Events / Ayşe Çağlar

	Title	Date	Type	Speakers	Register
	Governing through Contradictions.	Tue, 18.01.2022	Seminars and Colloquia	Ayşe Çağlar Ulrike Flader		Governing through Contradictions. Tue, 18.01.2022 Speakers: Ayşe Çağlar Ulrike Flader Series: Seminars and Colloquia Turkey is currently governed by a regime which blurs the line between authoritarian and democratic rule. While some authors tend to interpret this state as a moment of transition towards full authoritarianism, this paper argues that we should rather understand the coevalness of democratic and non-democratic practices as a deliberate and “cunning” mode of government, which we call soft authoritarian. Read more
Governing through Contradictions. Tue, 18.01.2022 Speakers: Ayşe Çağlar Ulrike Flader Series: Seminars and Colloquia Turkey is currently governed by a regime which blurs the line between authoritarian and democratic rule. While some authors tend to interpret this state as a moment of transition towards full authoritarianism, this paper argues that we should rather understand the coevalness of democratic and non-democratic practices as a deliberate and “cunning” mode of government, which we call soft authoritarian. Read more
	The Post-Coloniality of Asylum Infrastructure	Mon, 13.12.2021	Seminars and Colloquia	Ayşe ÇağlarPaolo Novak		The Post-Coloniality of Asylum Infrastructure Mon, 13.12.2021 Speakers: Ayşe ÇağlarPaolo Novak Series: Seminars and Colloquia This presentation takes as its object of analysis and investigation asylum seekers’ reception centres in a central Italian province. It builds upon literature concerned with the logistification of asylum to conceive these centres as nodes of the EU humanitarian border, yet it moves beyond the exclusive concern with the migrant-border dialectic that characterises most literature on the subject. In its attempt to dig deeper into the social ontology of the humanitarian border, the presentation de-centres the logistical gaze cast on asylum management characterising this literature by foregrounding instead the productive relation between the humanitarian border and the place-specific social dynamics that explain its emergence and reproduction in concrete settings. Accounting for the multiple and variegated histories, stories, agencies and trajectories that become entangled in the rooms of these reception centres, the paper argues that critical border scholars need to move beyond an exclusive concern with the border-migrant dialectic, and to reorient our attention towards an appreciation of borders’ place-specific configurations. In bringing to the fore the unevenness of these entanglements in each of these reception centres, the presentation also suggests recalibrating contemporary concerns with the coloniality of asylum, of migration, and of infrastructure. The expression ‘postcoloniality of asylum infrastructure’ wants to entangle colonial world-making legacies with everyday practices of place-making. Read more
The Post-Coloniality of Asylum Infrastructure Mon, 13.12.2021 Speakers: Ayşe ÇağlarPaolo Novak Series: Seminars and Colloquia This presentation takes as its object of analysis and investigation asylum seekers’ reception centres in a central Italian province. It builds upon literature concerned with the logistification of asylum to conceive these centres as nodes of the EU humanitarian border, yet it moves beyond the exclusive concern with the migrant-border dialectic that characterises most literature on the subject. In its attempt to dig deeper into the social ontology of the humanitarian border, the presentation de-centres the logistical gaze cast on asylum management characterising this literature by foregrounding instead the productive relation between the humanitarian border and the place-specific social dynamics that explain its emergence and reproduction in concrete settings. Accounting for the multiple and variegated histories, stories, agencies and trajectories that become entangled in the rooms of these reception centres, the paper argues that critical border scholars need to move beyond an exclusive concern with the border-migrant dialectic, and to reorient our attention towards an appreciation of borders’ place-specific configurations. In bringing to the fore the unevenness of these entanglements in each of these reception centres, the presentation also suggests recalibrating contemporary concerns with the coloniality of asylum, of migration, and of infrastructure. The expression ‘postcoloniality of asylum infrastructure’ wants to entangle colonial world-making legacies with everyday practices of place-making. Read more
	The Precarious Lives of Syrians: Temporary Protection and the Turkey/EU Deal	Tue, 30.11.2021	Seminars and Colloquia	Ayşe ÇağlarFeyzi Baban	Register here	The Precarious Lives of Syrians: Temporary Protection and the Turkey/EU Deal Tue, 30.11.2021 Speakers: Ayşe ÇağlarFeyzi Baban Series: Seminars and Colloquia Turkey currently hosts over 4million Syrian refugees who have no prospects of gaining long-term legal status. Their precarious lives are further complicated with the EU’s ongoing collaboration with Turkey to prevent them from claiming refugee status in the EU member states. The EU’s externalization efforts through its cooperation with Turkey further contribute to the precarious lives of Syrians and enable European states to ignore their international obligation to protect Syrians. In my talk, I will discuss elements of “architecture of precarity,” which defines the living conditions of Syrians and their legal prospects for status as a series of structurally conditioned obstacles. Domestic and international, these obstacles are designed to prevent Syrian refugees from claiming legal protection and attaining long-term legal status, including citizenship. While this “architecture of precarity” is most visible in Turkey’s treatment of Syrians, its legal elements such as externalization and ambiguous legal status are increasingly used by many states worldwide to circumvent the international legal framework of refugee protection. Read more
The Precarious Lives of Syrians: Temporary Protection and the Turkey/EU Deal Tue, 30.11.2021 Speakers: Ayşe ÇağlarFeyzi Baban Series: Seminars and Colloquia Turkey currently hosts over 4million Syrian refugees who have no prospects of gaining long-term legal status. Their precarious lives are further complicated with the EU’s ongoing collaboration with Turkey to prevent them from claiming refugee status in the EU member states. The EU’s externalization efforts through its cooperation with Turkey further contribute to the precarious lives of Syrians and enable European states to ignore their international obligation to protect Syrians. In my talk, I will discuss elements of “architecture of precarity,” which defines the living conditions of Syrians and their legal prospects for status as a series of structurally conditioned obstacles. Domestic and international, these obstacles are designed to prevent Syrian refugees from claiming legal protection and attaining long-term legal status, including citizenship. While this “architecture of precarity” is most visible in Turkey’s treatment of Syrians, its legal elements such as externalization and ambiguous legal status are increasingly used by many states worldwide to circumvent the international legal framework of refugee protection. Read more
	Sites of Statelessness: Laws, Cities, Seas	Wed, 15.09.2021 - Fri, 17.09.2021	Conferences and Workshops	Ayşe Çağlar Paula Banerjee Ranabir SamaddarSabyasachi Basu Ray Chaudhury		Sites of Statelessness: Laws, Cities, Seas Wed, 15.09.2021 - Fri, 17.09.2021 Speakers: Ayşe Çağlar Paula Banerjee Ranabir SamaddarSabyasachi Basu Ray Chaudhury Series: Conferences and Workshops "Sites of Statelessness: Laws, Cities, Seas" was a workshop on an edited volume (in the making) with the same title. It was being co-hosted with the Mahanirban Calcutta Research Group (MCRG) as part of the Europe-Asia Research Platform on Forced Migration. The workshop brought together scholars to address the distinctive dynamics of the different sites of the production of statelessness. Different sites evoke different histories and repertoires. They also bring different possibilities of alignment of the problematic, which the volume aims to address. Each contributor to the volume was paired with a discussant, workshop participants joined both physically and online. Read more
Sites of Statelessness: Laws, Cities, Seas Wed, 15.09.2021 - Fri, 17.09.2021 Speakers: Ayşe Çağlar Paula Banerjee Ranabir SamaddarSabyasachi Basu Ray Chaudhury Series: Conferences and Workshops "Sites of Statelessness: Laws, Cities, Seas" was a workshop on an edited volume (in the making) with the same title. It was being co-hosted with the Mahanirban Calcutta Research Group (MCRG) as part of the Europe-Asia Research Platform on Forced Migration. The workshop brought together scholars to address the distinctive dynamics of the different sites of the production of statelessness. Different sites evoke different histories and repertoires. They also bring different possibilities of alignment of the problematic, which the volume aims to address. Each contributor to the volume was paired with a discussant, workshop participants joined both physically and online. Read more
	Junior Visiting Fellows’ Conference Summer 2021	Mon, 21.06.2021	Conferences and Workshops	Ayşe Çağlar Ezgican Özdemir Iryna Sklokina Jan Vana Jul Tirler Katherine Younger Ludger Hagedorn Marci Shore Mariia Hupalo Mykhailo Martynenko Gabriela Vicanova Krystof DolezalRosario Forlenza, Dagmar Fink, Oley Kindiy, Costas Constantinou, Sina Farzin		Junior Visiting Fellows’ Conference Summer 2021 Mon, 21.06.2021 Speakers: Ayşe Çağlar Ezgican Özdemir Iryna Sklokina Jan Vana Jul Tirler Katherine Younger Ludger Hagedorn Marci Shore Mariia Hupalo Mykhailo Martynenko Gabriela Vicanova Krystof DolezalRosario Forlenza, Dagmar Fink, Oley Kindiy, Costas Constantinou, Sina Farzin Series: Conferences and Workshops The Junior Visiting Fellows' Conference is a bi-annual event at the Institute for Human Sciences that gives the Junior Fellows to present their work and research in a day-long conference. A traditional, semester-closing, celebration of the talented young researchers that is as old as the Institute itself, is always organized by the Junior Fellows themselves and usually includes Senior Fellows, Staff members and Alumni among others as commentators and discussants. Read more
Junior Visiting Fellows’ Conference Summer 2021 Mon, 21.06.2021 Speakers: Ayşe Çağlar Ezgican Özdemir Iryna Sklokina Jan Vana Jul Tirler Katherine Younger Ludger Hagedorn Marci Shore Mariia Hupalo Mykhailo Martynenko Gabriela Vicanova Krystof DolezalRosario Forlenza, Dagmar Fink, Oley Kindiy, Costas Constantinou, Sina Farzin Series: Conferences and Workshops The Junior Visiting Fellows' Conference is a bi-annual event at the Institute for Human Sciences that gives the Junior Fellows to present their work and research in a day-long conference. A traditional, semester-closing, celebration of the talented young researchers that is as old as the Institute itself, is always organized by the Junior Fellows themselves and usually includes Senior Fellows, Staff members and Alumni among others as commentators and discussants. Read more
	The Intersections of Syrian Refugees’ Dilemma: Settlement, Onward Movement, and Return	Wed, 16.06.2021	Seminars and Colloquia	Ayşe ÇağlarAhmet İçduygu		The Intersections of Syrian Refugees’ Dilemma: Settlement, Onward Movement, and Return Wed, 16.06.2021 Speakers: Ayşe ÇağlarAhmet İçduygu Series: Seminars and Colloquia The international refugee regime and its national versions increasingly tend to offer a temporary protection mechanism that creates a “limboizing effect” on refugees’ lives. It also appears that these policies use temporariness as a political tool of governance. While these dominant international and national rulings ideally present the three choices of settlement (integration in the first country of asylum), onward movement (resettlement in the third country), and return (repatriation) as durable solutions to the refugee question, none of these choices easily become pertinent in the lives of refugees under their protracted situation and limitations of the international refugee regime. Consequently, refugees face with the challenges of living in an environment of uncertainties that is also labelled with the concept of permanent temporariness. In this presentation, Ahmet Içduygu referred to the concept of permanent temporariness, and answered the question of what is the role of international refugee regime and that of Turkey’s refugee policies towards Syrian refugees in the context of refugees’ aspirations for planning their future. He also questioned the polarized nature of the structure-agency debate, emphasizing the synthesis of these two influences on refugees’ aspirations in the context of settlement, onward movement and return choices. Read more
The Intersections of Syrian Refugees’ Dilemma: Settlement, Onward Movement, and Return Wed, 16.06.2021 Speakers: Ayşe ÇağlarAhmet İçduygu Series: Seminars and Colloquia The international refugee regime and its national versions increasingly tend to offer a temporary protection mechanism that creates a “limboizing effect” on refugees’ lives. It also appears that these policies use temporariness as a political tool of governance. While these dominant international and national rulings ideally present the three choices of settlement (integration in the first country of asylum), onward movement (resettlement in the third country), and return (repatriation) as durable solutions to the refugee question, none of these choices easily become pertinent in the lives of refugees under their protracted situation and limitations of the international refugee regime. Consequently, refugees face with the challenges of living in an environment of uncertainties that is also labelled with the concept of permanent temporariness. In this presentation, Ahmet Içduygu referred to the concept of permanent temporariness, and answered the question of what is the role of international refugee regime and that of Turkey’s refugee policies towards Syrian refugees in the context of refugees’ aspirations for planning their future. He also questioned the polarized nature of the structure-agency debate, emphasizing the synthesis of these two influences on refugees’ aspirations in the context of settlement, onward movement and return choices. Read more
	Revisiting the Social History of Ethnic Violence in Rwanda	Tue, 25.05.2021	Lecture	Ayşe Çağlar Giorgia DonàErin Jessee		Revisiting the Social History of Ethnic Violence in Rwanda Tue, 25.05.2021 Speakers: Ayşe Çağlar Giorgia DonàErin Jessee Series: Lecture In this lecture, Prof. Doná revisited the social history of ethnic violence in Rwanda by focusing on marginalized voices. She introduced the constellation of genocide narratives to conceptualize the relationship between public and personal narratives of violence and its legacy and to identify connections among varied stories. This chronicle from below challenges a social history of almost totalizing violence to speak of continuity, embeddedness and the everyday. In doing so, it problematizes the narrative of ruptures between the “old” (pre-genocide) and “new” (post-genocide) reality; challenges the overlap of ethnic and social identities; and records the complex legacy of ethnic violence, as an event and as narrative, on the social and narrative lives of the nation and its people. Read more
Revisiting the Social History of Ethnic Violence in Rwanda Tue, 25.05.2021 Speakers: Ayşe Çağlar Giorgia DonàErin Jessee Series: Lecture In this lecture, Prof. Doná revisited the social history of ethnic violence in Rwanda by focusing on marginalized voices. She introduced the constellation of genocide narratives to conceptualize the relationship between public and personal narratives of violence and its legacy and to identify connections among varied stories. This chronicle from below challenges a social history of almost totalizing violence to speak of continuity, embeddedness and the everyday. In doing so, it problematizes the narrative of ruptures between the “old” (pre-genocide) and “new” (post-genocide) reality; challenges the overlap of ethnic and social identities; and records the complex legacy of ethnic violence, as an event and as narrative, on the social and narrative lives of the nation and its people. Read more
	Decolonizing Forced Migration Studies: Lessons from Borderlands	Wed, 12.05.2021	Seminars and Colloquia	Ayşe Çağlar Nergis Canefe		Decolonizing Forced Migration Studies: Lessons from Borderlands Wed, 12.05.2021 Speakers: Ayşe Çağlar Nergis Canefe Series: Seminars and Colloquia This presentation was an exploration of forced migration studies seen from the lens of de-colonial theory and invited us to consider shifting the geographies of reason habitually marking the field. Starting with a foundational critique of moralism and privilege marking canonized understandings of migration, precarity, displacement and dispossession, it unpacked the complexity of an existential political commitment to redefining forced migration not from the core/recipient states and societies but from borderlands. This work thus contributed to a long and rich—yet also troubled and deeply contested—conversation between postcolonial studies and forced migration studies. Read more
Decolonizing Forced Migration Studies: Lessons from Borderlands Wed, 12.05.2021 Speakers: Ayşe Çağlar Nergis Canefe Series: Seminars and Colloquia This presentation was an exploration of forced migration studies seen from the lens of de-colonial theory and invited us to consider shifting the geographies of reason habitually marking the field. Starting with a foundational critique of moralism and privilege marking canonized understandings of migration, precarity, displacement and dispossession, it unpacked the complexity of an existential political commitment to redefining forced migration not from the core/recipient states and societies but from borderlands. This work thus contributed to a long and rich—yet also troubled and deeply contested—conversation between postcolonial studies and forced migration studies. Read more
	Alien Logic	Tue, 11.05.2021	Lecture	Ayşe Çağlar Martin Burckhardt Timothy Snyder		Alien Logic Tue, 11.05.2021 Speakers: Ayşe Çağlar Martin Burckhardt Timothy Snyder Series: Lecture Bronislaw Malinowski has shown with his ethnological studies that a supposedly primitive society can be of astonishing complexity, as well as why the structure of this order remains obscure to its members. Obviously, modern societies also suffer from system blindness – why else is digitization said to have chiliastic, diabolic, magical powers? In a continuation to his cultural-theoretical investigations on the genealogy and philosophy of the machine, Martin Burckhardt explores the question of how the self-enchantment of rationality can occur, and to what extent the operating system of the attention economy can be read as an outsourced unconscious. This, in turn, leads back to the point of departure: what perspective must a contemporary social anthropologist take in order to read the present? Read more
Alien Logic Tue, 11.05.2021 Speakers: Ayşe Çağlar Martin Burckhardt Timothy Snyder Series: Lecture Bronislaw Malinowski has shown with his ethnological studies that a supposedly primitive society can be of astonishing complexity, as well as why the structure of this order remains obscure to its members. Obviously, modern societies also suffer from system blindness – why else is digitization said to have chiliastic, diabolic, magical powers? In a continuation to his cultural-theoretical investigations on the genealogy and philosophy of the machine, Martin Burckhardt explores the question of how the self-enchantment of rationality can occur, and to what extent the operating system of the attention economy can be read as an outsourced unconscious. This, in turn, leads back to the point of departure: what perspective must a contemporary social anthropologist take in order to read the present? Read more
	Fluid Zones of Hegemony	Mon, 10.05.2021	Seminars and Colloquia	Ayşe Çağlar Ezgican Özdemir		Fluid Zones of Hegemony Mon, 10.05.2021 Speakers: Ayşe Çağlar Ezgican Özdemir Series: Seminars and Colloquia Based on a 16-month ethnographic fieldwork in north Cyprus, Ezgi Özdemir's doctoral dissertation studies water infrastructure in the Turkish-occupied territories of Cyprus, enduring patronage relations between the Turkish state and the de-facto Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC), and emergent political subjectivities and collective identificatory practices of peoples in north Cyprus, which are contingent upon notions of exceptionality, non-recognition, and infrastructural and political dependence. For this, she looks specifically at the Turkish state-funded water pipeline from Turkey to north Cyprus—a megaproject that has since been privatized along with the transferred water and the local water resources of the north. Read more
Fluid Zones of Hegemony Mon, 10.05.2021 Speakers: Ayşe Çağlar Ezgican Özdemir Series: Seminars and Colloquia Based on a 16-month ethnographic fieldwork in north Cyprus, Ezgi Özdemir's doctoral dissertation studies water infrastructure in the Turkish-occupied territories of Cyprus, enduring patronage relations between the Turkish state and the de-facto Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC), and emergent political subjectivities and collective identificatory practices of peoples in north Cyprus, which are contingent upon notions of exceptionality, non-recognition, and infrastructural and political dependence. For this, she looks specifically at the Turkish state-funded water pipeline from Turkey to north Cyprus—a megaproject that has since been privatized along with the transferred water and the local water resources of the north. Read more