Gaining Freedoms: Claiming Space in Istanbul and Berlin by Berna Turam (review)

In a time when ethnographic methods have come under growing scrutiny in sociology, we read ethnographies with special care. Berna Turam increases the initial level of intrigue with a bold opening argument: "Urban space takes on the role of generating power and change and demanding liberties when democracies weaken in relation to the freedoms and rights of minorities, the discontents, oppositional political forces" (14). Furthermore, Turam makes this argument not by looking at the conflicts between Muslim and secular(ist) actors, which has been a quite fashionable approach in the analyses of Turkish politics, but by focusing on the cleavages among the secular locals as well. Yes, the book is certainly interesting, especially for the urban sociologists, political sociologists, and social movements scholars.

It is a difficult task to conduct comparative research that seeks to identify the fault lines in contested urban sites. In this case, these sites are an upper-middle-class neighborhood in Istanbul (Tes¸vikiye), a university campus again in Istanbul (nicknamed Freedom University), and one of the hip/former working-class-migrant neighborhoods of Berlin (Kreuzberg). Two waves of protest motivate the research in these sites: the Republican marches (2007) and the Gezi protests (2013). While both of the protests had an anti-government orientation, the former was a secular nationalist protest that split the opposition, and the latter united that opposition on the issue of rights. Therefore, these protests occur in two different times across two different fault lines. Even though these protests do not take center stage, the discussions that emerged in their aftermath haunt the ethnographer, who explores the conflict in the contested spaces of urban everyday life. The underlying question remains: How do we explain the emergence of new alliances that we witnessed in the Gezi protests when all political indicators signaled growing polarization just a few years ago?

Within these three sites, the book focuses on identifying a possible explanation. The most commonly cited fact about the Gezi protesters was that a large portion of these protesters were educated youth. This being the case, let's focus on the discussion that Gaining Freedoms provides on campus fault lines. One of these fault lines can be found at a campus that is famous for its liberal culture and quite successful in negotiating autonomy from the pressure of the state. For those who are familiar with the Turkish university scene, it is quite easy to guess where the fieldwork took place. The description of events regarding the headscarf ban echoes the growing tensions reflected in the Republican marches, "a split within the secular left," as the book suggests. Growing polarization between anti- and pro-scarf faculty shakes the liberal tradition of the university and reinforces other social divides, such as disciplinary boundaries and class differences. Campus gates no longer provide a boundary for "free space" of political activism à la Francesca Polletta, but become a reflection of the contention within. In a few years, this picture changes quite radically. In the second part of the analysis, the secular left on campus unites in the face of growing governmental pressure on campuses to defend the rights and freedoms, which befits the tradition of the Freedom University. Alliances are formed on the eve of the Gezi protests.

As can be seen in the example above, the book uses the Muslim-secular dichotomy to refute the very same dichotomy and shows the alternative splits and alliances to make better sense of political interactions and the role of the space. However, in doing so, it still suffers from following the initial dichotomy to explain the political contestations that are transformed only at a later stage. In this period, in major campuses in Turkey, there are also controversies over cafeterias, dorms, and tuition that are more class based or reflect different identity contestations. Campuses like Freedom University have multiple fault lines that highlight the importance of different spaces on campus, and multiple student groups contest these spaces for different...