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POST-DOCTORAL RESEARCH FELLOWS

Date: 26 April 2009 – 26 September 2009

Assistant Prof. Maya Arakon from Yeditepe University and Dr. Laurent Vinatier from Sciences Po Paris, as part of the Postdoctoral Research Fellowship of the INTERACT project have been chosen to conduct their 6 months researches in Sciences Po and BİLGİ respectively.

Maya Arakon , assistant professor of International Relations from Yeditepe University has started her research visit to Sciences Po Paris. She arrived Paris on April 26, and started her research in her office at the research center of CERI (Centre d'Etudes et de Recherches Internationales) of Sciences Po.

The title of her research project that she is currently conducting is “National identity and minority issues in Turkey and the European Union: a comparative analysis on the Western-European experience and the Kurdish problem in Turkey”.

In her own words, the project can be described as follows;

“Separatist movements and national identity demands are not solely a problem proper to Turkey. The Kurdish issue, as we call the ongoing and never-ending conflict in the southeastern part of the country, had first started in 1974 as a class movement, but after 1980, it changed its nature and took the form of a claim by the Kurds of Turkey for their cultural identity and its recognition. Within time, however, it turned into an armed conflict between Turkish government and the Kurdish rebels: a separatist armed organization called the PKK.

The question to ask is multiple: why this conflict could never find a peaceful solution? What do Turkish State and the Kurdish leaders have to do to stop this bloodshed which is going on for almost forty years now? How could the European Union countries, such as the Great Britain, Spain and France, facing the same kind of ethnic and separatist threats by their independentist organizations, (respectively the Irish Republican Army- IRA, the Euskadi Ta Askatasuna – ETA and the Front de Libération Nationale de la Corse –FLNC) find a peaceful solution? Could they really find it? Or at least how did they deal with this problem? Which policies did they apply against these organizations or how did they react to the cultural and minority demands?

The aim of my project is to try to analyze the Turkish State policies towards Kurdish components of the country under the light of Western European experience, to show similarities and differences, to compare them with the situation in Turkey and to see if these experiences are applicable to our country.

Laurent Vinatier (CV), on the other hand, will start his research at BİLGİ, starting with June 2009.

The title of his proposed study is “Diasporas and Clandestine Networks Between political projects and criminal practices”.

He in his abstract describes the prpoposed content of his research as follows;

“As any transnational framework, a diasporic structure allows some clandestine or even criminal networks to develop. Paradoxically however it appears that those links and relationships, far more discreet than classic transnational networks, are managed by very promising individuals, able both to integrate into the host society and to keep strong affiliation with their community.

It exists three main profiles, assimilated to Weberian Ideal Types.

• The smuggler. Anyone who knows how to cross borders illegally, for humans (especially refugees) or goods.
• The politic. An ideologue or a fighter, eager to continue his/her war abroad.
• The dealer. A businessman specialized in specific products, such as drugs, arms, gem, humans, who has to avoid legal controls.

Obviously, all of those actors do not have a similar relation to criminality, even though all of them are probably maintaining contacts with mafias. Moreover, if considering the case of diasporic affiliation, those individuals have been involved, in a way or another, into community-building processes, that they have to take into account or which they sometimes try to use at their advantage. Lastly, it cannot be excluded that some of them follow a political agenda connected to their homeland.

Reducing those three ideal types to criminal acts may hide more complex sociopolitical realities and hinder effective cases management. This research project proposes to undertake an anthropological and political study of criminal phenomenon within diasporas, in order to specify the interaction between diaspora and criminality.

Cases Studies

Our project aims at materializing those three Ideal Type approaches, taking examples from different diasporas, both old and new ones, constituted in Turkey. An explicit emphasis will be put on Caucasian diasporas, particularly Chechen and Abkhaz, regarding, exclusively, our cases studies (Ideal Type) 2 and 3.

• Ideal Type 1. Smuggling into Europe. How do migrants from Afghanistan manage to enter the European Union from Turkey?
• Ideal Type 2. Islamism in Turkey. Who are the new Chechen Islamists in Turkey and how do they try to engage into world terrorist networks?
• Ideal Type 3. The Abkhaz “mafia”. Beyond legality, what are the main strength of Abkhaz businessmen, living and working in Turkey?

The main question is about the place of those three actors within their diasporic community, to be declined according to the following scheme.

• Working modes of transnational networks. How and how far are diasporic resources used and exploited?
• Reactions within the community. How do those clandestine actors manage reactions emerging from the diaspora?
• Motivations and objectives of the actors. What is the political dimension of those clandestine projects and networks?

This research project offers a great advantage as it opens a worldwide perspective on migration and diasporic exchanges, while considering more particularly this triangular zone between Turkey, Europe and Russia.”