Cross-class alliances and urban middle classes with peasant characteristics: a historical-spatial approach to agency in territory-based rural mobilisations in Turkey

Abstract

This article explores the complexities of agency in contemporary territory-based mobilisations in the countryside by focusing on water struggles in Turkey. Using a historical-spatial approach, it combines agrarian political economy analysis with human-nature interactions. Through an analysis of cash crop production and urban-rural interactions, this contribution argues that capitalist agrarian transformation in Turkey led to the emergence of an ‘urban middle class with peasant characteristics’, with a strong capacity for mobilisation and alliance-building. It also argues that this group enabled abstraction, place-framing and aestheticised resistance, common elements we observe in contemporary territorial mobilisations.