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Retrieving the Dignity of a Cosmopolitan City: Contested Perspectives on Rights, Culture and Ethnicity in Mardin

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 July 2015

Zerrin Özlem Biner*
Affiliation:
Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, Advokatenweg 36, 06114, Halle-Saale, Germanybiner@eth.mpg.de.

Abstract

This article aims to contribute to the understanding of post-conflict processes in Turkey by focusing on the discourses and practices following the city of Mardin's bid to become a World Heritage Site. It intends to show how cosmopolitanism becomes a contested and dominant discourse for the locals of the city (Kurds, Arabs, and Syriac Christians) to re-articulate the history of the inter-communal relationships and to create a negotiating ground with the state, in order to recover from the moral and economic injuries of the military conflict during the 1990s. In doing so, the article discusses the effects of the accumulated events of past and present on the production of different forms of power relations between the state and its subject-citizens in the post-conflict context of Mardin, Southeastern Turkey.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © New Perspectives on Turkey 2007

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