Introduction: Rethinking power in Turkey through everyday practices

Abstract

In an increasingly authoritarian Turkish context that precludes any serious chance of making tangible political gains, challenging common conception of 'the political' may expand our understanding of power dynamics. Attempting to track power relations outside the most official, legitimate, conventional and formalised forms of politics provides alternative and sharper insights into how the political is being reframed and how actors retain, uphold, perpetuate or transform their capacity for agency. In an interdisciplinary perspective, but drawing mainly on anthropological literature and methodology, the issue addresses four questions - both empirically in the Turkish case and more conceptually: politicisation, visibility, social stratification and domination.