Syndicate: MoneyNations Interview Istanbul

[Andreas Broeckmann <abroeck@v2.nl>]

Interview from MoneyNations correspondent Guelsuen Karamustafa
with Ayse Oencue, sociologist from Istanbul.


GÃ?LSÃ?N KARAMUSTAFA: My first question will cover the issue investigated
in your book "Space Culture and Power". Knowing that it is an immense
discussion, could you tell us briefly about the process of 'changing
social identities' in globalizing cities?

AYSE Ã?NCÃ?: What is fascinating about processes of globalization in the
cultural realm is that we seem to be witnessing two processes
simultaneously. On the one hand,  there is an invasion of global signs,
symbols, icons, and words which appear to be intelligible to everyone.
Simultaneously however, these are appropriated by different groups and
communities in very diverse ways, so that instead of a process of
homogenization, what in fact we seem to be getting is cultural
hybridization, a multiplication of hybridities.  This is what is
fascinating as far as I am concerned:  How elements from a global
culture of consumption are appropriated and blended with indigenous
cultures at the local level,  used both to rebuild older cultural
identities, and also to create new cultural identities.  And the
question of identities is increasingly becoming bound up with
consumption.  Goods are not only commodities.  They are also symbolic
markers,  used in different combinations and in different ways to define
identities. This is a very fluid realm, I find, but increasingly
boundaries of identities are marked,  negotiated, and defended through
symbolic consumption.

G.K: Now we come to Istanbul. In Istanbul, a city of 15 million people,
where we are confronting continuous changes in power relations and
struggles for cultural identity, can we talk about the rediscovery of
Islam  and its relation to globalization?

A.Ã?: There are various ways of trying to link the growing visibility of
Islam in Istanbul and the complexity of changes we call globalization.
One aspect is, of course, the increasing significance of  Islamic middle
classes.  There is a growing  Islamic middle class which is trying to
define its distinctions from â??secularâ?? middle classes. There is now an
Islamic fashion industry,  which almost exclusively caters for middle or
upper income families.  There are lavish Islamic weddings in five star
hotels,   where women display the latest Islamic fashions.   The main
difference is that alcohol is not served, and a religious ceremony is
performed along with the civil rites.  Upwardly mobile families who
define themselves as Islamic have begun to appear in consumption sites
formerly enjoyed by secular middle class families only, making Islam
much more visible, such as in restaurants, hotels, resorts etc. There
are now Islamic television channels as well as daily newspapers and
womenâ??s magazines.   An Islamic business sector has grown.   The
boundaries of what constitutes an Islamic way of life in todayâ??s urban
consumer society is being negotiated.   This is what I mean by the new
visibility of Islam.  It is no longer a small town phenomenon.    What
we are witnessing is the growing significance of Islam as a collective
identity among upwardly mobile families in Istanbul.   Iâ??m not sure
that  we can call this a new identity,  but it has come to the
foreground in new ways in todayâ??s consumer culture.

G.K. Is there a possibility of  linking it with politics?

A.Ã?. Certainly it can be argued that the political discourse of Islam in
Turkey is also changing.   Formerly, it was mainly centered on such
themes as injustice, exclusion, and marginalization.  This is a
discourse that has traditionally appealed to voters in informal
neighborhoods, to poor immigrant populations of Istanbul.  Now the
Islamic movement is in the process of developing a language of success.
A language which is capable of reconciling faith with increased
consumption of goods.  Is there an Islamic form of entertainment?
Arenâ??t people who identify themselves with Islam supposed to have fun?
How are their vacations to be different from those of secular middle
classes?   I believe such questions have to do with the problem of
trying to reconcile 'faith' with what Bourdieu called 'taste'.  Tasteful
ways of consuming for those who embrace Islam.  This process of
negotiation between 'taste' and 'faith' has come to the foreground in a
variety of ways.  It is clearly visible in TV advertisements on Islamic
channels.  It is also clearly discernible in the fabric of the cities,
in the growing numbers of  Islamic housing estates - "sites" as they are
called in Turkish - which provide communal prayer facilities,  and
public spaces that are â??genderedâ??, i.e. built such that segregation of
men and woman can be accomplished easily.

G.K. At this point we are talking about consumption. I think that we can
easily link our subject very closely to a new situation of consumption
which we are witnessing in Istanbul. In our project we are dealing with
the issue of a new kind of trade which we have confronted since the 90s
after the changes in the Eastern European countries and Soviet States. A
new kind of economy called the "suitcase economy" which is backed by the
government in an illegal way. We would like to know where you place this
factor within the outcomes of globalization.

A.Ã?. In talking about globalization, what is often emphasized, is the
erosion of national economic borders, as financial and commodity markets
become integrated on a world scale.  And this is backed up by open-door
policies of  governments to encourage inflow of foreign capital and to
promote exports.    Turkey is no exception.   â??Free tradeâ?? and
integration into global markets has been the official policy for almost
two decades now.   But of course national borders have not
evaporated.    And simultaneously with integration into global markets,
a flourishing â??informalâ?? economy which thrives on the existence of
national borders has come into being.   This is what is often called
â??tourist tradeâ?? or â??suitcase tradeâ??.  It thrives on the existence of
borders between adjacent countries with different political systems as
well as levels of income.  It is â??informalâ?? in the sense that it is not
recorded as trade in official statistics.  For instance,  there is an
untold volume of ongoing  â??informalâ?? trade across the borders with Iraq,
Syria etc. in the southern provinces of Turkey. This border trade uses
the existing informal networks and it is officially unrecorded.  So
perhaps the growing â??tourist tradeâ?? with former Soviet Republics can be
considered part of this broader phenomenon.   In Istanbul today there
are open-air markets for instance,  which specialize in goods sold by
people who travel back and forth to the Central Asian Republics.
Similarly,  there are neighborhoods in Istanbul where you can find a
variety of goods coming from Iran or various Arab countries.  What  I am
trying to emphasize is that the â??globalizationâ?? of trade networks in
Istanbul has proceeded at the â??formalâ?? and â??informalâ?? levels
simultaneously.   The expansion of  formal and informal trade networks
with Iran and Arab countries of the region is also a very important
component of the growing visibility of  Islam in Istanbul.   To come
back to so called â??tourist tradeâ??, â??border tradeâ?? or â??suitcase tradeâ??,
whatever you may choose to call it,  its impact  on the consumer economy
in Istanbul has been momentous.   It has become a major component of
Istanbulâ??s thriving urban economy itself.  Its most immediate impact has
been on the garment industry of Istanbul of course.

G.K. And it mainly depends on womenâ??s labor.

A.Ã?. Yes it depends mostly on female labor.  But the â??tourist tradeâ?? has
impacted on the garment industry in paradoxical ways.  The traders who
come mainly from Russia and various Balkan countries trade on a cash
basis,  they literally bring vast amounts of cash in their suitcases.
They buy in large volumes.  But they want the goods immediately to take
back with them.   This kind of  trade involves  the personal  appearance
of  a â??tourist-traderâ?? in Istanbul, who demands on short notice vast
quantities of material or readymade clothing, and has the cash to pay
for it on the spot.   So the garment industry in Istanbul has
increasingly become oriented to the short term and often unpredictable
demands of the â??tourist tradeâ??, at the expense of  long term strategic
planning which is necessary to maintain a share in  European and world
markets.   The inflow of hard cash has created a market â??bubbleâ?? which
is very vulnerable to the shifting winds of  inter-governmental
politics.   It has also led  to increasing fragmentation among
manufacturing enterprises,  since many skilled craftsmen have left their
jobs to establish their own small workshops and to capture a share of
the â??tourist tradeâ??.   Of course, the proliferation of such small-scale
enterprises means that more and more young girls are drawn into
employment under â??sweatshopâ?? conditions in Istanbulâ??s garment
industry.   Small enterprises can evade labor laws, social security
regulations and tax requirements much more easily.  So it is currently
the young female labor force who bears the burden.   We must remember
that parallel to the growth of the â??suitcase tradeâ??,  there has been a
substantial increase in the volume of  â??illegalâ?? labor migration  across
borders as well.



G.K. This is  what I also witnessed lately while I was wandering around
the border trade market areas in the city. You can easily spot groups
of  foreign young people waiting for illegal jobs.

A.Ã?.  So cross-border networks include trade in consumer goods as well
as illicit labor migration.  They also include trade in people, of women
basically. Buying and selling of women.

G.K. Do you mean a kind of prostitution?

A.Ã?. Inter-linked with networks of labor flows.  At the moment it is
mainly Rumanian laborers who are coming to Istanbul. To Greece there is
also a labor flow from Rumania, but it is mostly domestic women,
domestic female labor  that is travelling to Greece.  In Istanbul it is
mainly young male laborers who come to work under  'sweat shop'
conditions.  With very low wages, totally unprotected by social security
legislation and literally â??illegalâ??, they have to hide from the police.
The police makes periodic raids when there are complaints,  but simply
ignore it most of the time.  On the whole, these various networks are
reshaping Istanbul in ways that we have yet to understand.  What we are
observing is an increasingly fragmented city.  This is obvious, one
doesn't have to undertake extensive research on Istanbul to know that it
is becoming increasingly fragmented.  But the notion of â??fragmentâ??
suggests unrelated  or unconnected pieces.  Yet these cross-border
networks have now penetrated the fabric of the city.  They have become
interconnected with the everyday lives of people in a variety of ways
that we have not yet began to explore.
What I should probably add is that this issue of â??mobile populationsâ?? is
in need of more broadly theorizing in literature as well. Various mobile
populations have always existed. Pilgrims have always been part of the
city,  migration has always been part of the city.  But the current
mobility of population across national borders - as suitcase traders, as
regular tourists, or as migrant laborers - is historically
unprecedented.  We know little about how these mobile populations
transform cities in cultural terms. There is much research on the
economic implications of cross border trade and labor mobility. It is
the cultural implications of this process that needs to be explored
further.  We have not yet moved  beyond very broad generalizations about
cultural hybridization.

Finally I should add that the cross-border networks between Istanbul and
Eastern European countries are themselves changing.  Initially the
movement of people back and forth relied upon a variety of personal
relationships and individualized connections.  This picture seems to be
changing as Mafia type organizations move in.   The â??informalâ?? or
â??illicitâ?? nature of the transactions involved provides fertile ground
for criminal organizations which offer protection for a price.  For
instance,  large numbers of women traveling in search of work,  have
been forced to sell themselves in Istanbul.  Today however,  the
question of prostitution is not confined to these women, many of them
housewives, who are forced into it because they have picked up their
belongings and come to Istanbul to work for three or four months, and
cannot find any other employment. The whole affair is now organized by
vast multinational criminal gangs.  The age of women who are
prostituting themselves has become progressively younger, they are
recruited as professional workers in this domain. So increasingly
cross-border flows are being taken over by â??professional criminal
groupsâ?? which operate as intermediaries in the process.   This seems to
be the case whether we are talking about immigrant laborers,  â??suitcase
tradersâ??, or  women being sold as commodities.

G.K. It is very interesting to discuss those issues with an academic.
The way you look at things and, as an artist, the way I look at things
seem a little different.  My ideas were mainly built on impressions, but
you are talking on the basis of facts. Thank you very much.