewingcitizenshipas a techniqueof spatialorganization this study shows (in de Certeau'sterms, a "strategy"), how the identities of "citizen"and "stranger" become out positionsin the contests over rights markers, staking and belonging that take place through city spaces. Ciworksto define and lay claimto tizenshipas a "strategy" a bounded space of belonging delimited against an ex. "Everystrategicrationalization . . is an effort teriority; to delimit one's own place in a worldbewitchedby the invisible powersof the Other" (de Certeau 1984, 36). Drawing on de Certeau, the discoursesand practices of citizenshipcan be seen as foundinga "proper space," a proprietary, circumscribedspace of rationalization. Transecting state and society, citizenship operates through such spaces as part of a regime of power and administration that assertsparticulardefinitionsof belonging, identity, and rights within liberal democratic this ideology. Approaching citizenshipas spatialstrategy, thus aims to contributeboth theoreticaland emstudy pirical insights to an understandingof citizenship as a process that fixes identities, delineates boundaries, and disciplines the meanings and practices of social space (NatterandJones 1997, 153; see also Smith 1989; Painter and Philo 1995; Staeheli and Clarke 1995; Rocco 2000). Stories such as Semiha'sshow that citizenship,as a hegemonic strategy,never completely succeeds in its administration citizens and strangers. Isin'sunderof In standing,"becomingpolitical"is embodiedin the moments when "strangers" and "outsiders" overturn the "various strategies and technologies of citizenship in which they [are] implicated and thereby [constitute] themselvesdifferentlyfrom the dominantimagesgiven to them" (Isin 2002, 33).' Thus when Semiha casts herselfand her sons as citizens,ratherthan terrorists, she is upendingthe discoursesthat position Kurdsas stranwithin the Turkish gers, as dangerous,internal"others" of citizenshipdisciplinethe polity.Hegemonicstrategies meaningsand uses of social space in Istanbul,but these
strategies are also disrupted through the politics of everyday practices, the tactical trajectories through which citizen-strangers trace unintended, heterogeneous spatial stories within and against an imposed political terrain (de Certeau 1984, 34). I begin by situating my fieldwork with Kurdishwomen in Istanbul within discourses of citizenship that work to assemble and locate ethnic and civic identities in the Turkish context. This discussion traces the coconstruction of Turkish citizenship and Kurdish identity politics through the logics of alterity and leads into

353

an analysis of how focus group participantsnarrate their own encounterswith the strategiesof citizenship that position them as strangerswithin particularurban spaces.Throughtacticalmaneuversthat disruptthe dominantmeaningsand practicesof space and identity in the city, focus group participantsnarratetheir own spatialstoriesof "makingdo" and "becomingpolitical" in everyday life. Finally, this reading of focus group narratives and dialogues generates further questions about the politicalpotentialof discoursesof anonymity, solidarity,and the public sphere as they are mobilized in various strategic or tactical ways in the politics of citizenshipin the city.

The Research Site

Citizenshipworks not only at the state level to asin sembleidentitiesand positionthem variously relation to discoursesof "belonging"and "rights,"but also at the scale of everyday,urbanlife. Lefebvre(1996) links strategiesof citizenshipto the urbanthrough"the right to the city,"the right to inhabit the city in the broadest sense and thus to be a producerof the city as a work. Indeed, setting aside the historical and etymological links between cities and citizenship in the Western context,2 cities are prime sites where identities are staked, belongingis negotiated, and rights are pursued. Such processesare understoodto be constitutiveof the meaning and practice of citizenship (Holston and Appadurai 1999; Holton 2000; Isin 2000). While the diversity of cities has been celebratedand urban public spacesidealizedas arenasof tolerantencounter,cities are also markedby processesof exclusion,segregation,and repression(Mitchell 1995; Ruddick1996; Smith 1997). The everydaylife-spacesof the city-its neighborhoods, parks,streets,and buildings-are thus both the medium throughwhich citizenshipstrugglestake place and, frequently,that which is at stake in the struggle. Istanbul has over 12 million inhabitants, approximately 60 percent of whom were born elsewhere (State Institute of Statistics 1993). Of the almost one-quarter
million rural-urban migrants Istanbul absorbs each year, many are economic and political refugees from the southeast, where the ongoing conflict between the state and the PKK (Partiya Karkeren Kurdistan-Kurdistan Workers' Party), a Marxist-Leninist Kurdish separatist movement that gained ground in the late 1980s, has not only intensified economically motivated rural to urban migration, but at times led to the forced migration of whole villages. The Human Rights Association estimates that 2 to 3 million people have been internally displaced

354

Secor
Table1. FocusGroup Structure
Group I. Younger newcomers II.Younger old-comers* III.Oldernewcomers IV.Olderold-comers**
*Three participantsborn in Istanbul. **One participantborn in Istanbul.

as a result of the conflict (Kiri?gi1998). Accordingto a reportprepared a committee of the Turkish Grand by National Assemblyin 2001, the state's security forces have evacuatedalmost3,000 villagesand hamlets.The official,undoubtedlylow, estimate is that 400,000 were displacedin these operations. Studies have suggestedthat we can talk about two waves of Kurdishmigrants,those who migratedduring the 1940-1980 periodfor predominantly economic reasons and those who migratedduringthe post-1980 period, whetherin searchof work,in flightfromthe war,or as a resultof the villageevacuations(Qelik2001). While in rural-urban have been the subjectsof migrants Turkey much scholarship fromthe 1960s to today (Karpat 1976; 1978; Erder1996; Wedel 2001a), as Kiri?giand Heper Winrow(1997) note, few studieshave explicitlyfocused on Kurdish migrants.What studies have been done on in Kurdish cities have offereddisparate migrants Turkish perspectiveson the experienceand meaningof Kurdish rural-urban migration.Some scholarshave seen urbanizationas a processthat investsKurdish in migrants urban life and thus leads to their assimilation (Kiri?giand Winrow1997), while others have seen the city as a site of identity formationand mobilizationwhere migrants are likely to forge strongerethnic solidarities(Seufert 1997; van Bruinessen1998; Wedel 2001b). In addition, both Seufert (1997) and Celik (2001) have questioned whether Kurdishidentity is reinforcedor undermined by the multiplicityof communitiesand identities that migrantsform in the city. While Seufert finds that the of politicization Kurdish identitymakesit a more salient axis of identificationthan Alevism for one particular identities in groupin Istanbul,Qelik finds that Kurdish the city become folded into and subsumedwithin identities based on migrants'regional origins (memleket or hempehrilik) (Qelik2001). All of these currents-assimilation, solidarity,and multiplicity-can be read in the focus groupdiscussions upon which this study is based, and in many ways it is the mobilization and disruptionof these very narratives that this articlewill show to be bound up with strategies
of citizenship and moments of becoming political. Instead of viewing assimilation and solidarity as alternative trajectories, this article shows how Istanbul becomes inhabited through daily peregrinations between silence and solidarity, anonymity and identity, and the spatial stories that focus group participants narrate as they negotiate the contested political terrain of the city. This study is based on the discussions and debates that took place among 33 women who participated in four focus groups conducted in Istanbul in the summer of 2001.3 Structured by age cohort and length of time in

Age Cohort 18-35 18-35 36-55 36-55

Years the City in <10 > 10 < 15 > 15

of the city (see Table1), the focusgroupswerecomprised who were iden7 to 10 women each. The participants, tified through the author'sinformalnetworks,did not know one another,and werebroughttogether previously in a rented conferenceroom for conversationsthat lasted for two to two-and-a-halfhours.4The participants were self-identifiedas Kurdish,though not all of them and spokeKurdish, a few of them had only one Kurdishspeakingparent. The focus groups were conducted in had migrated While most of the participants Turkish.5 three of the youngerwomen fromother areasof Turkey, and one of the olderwomenhad been bornin Istanbulto migrantparents. Most of the participantswere Sunni Muslims,but 12 of the women were Kurdish-speaking Alevis, membersof the heterodox Islamic community between 10 and 40 percentof that comprises somewhere the Turkishpopulationand includes Kurdish,Turkish, Arabic,and Azeri speakers(Hirschler2001).6 While we as might convenientlyreferto the participants "Kurdish the purpose of this study is not to migrant women," presentethnicity,gender,and migrantstatusas discreetly bounded categoriesof identity or experience. Instead, this studyfocuseson the spatialstrategiesof citizenship7 that have themselves, in the process of delimiting the "subjectof rights"in the Turkishcontext, worked to define, represent,and locate such subject positions exclusionary throughsociospatial processes(Sibley1995), that arecontinuously negotiatedthrougheveryprocesses day practices.

TurkishCitizenshipand KurdishIdentity: The Logicsof Alterity

been seen not merelyas a has Citizenship increasingly legal category,but as a set of discoursesand practices that are translated unevenlyacrossunequalsocialgroups and local contexts. We can also add that citizenshipas a hegemonicstrategyworksto define these groupsor lobetween them, and calities,to fix the powerdifferentials at these operations; the same time, as then to naturalize
discussed above, these hegemonic strategies are never

"ThereIs an IstanbulThat Belongsto Me":Citizenship,Space, and Identityin the City completely successful.Critics of the liberal citizenship ideal have shown how the discourse and practice of universalizes particular the constellation domiof citizenship nant subject positions (such as maleness, bourgeois status, or identificationwith the titularethnic or racial group) that is occupiedby "the citizen,"definingthose identitiesthat arenot encompassed withinthe seemingly neutralcategoryas particularistic thereforeproperly and excluded from expressionwithin the public sphere (Pateman 1988; Marston 1990). The followingdiscussion presents a brief readingof the history of Turkishcitizenship, thought through the logics of alterity,as it is inflected with the tensions embedded in Turkey'snationalist ideology and state institutions and with the relationalformationof Kurdish identity. FollowingWorldWar I, the Turkishnational revolution, led by General Mustafa Kemal (later Atatiirk), overthrewthe defeated Ottoman Empire,unseated the Islamic Caliphate, and, in 1923, created the modern, secularstate of Turkey. While the Ottoman Empirehad its subjectsalong confessionallines (the millet organized system), the new state aimed to sublimate its conIslamic stituency'sidentificationwith the transnational (umma)and instead to consolidateits rule community througha nationalistideal that had its roots in the Ottoman period and the YoungTurksgovernment (Committee on Union and Progress-CUP) of 1908-1918. It was duringthe CUP period that the main ideologueof Turkish nationalism, Ziya G6kalp (1876-1924), laid the foundation for what was to become the "paradox of Turkish its embodiment of nationalism," contradictory both the French cosmopolitanmodel and the German organic, ethnic model of national identity (Kadtoglu as 1996; Poulton 1997). Thus Turkishness, constructed within the discourseof the new republic,referredvardefined identity (all those iously to a civic, territorially within the Turkishstate) and to an exalted ethnie,the Turkicpeople of Anatolia whose languageand culture the architectsof the new regimehistoricized and valorized (Poulton 1997). In this way, at the same time as "Turkeywas a geographicalconcept, and the Turkish
people were (ideally) defined as those living in that territory" (Giilalp 1995, 117; quoted in White 1999), the new state was also and paradoxically constructed to be "the nation state of the Turks" (White 1999, 80). The citizenship ideal of the new state embodied this unresolved tension between territorial (jus soli) and ethnic (jus sanguinis) principles (Argun 1999). In its attempt to transform former Ottoman subjects into republican citizens and to establish a basis for the nascent state's legitimacy, the Kemalist (that is, following the principles of Mustafa Kemal Atatiirk) regime defined a

355

republicanTurkishidentity that would ultimatelyharnationalism. ness citizenshipto an uneasyTurkish elite the In thatruling[of who wasa Turk], modernizing and a tried to establish stronglink betweencitizenship The conceptualization or national identity.... nationality camehandin handwith as of citizenship, it was argued, and a unique,unchanging historicTurkish constructing thatwouldbe madepossible by newlyfabrionly identity whileiga culture, catingand imposing new monolithic identities ethnicandsub-cultural noring -(Igduygu et al. 1999,194-95). The "monolithic culture" that would be imposed in fromabove" (Turner1992) this instance of "citizenship was to encompassmodernist,secularist,and nationalist ideals and in doing so to spawn processesof Turkification. Although the TurkishRepublicfollowed the Ottoman tradition of acknowledgingonly non-Muslim Jews)as internalminorities, groups(Greeks,Armenians, the boundariesof the new state encompassedmany different Muslim groups that could claim non-Turkish ethnic identities,fromthe Lazof the BlackSea regionto the Kurdsof the country'seast and southeast (see Anwas drews 1989). Nonetheless,Turkish made the official state language, and the use of any other language in withthe was Consistent the newpublicsphere proscribed.8 top-down creationof citizenship,rightswere conceived of as those that were grantedby the state, and citizens in were understood to be primarily possession not of but of duties and obligationstowardsthe state rights, (Heper 1985). The officialposition of the young republicwas that everyone within the Turkishstate borderswas Turkish. Turks" in There were no Kurds Turkey, only "Mountain who were presumed to have merely forgotten their Turkishancestry.Within the state's conception of citizenship, the Kurds, like other cultural or linguistic groups, had only to assimilateinto the newly defined in Turkish nation in orderto enjoy full membership the As Mesut Yegenshows in his analysisof Turkish polity. was not to be prostate discourse, the word "Kurd"
nounced, while the eastern and southeastern regions and their population were referred to as tribal, outlaw, reactionary, and backwards, "all the evils of Turkey's pre-modern past" (Yemen1999, 555). In this way, "the Turkish state has, for a long time, consistently avoided recognizing the Kurdishnessof the Kurdish question" (Yegen 1999, 555, emphasis in original). Of course, Kurdishness itself has also been produced through relational processes occurring at multiple scales. With total numbers estimated to be somewhere between 20 and 25 million, the Middle East's Kurdish population

356

Secor identity within ingly enabled the productionof Kurdish the Turkishpublic sphere.This is the conand against text within which at least some elements of the Turkish what formerTurkstate have reluctantlyacknowledged ish president Siileyman Demirel famouslycalled "the Kurdish reality." The politicizationof Kurdishidentity in Turkeyreflects a largertrend toward the culturalreorganization of citizenship.As BryanTurner pointsout, whereasclass was the majoraxis of contestationin the earlystagesof industrialization, "citizenshipstrugglesin early twentyfirst-centurysociety are more commonly about claims to culturalidentity and culturalhistory"(Turner2000, 133). As groups such as the Kurds organize around specific identities in order to affirmthe importanceof difference for their exercise of rights, they call into question the idea that liberal citizenshipoffers a universalistic,culturallyneutral way to accommodatedifference. These challenges have given rise to new theories of citizenshipthat seek to reconcile principles of differenceand equalityin such a way that both acknowledgesculturalspecificityand avoidsreifyinggroup boundariesor stigmatizinggroup membership(Laclau and Mouffe 1985; Minow 1990; Young1990; Kymlicka 1995). Recognizingthat individualsmay claim membershipin a rangeof differentgroupsand may act politically within and through these communities,recent theorieshave suggestedthat we might speakof multiple levels of citizenship(Yuval-Davis1991) or even multiple public spheres (Fraser1992), that together could by ideallyconstitutea civic culturecharacterized cosmoand 1998). politanism diversity(Young1990;Sandercock Accordingto KirstieMcClure (1992), and following ErnestoLaclauand Chantal Mouffe (1985), what is at of is stake in these citizenshipstruggles the reinscription of who can no longerbe represented the "subject rights," within the frameof the liberalmodel's"unitary subjectas-citizen."As Isin (2002) argues,despite calls for "the right to difference,"differenceshould not be assumed to be priorto the very act of claimingsuch a right;like Laclauand Mouffe,Isin locates the politicalmoment in
the processes through which identities are assembled and rights-claims are articulated. Approached through the narratives of Kurdish migrant women, this political moment is infused with the contradictions, tensions, and ongoing negotiations over Turkish citizenship and Kurdish identity that have historically given shape to Turkey's political arena. The focus group dialogues among Kurdish women show how the spatial strategies of citizenship are enacted and tactically subverted as "strangers" in the city reinscribe their own presence within discourses and practices of citizenship and, in

of spans the borderlands four states: Turkey, Iraq,Iran, and Syria. The Kurds,like the Turks, are assembled of froma diversity religious linguistic and Interaffiliations. nationally,the fissiparousKurdsdiffer along linguistic and (Kurmanji/Sorani/Zaza) religious(Sunni/Shi'i/Alevi) lines. Turkey'sKurdishpopulation,within which Kurmanji is the dominant Kurdishdialect and Zazais the second most prevalent, hovers somewherebetween 7 and 12 million,with the exact numbersunknowndue to the state'sreluctance(since 1965) to collect data on the ethnolinguisticdiversitywithin its borders.While most Kurdsin TurkeypracticeSunni Islam,approximately 30 percent of Turkey'sKurds are Alevi Muslims. Kurds and Zaza speakers) comprise an estimated (Kurmanji 10 to 30 percent of Turkey'stotal Alevi population (Andrews1989; Hirschler2001). Scholarsof Kurdishnationalismin Turkeyhave emphasizedthe effects of state policies, the relative economic deprivationof the region, and the rise of a new Kurdish intellectualelite, both in Turkeyand abroad,in the construction Kurdish of identityin the late twentieth 1998;van Bruinessen1998;White century(Hassanpour 1998; Hirschler2001). Consistentwith Kemalistideals of nationalismand citizenship,Turkeyhas historically viewed emergent claims to Kurdishlinguistic,cultural, or politicalrightsas sourcesof instabilityand threatsto nationalunity (Rygiel1998; Ergil2000; Yavuz2001). As a result,the militaryelite and other state elements have unrest and expressionsof Kurdish respondedto Kurdish consciousness with strong-armedtactics of repression that have only further strengthened and politicized Kurdish identity (Gunter2000; Yavuz2001). In 1984, a year after the militaryregimeof the 1980 coup had returned the state to civilian control, the PKK launched the guerrillamovement that would end up politicizing the peasantry,drawingthe state into a protracted conflict in the southeast and costing an estimated 30,000 lives. At the same time as the Turkishsecurityforces asserted their dominationover the restlesssoutheast,and while strict limits to Kurdishpolitical expressioncontinued to be enforced, the recognition of ethnicity as a fault line in modern Turkey gained ground (Kasaba and Bozdogan, 2000). This shift was in part due to the policies of Prime Minister Turgut Ozal (from 1983 to 1991) who recognized Kurds as a distinct ethnic group within Turkey. But perhaps more significantly, the transformations enacted by rural to urban migration, the liberalization of the Turkish media since the mid-1980s, and the rise of international Kurdish media, such as the satellite station Med-TV (licensed to Britain and broadcast into Turkey from various European sites), have increas-

"ThereIs an IstanbulThat Belongsto Me":Citizenship,Space, and Identityin the City the process, not only become new "subjectsof rights" but reconfigure meaningsand uses of urbanspaces. the These discussionsboth push against the limitationsof the liberal citizenship ideal and, at the same time, animate the political potential that infuses the everyday encounters through which citizenship becomes meaningful.

357

the Traversing City: Gender,Class, Religion,and Ethnicity

similarto a Walkingis, for de Certeau,a performance speech act; walkingis a narrativeaction throughwhich selected, and linked, places are traversedand organized, and so strung together into "sentencesand itineraries" writes de Certeau, (de Certeau 1984, 115). "Walking," "affirms, suspects, tries out, transgresses, respects,etc., the trajectories 'speaks'" Certeau 1984, 99). These it (de spatialstories,writtenin the footstepsof the city walker and yet also assembledfrom fragmentsdrawnfrom earlier stories, operate to markout boundariesin the city, "to compose spaces, to verify,collate and displacetheir the frontiers,"(de Certeau 1984, 123). Traversing city and inhabitingits places can thus be seen as both negotiatingand creatingwhat GeraldinePratt (1998) calls "gridsof difference,"the variouslyfluid and fortified of boundaries urbanspacethat provokea rangeof identity In performances. the case of the participantsof these focus groupsin Istanbul,identitiesand spacesof gender, class, religiouspractice,and ethnicity were intertwined within narratives mobilityin the city. of Spatial trajectories of everyday life are gendered not only throughdivisionsof labor and the production of "male"and "female"spaces and identities, but also throughthe waysin which walkingand mobilityare read by others. For example,one woman describedhow her wagedworkas a house cleaner (madenecessary, despite her conservativecommunity, her husband's by disability) takes her all over the city, but how her father-in-law beats her because he sees this mobility as signaling
lax sexual morality and prostitution; her neighbors also shun her and even her children are harassed at school. However predominant stories and discussions of gender differences in urban life were in the focus groups, it should be noted that focus group participants frequently explained that while gender relations within families and communities vary a great deal across Turkish society, no particular constellation of gender relations can be mapped onto Kurdish culture or identity per se. Focus group participants did represent religion and religiosity as intersecting with gender practices in the city

and as affecting women's spatial trajectoriesin the city. Not only is veiling discussedas a spatialdiscipline than a village. Istanbulis more backwards ("Sultanbeyli Even if you weren'tcovered [veiled]in the village,it will be forced to cover there";see also Secor 2002) but as focus group participantsdescribe their everyday lives in the city, they frequentlyrefer to specific, religiously and districtswithin which differentiated neighborhoods different performancesof gender and identity are required.Urbanenclaves of conservativeSunni Islamism, in such as Sultanbeyli9 37-year-oldDeren's description above, are especiallyalienatingto Alevi women, whose religious practice not only differs from that which is being assertedin these spaces, but has also historically been persecutedas hereticalby the Sunni mainstream. Thus, while some women representedplaces of entertainment and consumerismas exclusionaryspaces, areasthat they wouldavoiddue to theirown classhabitus and to the gender norms of their communities,others conservativeareas.In felt moreout of placein religiously of older women who had been in the city for the group 20 years or more, when one woman said that she was in uncomfortable the entertainmentdistrictof Beyoglu, anotherwoman rejoined: ... as is thanSultanbeyli Dress Really Beyoglu muchbetter and woulddressin Beyoglu go to Sultanbeyli. They you wouldlynchyou. While the spatialand temporalboundaries produced through relations of gender and class are clearly imof experiencesin the city,10 portantto women'severyday particularinterest for this article is how articulations and of Kurdish Alevi identityintersectwith and mediate these relations. Women represented Kurdishcultural difference and its spatializationas being strongly inflectedby class,but not reducibleto it. Pervin,a 44-yearold workingwomanfromArti who had been in Istanbul for 30 years, expresseda common sentiment when she explained, "Certainly,there is a class structurein Istanbul, but a poor Turkishwoman and a poor Kurdish woman live throughvery differentthings."
The interplay of class and ethnic difference was expressed and debated throughout the focus groups, but its articulation in spatial practice became especially evident when women talked about feeling uncomfortable in spaces that they perceived to be both elite and culturally different. The following dialogue took place among three women in their early 20s who had spent all (in the case of Bahriye) or almost all of their lives in Istanbul: there [in wealthyareas].We Sima:We are not comfortable feel like we are a differentkind of person.

358

Secor against dominant spatializationsof the city (such as those that produceelite, nonmigrant,non-Kurdish spaces) and the strategies through which they and others identification in participate stakingout spacesof Kurdish and hegemony.When askedwhere they felt most comfortable,however,women not only referredto strategic spaces of Kurdishand (sometimes)Alevi identification, but also to areasof diversityand encounter articulated through liberal democraticdiscoursesand the ideal of the public sphere.

Whenwe lookat ourowncommunity, whenwe Ceyden: lookat ourfamily, lookdifferent. they You as . Bahriye: can see yourself a stranger.. . It is as if lookdownon you. people Ceyden:. .. I went a few times,and they lookedat me ill I strangely... I became at easewithmyself. don'twant to go. I prefer go to placesthatareof myowncommuto there. nity.I ammorecomfortable Wegoto places areof ourownculture. that Bahriye Maybe is our everyone like this. Wego to cafesthat areplaying own music.We go to barswhereour peoplego, places to belonging ourownpeople. This discussionis one of many focus group exchanges that narratewomen's encounters with spatializedstrathe tegies of differentiation, "logicsof alterity,"to use that segregateand distinguishculIsin's (2002) phrase, tural differencein the city. Women see themselves as in active participants these processesof distinctionand which, though subjugating("They look estrangement, down on you;""I become ill at ease with myself"),also as mayprovidethe basisforidentityand solidarity spatial strategiesfor the creation of "placesbelonging to our own people."While in the above dialogueBahriyerefers content only to "ourpeople,"at other times the Kurdish of such spaces was made explicit. Mahfuze,a 38-yearmusic teacher who had lived old, university-educated in Istanbulfor 20 years,explainedthat althoughshe felt able to move throughother kinds of spaces, "Likeour friend," I also feel more comfortablein a place where there is a high proportionof Kurds." Vahide explained her perspectiveon the role of culture in constructing social-and spatial-boundaries: and determine we will that My socialorigins my friends' in be found Taksim Kadtk6y or of Istanbul]. is this It [areas socialorigin, culture, designates boundaries. that my my In the wordsof Deren, who claimedto preferKurdish places as well: of Thereis a feeling belonging people that have.Whenyou
go to a place you feel it.'2 City walkers traverse interlacing "grids of difference" and find themselves taking up particular subject positions in relation to the various (religiously, ethnically, or class-based) communties and spaces that organize their spatial trajectories. As their footsteps narrate urban stories-fixing, assembling, traversing, and transforming urban boundaries-urban travelers become active participants in the production of difference, identity, and citizenship. In the focus group discussions, women traced the outlines of such stories. In doing so, they explained both the tactics through which they act within and

Strangers and Citizens

of Ifyougooutin thepublic [Taksim space Taksim meydanz] Because do youfeelfree? everykindof youfeelfree.Why personis there and nobodyturnsto you, nobodysays, If the aside from police. Of are "Why youlikethat?" course, they theythinkyoulooksuspicious, stopyouimmediately andaskforID.Asidefromthisyou arefree. -(Kumru, age23, sixyearsin Istanbul) On the one hand, focus group participants representedIstanbul,and especiallyTaksim,as a glorious public sphere, an arena of unassimilated difference where all kindsof people coexist, interact,and fruitfully broadeneach other's horizons.For example,Lalegiin,a 21-year-olduniversitystudent who has been in Istanbul for fouryears,describedthe city in this way: commuIstanbul better [than a village]for building is thereis more more because encounter nication, people, you of how variety.... I learned to be tolerant people. Likewise,Kumruexplained: from with In Istanbul canbuildcommunication people you and all walks life.Youcan debate discuss. of Such interactionin the urbanpublicsphereis seen as improvingrelationsbetween Turksand Kurds;in Bahriye'swords, "A Turkwho meets a Kurd,if s/he meets a really good person, maybe his/her thinking changes, his/her point of view changes."Women often situated in these encounters, debates, and transformations the
urban space of Taksim, an area referred to as "a cosmopolitan place," "a place where all cultures take shelter," "a place of alternatives," a place where "people feel a bit more free." In this sense, women-and especially younger women-saw themselves as participants in the city as "citizens" within a diverse public sphere of free encounter. On the other hand, despite their engagement with this powerful liberal democratic discourse, women very often saw themselves as strangers, positioned outside

"ThereIs an IstanbulThat Belongsto Me":Citizenship,Space, and Identityin the City of the category"Istanbulite," estrangedwithin spacesof culturaland class difference,markedand excludedfrom urban space and rights.3 The position of the stranger can be understood theoretically throughthe workof Isin, who views strangers internaloutsiders,those who are as excludedfromcitizenshiprightsat the sametime as they are incorporated within the associationalsphere of citizens. They are the closest "others,"and as such their differentiation particularly is crucialfor definingthe citizen (Isin 2002). Thus, at the same time as women spoke of Taksim in terms of an ideal public sphere of unassimilateddifference,tolerance, and interaction, they both recognizedand resisted the processes that constitute them as strangersand police their presence, even in the most diverseof urbanspaces.Kumru, one in breathexpressing sense of freedomin Taksimand in her the next telling of police harassment,cogently captures this tension. Citizenship,as a set of hegemonicpracticesand disthe courses, assemblesand naturalizes subjectpositions of citizen and stranger, them within a grid of situating powerrelationsrenderedacrossstate and society.Focus group discussions drew attention to how participants experiencedtheirown estrangement throughencounters with the strategiesof Turkishcitizenshipthat position them as strangersin the city. When, in the dialogue between Ceyden, $ima, and Bahriyequoted in the previous section, Ceydensaid that she could see herselfas a she a stranger(yabancz),14 described sensationfrequently noted by other participantsas well, that of suddenly seeing her own "difference" through the eyes of urban others. The feeling of becoming a strangerthus arises through the logics of alterityas spatialpracticesof differentiationand identityin the city.In Pervin's words,"If I come to a space with people who are contraryto my LikewiseOykii, a 22culture,then I feel like a stranger." her student,described own feelingsof year-olduniversity becomingdifferentas she moves throughurbanspace: I have felt like a stranger Istanbul. in Speaking, moving and haveallbrought aboutthis around, interacting socially feeling.
Echoing Semiha's pleas for meaningful citizenship with which we opened this article, 36-year-old Gizem, who came to Istanbul nine years ago from the Tiinceli region, explained: Forus, this place counts as a foreignplace [gurbet].15This place is also our homeland, but we feel that we are in a foreignplace. Participants also linked processes of differentiation and estrangement directly to state discourses of citizen-

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ship in Turkey.For example, in the group of younger women who had been in the city most of their lives, Vahideexpressedcriticalresistanceto the positioningof Kurds strangers as when, aftersome thought,she revised a previouscommentshe had made: I wereforeigners/strangers to and Before, saidKurds Turks the of eachother, I saidthis repeating definitions offibut cialhistory. isn'tthatway. It Likewise,in another focus group,a 22-year-oldwowith her familynine man who had come from Thinceli with state yearsearlierassociatedher own estrangement discoursesthat disallowKurdishdifference.In the following narrative,she describeshow she is markedas a strangerdue to her name, which is unusual for being distinctlyKurdish: asks At the Theyseemeasa stranger. school teacher allthe If the teacher doesn't doesyournamemean?" time,"What is nobody himself Kurd a likeKurds says,"There he calling in in Turkey." areforeigners/strangers We [yabancllar]Turkey, The Thisis not accepted. police I think... I'ma Kurd. that on come.Saying mynameis Kurdish myIDcard,they is Taksim a political takeme underarrest. Although space nameis come!Your suspicious, they [mekiin], say,"You're a fromDersim, Kurdish, you're student,you must you're At did be definitely a participant!" schoolthe teachers this. at whileI wassitting a caf6in Taksim. Thishappened Why citizen. mustI live this?I don'twantto be a Turkish Quite simply,her name representsa differencethat is not permittedwithin the officialnarrativeof citizenship As and nation in Turkey. this differenceis disciplined, public spaces such as Taksimare policed. Despite what she sees as her rightto presence,this young womanalso citizenship.Likewise,in positionsherselfoutsideTurkish it is writtenon your ID that Kumru's words,"Although you are a citizen of the TurkishRepublic,it also says that you arefromMardin[in the Kurdish southeast];you not Such are not acceptedas a citizen of Turkey, really." is the powerof citizenship,of the strategiesof inclusion and exclusion that harness the ability to name and identify,to police and discipline,the powerto delineate
the spatial boundaries of the urban public sphere.

Spatial Stories: Anonymity and Identity

Every story is a travel story-a spatial practice. For this reason,spatialpracticesconcern everydaytactics, are part of them. -(de Certeau, 1984: 115) The stories that emerge and are created through the focus group discussions are, like all stories, spatial stories.

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Secor 1992), are forged.At the same time, it is a site of (Fraser hide wherefocus groupparticipants variously anonymity, and reveal differentroles as they travel fromone urban space to another.Judith Garber,in her critique of the idealizationof urbananonymity,arguesthat despite its associationwith freedomand tolerance,anonymityalso connotes defensively hidden identities and enforced invisibility(Garber2000). Garber suggests that while may be a defensivetactic for those who seek anonymity freedomfrom persecution,in the long run "identityreplaces anonymityas the goal of urban living" (Garber the of 2000, 23). This critiquecaptures ambiguity anonyand mity as a tactic in a context of forced assimilation as raisesquestionsaboutits politicalimplications; Marilyn Lake (2001) pointsout in her studyof aboriginal politics in Australia,there is a '"dangerous intimacy'between and the 'progressive' principleof non-discrimination the between the processes policyof assimilation, 'repressive' and of subjectification subjection"(Lake2001, 567). When women enact anonymityand identity, these of 'writings' the city" (Ahearne 1995, 177) "peripatetic represent spatial practices through which women are able to position themselvesas new "subjectsof rights." Such maneuvers are a response to the strategies of Turkish citizenship (enacted through policing, legal structures,and social life) that work to positionKurdish identity as outside, counter to, and even destructiveof the ideal of the Turkishcitizen. Strategiesof citizenship are inherentlyspatial processesthat take place in and urbanspacesof the city.Thus, throughthe differentiated and in orderto showhow practicesof anonymity identity areenacted, this section focuseson some of the everyday spaces throughwhich citizenship,belonging,and identity are constitutedin the city: schools, neighborhoods, and workplaces. Schools While others have written about the creation of Turkish citizens through public education (Igduygu, (olak, and Soyarik 1999), and while focus group participants did discuss the politics of Turkish-language education in general,"7what is of particular interest for this argument is how schools, as prime sites of identity formation and boundary creation, become implicated in the everyday construction of citizenship. Indeed, focus group participants frequently described themselves or their children first coming into contact with Kurdishness as a label and social position in Turkish society in school. For example, Diinya said, describing her brothers' experiences, "At school they are confronted-this is a Kurd!" Participants spoke not only of children taunting

life They tracethe tacticsof everyday that workto make use of and to disruptthe hegemonicstrategyof citizenin ship.Twomomentsemergeas important the narratives: anonymity, wherebywomen selectivelychoose to "pass" as Turkish;and identity, through which women selectively choose to identify themselves as Kurdish.While anonymityoperatesas a tactic (a maneuveron enemy the territory, "makingdo" of those without a "proper" space of their own), identity can be seen as a strategic move that stakes a claim to space (a neighborhood,a caf6,a workspace) asserting by unity and powerover and that spaceagainstan exteriority. What animates through this distinctionbetweenstrategicand tacticalmaneuvers is a particular between space and power.As relationship de Certeau explains, what is particularto strategiesis their productionof territory, a spatial"property" of that enables the projection and assemblageof "totalizing systemsand typesof discourse"(de Certeau 1980, 7). In other words, while anonymitymay be a tactical maneuver through which everydayspatial hegemonies are is covertlytransgressed, identity projectedthroughclaims to particularKurdish spaces of power.Such a move to demarcatespacesof Kurdish can, identity and solidarity in these terms,be designatedas strategic.Delineatedby an idea of "Kurdishness," strategicspacesareconstituted an ethnonationalistexclusionarylogic at the through same time as they create the field necessaryfor political activities.Such an approach de Certeaumultipliesthe to of these terms (tactics, strategies) by acpossibilities knowledgingthat strategiesmay also be used by "the weak"as they transform themselves,howeverfleetingly, into the powerfulthroughspatialappropriation.16 Focus group participantstrace their own mobility across spaces dominatedby the liberalideal of Turkish citizenship,where they often employthe tactics of anonymity,and alternativespacesof Kurdish solidarity: Forus,to talkabout somethings witha risk. comes Because of this,peoplelive in twoworlds. One is a world thatnot can a withthe everyone enter, placewhere truly you belong of For it origins youridentity. example, is a placewhereI
can unite with other Kurds.But let's say there is someone whose reactionI can'tpredict.I won'tsay anythingto them on this topic. -(Esel, age 36, 19 yearsin Istanbul) In her narration, Esel travels between and across different ways of making do and claiming identity in the city. Her words express the everyday nature of these maneuvers through which anonymity and Kurdishness are variously mobilized within the urban environment. The city is at once a site of identity where new communities of urban citizens, "counter-public spheres"

"ThereIs an IstanbulThat Belongsto Me":Citizenship,Space, and Identityin the City other children,but also of childrenpassingon messages fromtheir parents,such as that they have not been permitted to playwith Kurdish children:"Inschool,we lived the depthsof this. In class,we werealwaysthe guests,the ones who had migrated." somecases,womendescribed In their own or their siblings'experiences,but in many stories (especially those of older women who were newcomersto the city), theirchildrenencountered such early practicesof distinctionand exclusion.Semiha describes the pain of her own realizationthat her daughterwas being socializedin this way at school in Istanbul: I havean 8-year-old we "Mother, needto beware daughter. becausewe are Kurds," says.She was beingtaunted she at school.I don'tknowif thereis anything morepainful thanthis. In this context, women describedvarious tactics of assimilation. Some of the participants who had grownup in Istanbuldescribehow theirfamiliesdid not tell largely them that they were Kurdishor, in some cases, Alevi, until they were quite old. Thus, even though they were speakingKurdishat home and worshipingas Alevis in their community,these childrenwere shieldedfrom the power and politics of these labels in Turkishsociety.As Ceyden describesthis tactic, As longas I wasgoingto middle school,andeven as long as I wasgoingto highschool,I didnot knowabouteither or it because washidden my myKurdishnessmyAlevism by don'ttellchildren so thattheydon'tsayit that family. They outsidethe home.Mostof us arelikethat. Other women in this group of younger old-comers to the city concurredwith Ceyden'sgeneralization, and similarstories of families'attempts to insulate children from the consequences of claiming Kurdishand Alevi identity were shared in the group of older old-comers as well. While we will returnin the followingsection to women'sreclamationof these identities as adults, here the criticalpoint is that such narrativesprovidea window into the processesthroughwhich schoolsact as sites where identities are constituted within and through
discourses of citizenship. At the same time, participants' stories communicate tactical maneuvers through which children act to create their own multiple and mobile political subjectivities in daily practice. Nowhere was this more explicit than in the story told by Bahriye, a 21-year-old woman who was born in Istanbul to migrant parents: My younger brother was going to first grade in primary school, and one time I looked at his notebook. He had written there, "The biggest militaryis our military," "My

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etc. and fatherland Turkey," I sawthesethings I laughed is with. these arethingsyou areindoctrinated Our because started teasemybrother, to littlesister "Oh,areyou saying, So a Turk? Lookherewhatyou havewritten!" he saidto it her,"AtschoolI ama Turk, is whenI comehomethatI startsaying am a Kurd." I Different spaces, themselves the product of socioof political relations, call forth different performances not only ethnic identity and citizenship.Bahriye's story further illustratesthe spatialityof identity in the city, but also poignantly captures the competing pressures that children negotiate at school, at home, interWhile positioning generationally,and interpersonally. of ethnic solidarity his Kurdish himselfwithin the family and community at home, Bahriye'sbrother is able to enact his own versionof Turkish citizenshipby claiming militaristic belonging, pride, and nationalism republican do" in the school environment.Thus, a storyof "making a young boy'smovement between that unfoldsthrough home and school shows how a child can learn to parse his life in such a waythat he enacts differentidentitiesin differentspaces. Neighborhoods discussedtheir everyday As focus groupparticipants lives, they describedprocessesof affiliationand identification as well as those of exclusion and alienation. When neighborhoodswere represented as spaces of community,identity,and belonging,focus groupnarratives evoked themes of ethnic and religious homogeneity.In the wordsof Giildem, in I feel most comfortable the place whereI live. It is and of a housingdevelopment 75 homes,mostlyKurds is is Alevis.. . . Our culture the same,our language the there. same.I feelverycomfortable At the same time, other women describedthe exclusionaryhousing practices that they encountered in Istanbul.They talkedabout landlords being unwillingto
rent to them because of their ethnicity and of other families being unwilling to move into Kurdish-dominated apartment buildings or to share space with Alevi families. Recent migrants who lived in areas where their neighbors were not Kurdish described feelings of alienation and isolation; as one woman put it, "There should be somebody who will understand me, there should be a community." In this vein, many women complained of Turkish (and for Alevi participants, Sunni) neighbors who appeared to censure the presence of Kurdish and Alevi families, making them uneasy by

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Secor and are These questionsresurface politicalmobilization? addressedcriticallyin the followingdiscussionof anonymity and identity in the workplace. Workplaces Workplaceswere described as environments policed by discriminatory practicesthat at once discipline the expressionof Kurdishnessand provoke resistance throughthe strategicenactmentof identityclaims.Focus group participantsdescribedIstanbul'slabor market as based on structuredthroughpracticesof discrimination markersof Kurdish ethnicity such as ID cardsthat give their birthplaceas being in the southeast and accents that betray them as Kurdishspeakers.Practicesof exclusion based on regionalorigin were describedby 40year-oldNazan, who came to Istanbul13 yearsago, has seven children, and works two to three days a week cleaning houses: Whenyouwantto get a job,theyaskwhereareyoufrom. not ... I amfrom Diyarbakir. shesays,we're looking Okay, no forhelpanymore,there's work. Nazan's story was repeated many times in different forms in the four focus groups,and in fact may have in been the most persistentnarrativeof discrimination the city. Encountering interviewsas gatewayswhere job discriminatory practiceswereenacted,manywomen told from potential employers. of hiding their Kurdishness When women who were not markedby their accents did found themselvesin jobs where employers not know were Kurdish,workplacesbecame spaces within they which they daily faced the decision of whether to dissemble or to articulatetheir Kurdishidentities, a decision that sometimes had serious consequences. For woman, example,Inci, a 35-year-oldsingle, professional said that she lost her job of 16 years when she finally In that she wasKurdish. the announcedto her employers not only revealed how following dialogue,participants they perceivetheir own choices and constraintsbut also subtlydebated the politics of assimilationand identity:
Pervin:When I startedworking,a little bit later I saw that I they did not like Kurds. didn'tfeel any need to tell them. But a month laterI was leavingand, in appropriate words,I told them that I was Kurdish. Tiilay: But if youraccent had been Kurdish-I know about this!-they would have been able to turn you away from the start.They don'tgive you workif they can tell that you are Kurdish when you speak.If you have lived here a long time, then your accent doesn'tgive you away. It Asuman: I was workingas a hairdresser. was five to six months since I had startedworking.One day the people I

aboutKurdish TV music,breaking satellites complaining intended to bringin the transnational Kurdishchannel (Med-TV), or, in two women's stories, objecting to familiesshakingtheirlinens fromtheirbalconies Kurdish I notice, others shake out their things, and they ("Now don't say anything,but if I shake out the smallestthing they scold me"). of Indeed,it is well knownthat migrant neighborhoods both Istanbul and Ankara tend to be ethnically,regionally,and religiouslysegregatedspaces (Robins and Aksoy, 1995; Giine?-Ayata1991; Itk and Pinarctoilu often resultsfrominformal 2001). While this segregation networksand chain migration(wherebymigrantsfrom one villageor regionmove to the same urbanneighborhood) and may providespaces of solidarityin the city, Kurdishmigrantsalso find themselvesoperatingacross urbanboundaries of their own making.Rana, a 26not fromElazti,told of how,when herfamily year-old migrant moved into a neighborhood Turkish of in migrants 1980, their apartmentdoor was stoned and they were told to get out, that Kurdswere not welcome there. Although this story dates from a particularly repressiveperiod in history,other women spoke of recent practices Turkey's that excludedthem from certainneighborhoods. the In a 39-year-old motherof eight narrative, Feriha, following children,describesher family'snegotiationof Istanbul's ethnically differentiated housing market since their in arrival the city 15 yearspreviously: We came from Bitlis here, and being Kurds, everyone excludedus. At the momentit is still like this. In the wherewe live,we arethe onlyKurds. we If neighborhood had saidwe wereKurds wouldn't even had givenus they the house. . . . I am Kurdish, okay.I am proudof my Kurdishness. did something But happento makeme say Kurd' we We 'Kurd, constantly? Okay, are Kurds. do not but deny it. We acceptthat we are Kurdish, Allahgave . the Kurds if Watch, yougo to an hardships.. everywhere. if apartment building, they excludeKurds; you go to a schoolit is the same. defense of her family'suse of tactical silence as Feriha's
they enter into spaces that demand particular identity performances-that is, spaces where the public performance of Turkishness, with all of its complicated and contradictory implications, is required-echoes across the multiple sites of everyday life (schools, neighborhoods, workplaces, and others) where citizenship and identity are constituted. Her rhetorical question, "Did something happen to make me say 'Kurd,Kurd'constantly?" evokes the ambiguity of Kurdishidentity and its place within the Turkish polity. When much is to be gained from assimilation, how and why does difference become a stance for

"ThereIs an IstanbulThat Belongsto Me":Citizenship,Space, and Identityin the City worked with therestarted put downAlevisandKurds. to themthatI wasKurdish ... I madethemuneasy telling by andAleviandfeelproud this."Ah," said,"don't of talk they don'tlookKurdish all!"Theywerethat at nonsense, you it written my on irrational, wasas if I oughtto have"Kurd" forehead. haveneverfeltashamed beingKurdish.feel I of I I am 36 yearsold. I wasbornhere,grewup here. proud. Butto claimmytrueidentity, saidto mymother, I "Teach me Kurdish." laterI taughtmy own children And their too. language In this dialogue,Tdlay'scontributionpoints out that the accessibilityof anonymityas a tactic itself varies withingroups.Garber, her critiqueof anonymityas a in normativeurbanideal (in the workof IrisMarionYoung [1990], for example), arguesthat one of the limitations of anonymityis that it is not equally accessible to all groups (Garber2000). Likewise, Ttilay hears Pervin's a and storyas expressing kind of privilegeof assimilation, points out that others do not have the same opportunities to become anonymousin the laborforce. Pervin's choice to tell her employersthat she is Kurdishas she was leaving appearsas an act of resistanceto the discriminatory practices that she had also subverted throughher own tactic of anonymityin the workplace. At the same time, Asuman'sresponse,by representing the act of expressing Kurdish identityin the presenceof prejudiceas one of resistanceand pride,furthercritiques Pervin'ssilence. This critique is reinforcedwhen Asuman drawsattention to the effortsshe has made to reclaim and reproducethe Kurdish languagein the city. The give and take of this dialogue thus catches the participantsbetween assimilationand solidarity,anonymity and identity, the contradictoryand overlapping discoursesout of which Kurdish identity,urbanlife, and the Turkishnational imaginaryare constituted in Istanbul. Do the tactics of anonymity, Garbersuggests, as signal a responseto the lack of a "genuinepublicityor On openness"in Istanbul? the one hand, there is clearly a preferencefor being able to articulateKurdish(and also Alevi) identitiesin publicarenasuch as workplaces, schools, and neighborhoods.Hiding these identities,
becoming anonymous, is a tactic that focus group participants describe enacting reluctantly in response to the agonistic and alienating practices and discourses of Turkish citizenship. From this perspective, Garber is correct in her suggestion that anonymity is not an end in itself. On the other hand, Garber's rejection of this "pluralist vision of anonymity" is perhaps too strong, in that she dismisses the political potential and everyday importance of these tactics. On the contrary, Kurdish migrant women's descriptions of their everyday urban lives illustrate how the act of navigating different re-

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gimes of power,identity,and space in the city can become a means to enact a criticalpolitics of citizenship. By employinga range of tactics and strategies,women stakeout multiplepositionsfromwhich to claimrightsin the city. In other words,makingdo can indeed be the to basisof resistanceand of "becoming political"; return to de Certeau, we can evoke his assertion that such spatialpractices since of havethe function spatial legislation theydetermine or about rightsand divideup landsby "acts" discourses a a actions(planting tree,maintaining dungheap,etc.). 1984,122) -(de Certeau Spatial stories,whether they trace tactics of anonymity or strategiesof identity,should thus be seen as political narrativesoperatingthroughthe streets of the city.

The Political Moment: Claiming Rights and Identities

I of in to Forallof 16years forbade myself speak myidentity and the workplace, in my schooldays,andafterfinishing school,I forbid myself. Theywouldsay to me, youreyeare and brows eyeslookKurdish, youa littlebit Kurd? "No, of coursenot, definitely you insultme!"I wouldsay. not, I In Eventuallyexploded. the end,one dayI wentout and wantto play I nowI wantto knowmyself, don't said,"Hey, thisgame.I ama Kurd." The tactics, multiplicity,and mobilityof Kurdishidentities take shape throughinci's narrative,in which she moves between assimilation and the passionate reclamationof her Kurdish identity.After yearsof silence which her Kurdishness was, as she put it, like a during cultural to her,inci now worksat a Kurdish boogeyman center, takes frequent researchtrips to the southeast, and dreams of retiringto Munzur,a mountain in the Kurdish-Alevi provinceof Tinceli, with, she said,a fierce her and a gun. Reconstructing identityas a Kurdish dog describedher own "becomingpolitical": woman,inci Kurdish traditional Lastyear,I was wearing clothes,and
one week I walkedaroundlike that .... They stoppedme in the street and asked, "What country are you from?"I said,"Iam fromthis country,this land,but I am a Kurdand because of this I wear the clothes of a Kurdishwoman. women dresslike this?"they asked. "Oh really,Kurdish Without a referent, "they" appear as the urban community, "the public," whom inci confronts and teaches through her performance of Kurdishness. Positioning herself as a citizen (in the jus soli model: "I am from this country"), she declares both Kurdish cultural identity

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Secor they peoplecome here, whetheror not they are Kurdish, are immediatelylabeled as such." Another participant was who interrogated categoryof Kurdishness Oykii, the in the groupof youngernewcomersto the city.Not only did she question the idea that there is a single Kurdish language (pointing out that, after all, Zaza, Kurmanji, and Sorani are not mutuallyintelligible),but she also debated the basis of Kurdish identity: We Oykii:I don'tknowhowwe knowwe areKurdish. are I askmygrandfather, saysweareKurds, he from Adiyaman. Turkish. but he speaks Hasibe:Butyoudon'tacceptbeingKurdish. state.Is this a race?I don't Oykii:Thereis no Kurdish a Are knowwhereit comesfrom. the Kurds race? if Your Hasibe: grandfather, your grandfather, grandfather's You is Kurdish. he spokeKurdish yourmother then tongue You arefromAdiyaman. area Kurd. WhydidyourgrandThatis the state'spoliticsof asfathersayhe is a Turk? similation. saywe areKurds. We means when there is The question of what Kurdishness and no state, that is, no formalcitizenship, of where the boundariesof the Kurdishcommunityare to be drawn came to the foreonce morewhen, laterin the discussion, who has been in Is(a Yaprak 33-year-oldpiece-worker tanbul for three years) joined the debate around the question of citizenship: "You say you want to be a Kurdish citizen,"she intervened,"Butstill confusionwill Youhave to draw arise:Where is the Kurdish republic? a border." drawingattention to these challengesof By differentiationand identification,these young women their own politicsof identityand articulatetheir perform own understandings what is at stake in strugglesover of in Turkey. citizenship terrainthrough To say that the city is an ever-shifting are whichidentity, and belonging, rights-claims constantly out in differentways,and that, as such, the being played the city materializes politicalmoment, is not to say that It the city effectspoliticaltransformation. is not becoming urban that defines women as political subjects, but nonethelessbecoming politicalis enactedthroughthe city andits spaces.Istanbul formanywomen,a placewhere is,
they find themselves engaging in political and social activities. In the discussions of the younger women especially, Istanbul is represented as a place where Kurdish identity is actively being made and transformed into a basis for rights-claims in everyday life. In Rana's words, There are Kurdishassociations, and there are political go parties;people can comfortably out and find social acof tivities. It is not verycomfortable, course,but they can expressthemselves,at least partly.

and the right to its outward expression through her dress.This is Inci'sclaim to belonging,identity,and the right to culturalexpressionin the urbanpublic sphere. Like Inci, many women spoke of moving from assimilationto the assertionof identityover the courseof their adult lives; Vahide,for example,told of how when she got married, made her home in the "traditional" she style, much to her assimilationistparents' dismay. In discussing the choices they have made, women frequently attributedtheir own active self-positioningas Kurds to changes in Turkish society since the early 1980s. Despite the manystoriesof encounterswith prewomen frequently judiceand practicesof discrimination, claimedthat the expression Kurdish of identitywasmore than it was 20 years ago. While few wopossibletoday men attributedthis shift to a particularset of causes, those who did try to explain these changes pointed towardsthe effects of the PKK'sarmeduprising, although they were guardedin this assertion.As Hasibe said, We areluckythat now we can express whatit is to be a Kurd. Thatit wascreated fromone sideby the PKK connectioncannotbe saidopenlyin all places.It carries the riskof beingdeclared potentially guilty. Within the social contexts of the focus groups,comprised as they were around the common characteristic of the "Kurdishness" the participants, of women tended to expresspridein Kurdish identity,a desireto returnto their lands under peaceful conditions, and a commitment to the preservation Kurdishlanguageand culof ture.Kurdishness Kurdish and identitywere,forthe most Aside from occapart, presumedto be unproblematic. sional references to the diversity of Kurdishcultural practices(usuallyarticulatedin termsof regionaldifferences), women rarely drew attention to the ways in which being Kurdishcan be ambiguous.Referringto Stuart Hall's (1996) assertionthat essentialism,though theoreticallydeconstructed,remains politically viable, and echoing GayatriSpivak's(1988) call for "strategic essentialism," Lynn Stephen (2001, 67) arguesthat in El Salvador,women in civil societal organizations "are
bound to exercise their citizenship rights-at least for now-through the imagined unity of identities that in everyday life are never experienced as a stable core of self, unchanging through time." Among those who did raise questions about the unity and meaning of Kurdish identity was Diinya, a young woman who identified herself as half Arab and half Kurdish, and until recently presented herself as being Arab. Describing how being Kurdish is a label and social position that has, in many ways, been imposed upon her since she migrated to the city, she said, "When Eastern

"ThereIs an IstanbulThat Belongsto Me":Citizenship,Space, and Identityin the City Women spoke of their involvement in the Kurdish political party HADEP both as supporters and as activists within the party's women's branch. Others talked about local neighborhood culturalcenters where in activities,attended women'ssewing they participated classes, and sat on committees. Women were also involved in unions, women's labor organizations,and Kurdish culturalassociations. somewomenwho were For housewivesor house-daughters and were not otherwise active in associations the city,HADEP'slocal festivals in and the 8th of MarchWomen's Day march,in which the women'sbranchof HADEP participated, providedthem with opportunities public politicalengagement.Hafor sibe describedtakingher mother there: She wasveryhappy. wasthe firsttimeshe hadparticiIt A flockof women. the end In patedin something. colorful she wondered she hadn't donethisbefore. why

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Kurdishmigrant women in Istanbul construct themof selves as new and ambiguous "subjects rights,"that is to say, as citizen-strangers, both within and outside the nation and the city. Even in the above dialogue,while Deren positions herself as a producerof a diverse Istanbul, Nimet remindsher that others will continue to positionher as a stranger. Kurdish identityresidesat the point "[C]ontemporary of an intersection, the dangerous place where being (de-) constituted (assimilated)and constitutingoneself collide" (Houston 2001, 18). This articlehas sought to demonstratehow this tension is played out within the everydayspatialtracingsof urbanlife, the commonways in which hegemonicnotions of citizenshipare both accommodatedand disruptedacrossurbanspaces.At the same time, the processes through which identity, belonging,and rightsarecontestedin the city take shapein relationto complex and historicallyambivalentnotions of Turkishcitizenshipand nationalism.As Chris Rumfordpointsout, it has been a commonthoughmisleading Conclusion an move to read Kurdishidentity as a "particularism," instance of identitypolitics that is opposedto the "unithat to Deren:Thereis an Istanbul belongs me.In another state (Rumford versal"of the Turkish 2002). Indeed,this I I place,outsideof Istanbul, can sayI am an Istanbulite. can be readin BetigiilArgun'streatmentof the tendency have a relationship Istanbul, placewhereI have with a Kurdish issue, in which she arguesthat the problemwith achieved and and of political otherrelations, I ama creator the currentconception of citizenshipin Turkeyis that thisIstanbul myself. adheredto liberalprinciplesof uniit has insufficiently Nimet: If you say you are Istanbulite, your accentsays versalism(Argun 1999). youaren't. Kurdishidentity is not a residualcategorythat has Deren: That isn'timportant. talkingaboutmy own I'm merely failed to be accommodatedwithin a (mythical) Istanbul. neutral state, but instead it is a product of what Isin To excludethe urban fromgroups, is classes,individuals, (2002) refersto as "solidaristic, agonisticand alienating" alsoto excludethemfromcivilization, not fromsociety if that have relationally defined Turkishness, processes itself.The right the citylegitimates refusal allow to the to In and Kurdishness, citizenship. this vein, this articlehas oneselfto be removed fromurban reality discriminatory triedto demonstrate by how these identitiesand socialposiandsegregative organization. tions are encountered,created, and contested through in -(Lefebvre 1996,195,emphasis original) and urbanspaces (such as schools,workplaces, particular and everydayspatial practices.By beFollowingHenri Lefebvre(1996), "the rightto the city" neighborhoods) refers not only to rights to urban services, such as coming awareof the practicesthat both reproduceand in and education, but also to the right to contest dominantideasof citizenship everyday we life, housing, work, participatein making"the urban,"the right to inhabit gain insight into how citizenshipis continuouslybeing and transform urban space and thus to become a creator fromthe bottom up. The storiesrecounted reconfigured
of the city as oeuvre. In other words, a critical element of urban citizenship struggles-that is, contests over identity, belonging, and rights to the city-is the assertion of the right to become a producer of the city, of urban space, and of citizenship itself. Focus group discussions narrate the insecurity and mobility of these claims to urban presence and ownership in everyday life; as inci said, "No matter how long I am here, they don't feel that I am an owner of this city, and I don't feel like I am an owner of this place either." In becoming political, these here not only describe the informal and formal policing of citizenship in Istanbul, but also reveal the fragility and partiality of liberal conceptions of "the public" and "the subject of rights." As the narratives of Kurdish migrant women in Istanbul illustrate, public space and rights are constantly being produced, claimed, and contested in ways that may appear to be no more than "making do" but are also always political. By refiguringconcepts of the public, rights, and political subjectivity through the voices of ordinary people and the everyday spatial stories that

366

Secor
I the 1996). In analyzing focusgroupdiscussions, have not data"(Montell1999, individual triedto pullout "consistent the debates,and 64), but ratherto emphasize interactions, that the of collaborations arose through performance the focus (Wilkinson groupsas "socialcontextsfor meaning-making" 1999, 23). To this end, I have frequently quoteddialogues woaimedto contextualize betweenwomenand elsewhere withinthe focusgroupdiscussions. men'snarratives and 4. Given the relativelysmallnumberof participants the method of selection, this is clearly not a representative The findings womenin Istanbul. migrant sampleof Kurdish of this study should be taken as suggestiverather than were The conversations tapedwith generalizable. focusgroup and the consentof the participants translated the author. by to 5. It wouldhave been preferable conduct the focus groups in Kurdish. Most of the women spoke Kurmanji, though some were Zazaspeakersand some spoke no Kurdishat all. Unfortunately, havingcome to this workwith Kurdish This meant women only recently,I do not speakKurdish. that I was unable to speak with women who had never and Turkish. Accordingto Giindiiz-Ho~g6r Smits acquired (2001), 4 percent of Kurdishwomen living in Western Such non-Turkish speaking Turkeydo not speak Turkish. women tended to be older and to have had no formal and education(Giindiiz-Hogg6r Smits 2001). 6. On Alevi identity, see the collection edited by Olsson, Ozdalga,and Raudvere(1998). at 7. I refer to the "spatialstrategiesof citizenship" various notion Since I am usingde Certeau's pointsin this analysis. of "strategy," is in fact redundant; this strategiesare the of "proper" operations powerthat delimitandworkthrough spaces.However,I use this phraseto remindthe readerof the spatialcontent of conceptof strategy. law the 8. AlthoughTurkey repealed language in 1991,the use of Kurdishis still effectivelyregulatedthroughconstituof tional articlesand lawsthat enablethe prosecution any to that mightbe construedas threatening state expression 1998;Kthl 1998). securityor integrity(Hassanpour 9. For an ethnographic treatmentof poverty,migrationand (2001) religionin Sultanbeyli,see IStk and Pinarctoglu's case study. both genderand 10. Focusgroupwomenextensivelydiscussed classas factorsthat mediatetheiraccessto andengagement with urbanlife and politics. An analysisof this material is beyond the scope of this article,except as it relatesto questionsof ethnic identity. to referred each other 11. Focusgroupparticipants frequently as "friend," thoughof coursethey had not met beforethe to beingreferred is Pervinin group.In thiscase,the "friend" the groupof olderold-comersto the city. 12. I am happyto note that the focus groupitself was cited as an exampleof such a space. of 13. This feelingof alienationfromthe category "Istanbulite" should not be taken as unique to Kurdish migrantsin Iswomenhave revealed withnon-Kurdish tanbul.Discussions a similarsense of difference,based on class and migrant habitus,fromthe dominanturbansociety (Secor2003). 14. The word yabanczmeans both strangerand foreignerin Turkish. 15. Gurbet also meansexile. Ahearne(1995) also arguesthat the lines drawnby 16. Jeremy de Certeau'sdistinctionbetween strategiesand tactics in

they recount, this analysisopens up the idea of citizenship

to alternative such possibilities, asthoseofmultiple public

spheres (Fraser 1992) or multilevel citizenship (YuvalDavis 1991). When focus group participantsnarrate their

ownmobility across various of spatial regimes citizenship,

it becomes apparent that "citizenship"embodies a complexity and fluidity within their lives that defies any sense of a unitary or universal Turkish citizen. Circulating through both formal and informal channels, dominant ideas of citizenship (however internally contradictory) serve to rationalize the administration of urban space in ways that designate inclusion and exclusion, citizens and strangers. At the same time, citizenship, as a set of practices and discourses, is open to constant renegotiation. By understanding the practices of citizenship as dynamic, spatial, and quotidian, we become better able to recognize and produce progressive democratic practice in everyday life. Finally, if we are to learn from Semiha's story, with which this article opens, perhaps we may learn how to recognize the politics of survival, the moment of political "becoming" and the spaces to which we must lay claim in the process.

Acknowledgments
This research was supported by a University of Kentucky Faculty Summer Faculty Research Fellowship. Earlier versions of this paper were presented at the University of Kentucky, Syracuse University, Miami

of GeoUniversity Ohio, and the 2002 International

graphical Union (IGU) "Rights to the City" International Conference in Rome, Italy. This paper benefited from the comments and questions of participants in these forums. I am grateful to John Paul Jones III, Don Mitchell, Robert Olson, the anonymous reviewers, and "People, Place and Region" editor Audrey Kobayashi for their insightful comments on previous drafts of this manuscript. I alone am responsible for all remaining flaws. My deepest debt of gratitude is to the women who shared their stories with me and to all of those who made

in thisworkpossible Turkey.

Notes
1. Isin cites here Mahon (1992) and Frijhoff (1999). 2. Turner refers (2000) pointsout that the wordforcitizenship to the state, not to the city,in Russian. The sameis trueof where the wordvatanda? Turkish, (citizen)refersto membershipwithin the territory. 3. Focus groupswere used becauseof the strengthsof this methodfor exploring and publicdiscourse, meanings narratives (seeMontell1999;Longhurst, 1996;GossandLeinbach

"ThereIs an IstanbulThat Belongsto Me":Citizenship,Space, and Identityin the City

The Practice Everyday are too clear-cut.While I am of Life that it is fruitfulto see strategicspacesas being suggesting tacticallycreated within space dominatedby the other, Ahearnearguesthat those with strategiccontrolof space, "thestrong," alsomakeuse of tactics.Ahearnesuggests may that "'strategies' and 'tactics' cannot necessarilybe set againsteach other as opposingforcesin a clearlydefined zone of combat. Rather,as Certeau presentsthem, they enable us as conceptsto discerna numberof heterogeneous movements across different distributionsof power" (Ahearne1995, 163). told 17. Participants movingand importantstoriesabouthow theirlanguage policedin the classroom, since these was but storieswere all set in the southeastratherthan in Istanbul, they have not been includedin this discussion.

367

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1457 PattersonOffice Tower,Departmentof Geography, Correspondence: Universityof Kentucky,Lexington, Kentucky40506-0027, e-mail: ajseco2@uky.edu.