Ülkücü community in Zeytinburnu: violence around words and encounters

Abstract

This thesis aims at comprehending the dynamics of hostility and violence against Kurds in ülkücü community in Zeytinburnu, Istanbul, through focusing on the violent attacks against Kurds that took place in Zeytinburnu. My analysis depicts the violence as an outcome of both macro relations of nationalist politics and micro dynamics of the ülkücü community and the locale. A discussion of the conventional perspectives on ethnic violence is reassessed to provide an insightful analysis on hostility and violence from the perspective of anthropology focusing on the details of everyday life. This thesis attempts to compare various experiences of nationalism and to reveal how radical nationalism (ülkücülük) differs from them. Ülkücü community is analyzed through their discourses that inscribe certain affects on their bodies, which constitutes them as a distinct political group on the urban space. Then, it is argued that the hostility against the Kurds in Zeytinburnu is constructed through encounters on the local topography. Finally, violence is both conceptualized as an outcome of heterogeneous micro-dynamics of power and as a passionate performance constituting the ülkücü community in certain forms.