M.A. Theses

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An ethnography of collaboration :|reflecting on the assemblages of projects for gender mainstreaming in Turkey
(Thesis (M.A.) - Bogazici University. Institute for Graduate Studies in Social Sciences, 2022., 2022.) İmer, Öznur İlke.; Ahıska, Meltem.
This thesis examines the establishment and implementation of gender mainstreaming (GM) projects enabled by the collaboration between the civil society, public and private sector in Turkey and the new dynamics they create. This study, which aims to observe how gender equality is (re)framed in different contexts and how collaboration is practiced, is based on participant observation carried out in GM activities, and in-depth interviews conducted with actors who play an active role in the establishment of this terrain. First, the thesis introduces a normative framework that includes the new development paradigm, the new configuration of capitalism, and project feminism, with a focus on Turkey’s interaction with this framework. In other words, while illuminating the complex, intertwined processes that contribute to the formation of gender mainstreaming, it proposes to analyze this terrain through this framework and emphasizes the specificity of the Turkish case. Then, it discusses the conflicts that have occurred in the contact zones where different actors with different agendas come together as well as the historical background of these conflicts, how they have been resolved, and the new dynamics that have emerged. Finally, the thesis examines the design phase of the projects, the construction of the trainings, and the roles of the trainers while revealing the informal processes that are not included in the public documents but ensure the formation and continuation of the projects. In sum, this thesis follows the movement of gender within the boundaries drawn by a paradigm that has become dominant today and the questions it produces.
Becoming individuals or the endless discovery: the reconstruction of feminine subjectivities through depression narratives in Turkey
(Thesis (M.A.)-Bogazici University. Institute for Graduate Studies in Social Sciences, 2006., 2006.) Bakırcan, Sündüz Şule.; Ahıska, Meltem.
This study aims to analyze the tension between femininity and the psychology discourse in Turkey through women's narratives about the depression. This thesis aims to show that the norm of the individual self employed by the psychology discourse opens a gap between women and the norm of psychologically healthy self. The practices of psychology operate with the premise of closing this gap and of alleviating the women's psychological burden which is caused by the pathriarchal norms. However, this thesis claims that the psychology discourse creates new burdens and conflicts for women with its basic tenet: the individual self. This thesis aims to show these, by analysing how women relate to this norm and the psychology discourse. How they retell their live stories around the norms and definitions of psychology is the main question of this thesis. I argue that the discourse of psychology opens up a new space for women to talk about the unspeakable parts of their lives and through this new space it regulates femininity and/but reconstructs the existing gender norms.
Building a past: Cultural heritage, imagining, and marketing memory in Adana
(Thesis (M.A.) - Bogazici University. Institute for Graduate Studies in the Social Sciences, 2018., 2018.) İlhan, Hikmet.; Ahıska, Meltem.; Gökarıksel, Saygun.
This thesis examines the role of historical Adana Tepebağ houses in the imagination of social memory and cultural heritage by exploring how the houses are marketed as both emotional instruments and economic investments. It analyzes the functions of places and materiality by treating Tepebağ houses as material traces of the past where different narratives unfold. My research is based on interviews I conducted with the residents of Tepebağ neighborhood and with state officials in charge of the Culture Street Project in 2017. I pay special attention to the dynamic interrelation between personal and local narratives, and imagination and materiality. My thesis will contribute to the scholarship on history and place memory by showing how place memory functions as a destabilizing or supplementary tool against circulated narratives in social memory and historical accounts.
Çatom project: field supervisors in between the state and the social
(Thesis (M.A.)-Bogazici University. Institute for Graduate Studies in Social Sciences, 2004., 2004.) Sözer, Hande.; Ahıska, Meltem.
The aim of this study is to critically reflect on ÇATOM Project as a social development project in Southeastern Anatolia. Firstly, I have elaborated modes of operations of global development discourse. Secondly, I have analyzed ÇATOM discourse as a developmental mode of dealing with the social in the region by particular portrayals and technologies. Lastly, with a focus on ÇATOM field supervisor as a discursively constructed subject-position situated inbetween the state and the social, I have elucidated their accounts and materialization stories of the project's discourse, based on the fieldwork conducted in October 2002 and in May 2003, at one of the provinces of Southeastern Anatolia.
Circular entrapment :|tracing the (in)formational contours of F-type high security prisons
(Thesis (M.A.) - Bogazici University. Institute for Graduate Studies in the Social Sciences, 2019., 2019.) Açıkalın, Mesut.; Ahıska, Meltem.
This thesis is a multilayered inquiry on the phenomenon of isolation; isolation understood as a distinct situation and sense of (un)reality that stems from an obsessive dictum of its ontological impossibility as the sole condition of possibility. The F-type High Security Prison, together with the history of penal transformation that led to its formation, is the second central domain of concern. Taking the experience of community as the sole possible (un)ground(ing) of experience, and as an always already resistance to isolation, the thesis first aims to rethink the recent (hi)stories of penal transformation of Turkey in tandem with both antagonistic and cooperative forces that (are) in-formed (through) it. Situating the F-type Prison on the maxim of abstraction that both includes and exceeds disciplinary concerns over the body, it then tries to reimagine the general terrain of the prison as a scenery instituted by a fictional medium which strategically dictates an insistent denial of its own ontological impossibility. Lastly, the thesis attempts to account for the circular entrapment of experience and community that seemingly occurs when faced with this fictional medium enforced as the dictum and condition of existence. Its data composed by participant observations, conversations with prisoners and ex-prisoners, self-reflections, and other ethnographical data, the thesis tries to conceive and explore the field as a community exposed.
‘Developing’ the governance of childhood: The (In)compatibility of protection and punishment in juvenile courts
(Thesis (M.A.) - Bogazici University. Institute for Graduate Studies in the Social Sciences, 2016., 2016.) Konuk, Deniz Pınar.; Ahıska, Meltem.
This thesis aims to analyze the changing discourses and practices of juvenile courts in Turkey with the enactment of the Child Protection Law from a critical legal perspective. By problematizing this denoted ‘development’ in child law, the study conveys the relationship between law’s calculated prospective and unintended impacts. It begins with tracing how children are constituted as particular governable subjects and how a legal reform concerning them relates to Turkey’s performance of progression in larger scales. Then, it examines the Child Protection Law as a governmental intervention which introduces novel epistemologico-juridical emphasis in reconfiguring the child issue. The thesis further maps the entanglement of this intervention with the legal processes that it aims to regulate which sparks off conflictual, ambiguous and competing forms of judgment. As the research shows, means of technical management and vocation of protection increases along with the intensified punitive apparatuses of juvenile courts. To this end, the emerging breaches and the incompatible mixture of legal discourses and practices are addressed as productive sites that (re)forms the ensemble of distinct power modalities. The thesis argues that focusing on the ways in which law works enable to see the articulation of punishment and protection in juvenile justice system as law’s compatible responses. In relation to this, and on broader level, the study demonstrates the transactional zones and reciprocal alliance between law’s sovereign and disciplinary effects in Turkey’s juvenile courts.
Education for "motherhood": a case study on the subjectivities of the women participating in the mother-child education program
(Thesis (M.A.)-Bogazici University. Institute for Graduate Studies in Social Sciences, 2009., 2009.) Bayraktar, Sevi.; Ahıska, Meltem.
This study aims to analyze the subjectivity formations of the urban to rural migrant women who are subjected to the education programs on ‘motherhood’. Among the variety of Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) the focus of this study is on the Mother-Child Education Program (AÇEP) of the Mother-Child Education Foundation (AÇEV), which is a private foundation working with the state institutions collaboratively. In this regard, this thesis examines the operations of the ‘Education for Motherhood’ Program in one of the politically marginalized and economically deprived areas of stanbul, the Gazi neighborhood, and tries to comprehend its ‘reflections’ in everyday life experiences of the women with whom the actors of state and civil society attempted to make ‘proper’ mothers. In this process, through a fantasy of modern, middle-class womanhood, as the model of ‘proper’ mothering, the working class women living in the Gazi neighborhood are alienated to their class positions, ethnic identities and the ways of gender-based oppression within the patriarchal social structure. In fact, this study tries to display how power operates in the ‘gap’ between the fantasy of middle-class nuclear family and the actuality of the everyday life conditions of the marginalized inhabitants of the Gazi neighborhood. To this extent, while women become the agents of the state at home and the mediators of its operations in the neighborhood they use various "tactics" around this ‘gap’ and play with different subject positions to have "agency" in the face of the power-holder actors both in the private and the public spaces.
Historical and political encounters with the nonhuman: Habitat II, the crisis of cohabitation, and the wit(h)nessing dogs
(Thesis (M.A.) - Bogazici University. Institute for Graduate Studies in the Social Sciences, 2017., 2017.) Tarak, Eda.; Ahıska, Meltem.
This research addresses a set of questions regarding the agency of dogs, particularly the memory that the stray dogs of Istanbul may have historically performed during a specific episode of crisis and dislocation in the city — and how thinking of dogs as witnesses can help us in understanding wider social and political issues of displacement, inequality, exclusion and democracy. The thesis focuses on the weeks leading up to Habitat II: The Second United Nations Conference on Human Settlements, when the Istanbul local authorities, in preparation for the conference, decided to get rid of the stray dogs living on the European side of the city by poisoning them. The urge for national progress and the discourse of humanism that are manifested in the modernist interventions of Habitat II preparations are problematized. In the course of this research, I met participants from the conference organization who were involved in the ecological and political discussions surrounding it. I also looked at communities who were pushed out of the city center during the same period, including the “Saturday Mothers” and the transgender community. Human histories are always entangled with the histories of nonhumans. I tried to lay out a potentiality to think, recall, remember and wit(h)ness with the nonhuman. I argued that this potentiality for wit(h)nessing did already reverberate in the ways that we cohabit the Earth and dwell in neighborhoods. From this opening, I was able to frame the city space and its habitants differently in their plural relationality, in their ability to care and respond.
Human enterprise of global capitalism and the golden collars: producing the producer
(Thesis (M.S.)-Bogazici University. Institute for Graduate Studies in Science and Engineering, 2006., 2006.) Zeybek, Sezai Ozan.; Ahıska, Meltem.
This thesis is about the production of a specific kind of producer, i.e., "golden collars". Golden collars are the most valuable production factor in the contemporary capitalism; they are mostly assigned to tasks that involve innovation, information generation and analysis. In this regard, their productivity is the primary concern of firms, since golden collars create the main comparative advantage in the global competition. In the scope of this study, production denotes not the production of commodities but the production of golden collar subjectivities: their aspirations, desires, bodies, and performances. In this regard, this study focuses on the discursive formation within which the norms of effectiveness, self-development and productivity are asserted and how through these norms a space is opened up in which golden collars in Istanbul make claims regarding "them" and "us"; the West and theEast respectively. There in, work is a realm of innumerable disciplinary techniques targeting thetime, the body, emotions, and the mind-settings of golden collars; but these disciplines in turn produce specific hierarchies, differentiations, distinctions, and exclusions in which golden collars invest.
Listening to possible worlds :|the 2019 Istanbul feminist night March and its acoustic conflicts
(Thesis (M.A.) - Bogazici University. Institute for Graduate Studies in the Social Sciences, 2021., 2021.) Akdemir, Ege.; Ahıska, Meltem.
This thesis is about the relationship between sound and power. It takes the 2019 Istanbul Feminist Night March as a case study where women participants were accused of protesting the sound of the call to prayer that was broadcast during their annual Women’s Day demonstration. This allegation was later propagated and substantiated by the President via an audiovisual video collage that he displayed during his rally. Defining this series of events as acoustic conflicts, the thesis contributes to the argument that the soundscape of a nation is a gendered site of power on three main axes. First, it exhibits the political power of the silenced voices and sounds of women through examining the acoustic atmosphere of feminist night marches and other feminine-soundscapes; second, it reveals how the current gendered power regime of the government operates over the soundscape of the nation by untangling the President’s allegation towards women protestors; and third, it offers an analysis about how the contemporary conditions of the production and circulation of audiovisual representations affect social and political day-to-day listening practices via a discursive and audiovisual analysis of the video collage displayed by the President. Based on theories of feminism, aesthetics, affect, and sound studies, and through ethnographic fieldwork and media analysis, the thesis brings these three axes together around the question: how the relationship between sound and power contributes to and challenges the hierarchical sensory configuration of the patriarchal social system.
Living with the specters of the past: an insight into identity, subjectivity, and memory in Trabzon
(Thesis (M.A.) - Bogazici University. Institute for Graduate Studies in the Social Sciences, 2013., 2013.) Sağlam, Erol.; Ahıska, Meltem.
This thesis aims at comprehending the dynamics of identity in Romeika-speaking locals of Akyayla, Trabzon, through focusing on the status of Romeika as a living memory. My analysis depicts the language as a private and intimate element of communal identity that fuels the investment in and performance of Turkishness in the area. Public private discussion is reassessed to understand the complexities of the (in)visibility of Romeika in the public sphere. This research also touches upon how Romeika-speaking locals relate to official discourses and other communities who raise political demands that are based-on their socio-cultural distinctions. The staunch allegiance of locals to nationalist ideals is analyzed in relation to their haunting heritage and memories. Finally, dynamics of local identity and how it affected by the continuity of Romeika is discussed in relation to psychoanalytic theory to get a better grasp of subjectivity, identity, and remembrance in Akyayla.
Memory as representation/memory as experience: a study on Hatırla Sevgili through the narratives of leftists’ children in Turkey
(Thesis (M.A.)-Bogazici University. Institute for Graduate Studies in Social Sciences, 2009., 2009.) Güzel, Zeynep.; Ahıska, Meltem.
This study aims to analyze the experience(s) of leftists’ children through their narratives related to political past of Turkey and the television serial Hatırla Sevgili. To this end, in this thesis, within the context of 12 September 1980 military coup, the concept of individual memory is compared with the representation of the political past of Turkey in Hatırla Sevgili. The method of this study is based on narrative analysis and analysis of filmic representation. Secondly, this study examines the ways in which the leftists’ identity is characterized as innocent through the narratives of leftists themselves and by the narration of Hatırla Sevgili. Accordingly it is argued that this projection works as a dominant discourse, which prevents the other possibilities of articulations and interpretations on the same issue that would contribute to the analysis of the past. Finally, this study aims to illustrate how the experience(s) of leftists’ children have the potential of subverting the dominant narratives on the political past of Turkey.
Militarized medical discourse on homosexuality and hegemonic masculinity in Turkey
(Thesis (M.A.)-Bogazici University. Institute for Graduate Studies in Social Sciences, 2007., 2007.) Başaran, Oyman.; Ahıska, Meltem.
This thesis aims to analyze the militarized medical inspections and the bureaucratic procedures underwent by gay men, who ask to be exempt from military service, in order to understand the relationship between the production of “homosexual” bodies that are feminized in the militarized medical discourse and that of “normal” bodies in military service. It posits the question of the exclusion of gay men from military service in a broader context and elaborates on the production of national male bodies as “sovereigns” in the current political and gender regime. This regime requires the production and exclusion of specific forms of femininity, which are assumed to be embodied in the “ineligible” bodies of women and gay men. In this way, a certain form of masculinity is normalized and hegemonized, and the military remains one of the main institutions generating gender and sexual differences in Turkey. By conceptualizing “masculine/feminine” binary opposition and stereotype of the “homosexual” as analytical tools, the structural relationship between the dynamics of male homosocial bonding and technologies and procedures used in the medical inspections in the production of a particular femininity/homosexuality is scrutinized. Gay men are attached to the identity of “homosexual” and by “purifying” the army from homosexuals who can threaten the order, the military can preserve its appearance as a community composed of “real” men.
Reconstituting the youth as a political category and neo-liberal reason: The case of Community Volunteers Foundation
(Thesis (M.A.)-Bogazici University. Institute for Graduate Studies in the Social Sciences, 2010., 2010.) Küçükören, Gülgün.; Ahıska, Meltem.
In an effort to make sense of the new currents in civil society activities in Turkey, this study strove to put a magnifier on one of the biggest youth organizations, which works with a mission of youth empowerment, Community Volunteers Foundation (TOG). Within the general framework of neo-liberal transformation that Turkey has been undergoing since 1980s, the new citizenship models offered by civil society organizations were scrutinized. Neo-liberalism was treated as a “governmental regime” instead of an ideology. The alleged distinction between the state, the private sector and the civil society was interrogated. It was claimed that reconstitution of the youth as a political category with shared characteristics, problems and aspirations, make the government of the youth at a distance possible. Autonomization and responsibilization were regarded as the basic technologies of citizenship which are used simultaneously. Emergence of the new myth of ‘young active citizen’ was pointed out within the political and social spheres whose boundaries are being constantly discursively redrawn. A special emphasis was put on the tension between the super-imposed synthetic morality and subsequent norms and principles by the foundation on the one hand, and existing norms and values entrenched in the local on the other hand.
Remembering the 1992-95 war in Bosnia and Herzegovina: The case of Sarajevo Roses
(Thesis (M.A.)-Bogazici University. Institute for Graduate Studies in Social Sciences, 2004., 2004.) Imamovic, Azra.; Ahıska, Meltem.
This work explores acts of public memory and analyzes commemoration practices surrounding the Sarajevo Roses, shell holes filled with red paint located in the streets of Sarajevo, with additional reference to the commemoration practices in Potocari (Srebrenica) and Kovaci (Sarajevo). The work looks at how historical discourse intermingles, clashes and merges with the memory-work at the commemoration sites. The research is therefore based on exploration of commemoration sites and memories that current residents of Sarajevo have in relation to the Sarajevo Roses. The analysis of the memory work point to a difficulty in appropriation of the memories related to Sarajevo Roses, i.e. the absence of any group who could claim them in their recollection of war memories.
Representing and performing Laz identity ''this is not a rebel song!''
(Thesis (M.A.) - Bogazici University. Institute for Graduate Studies in Social Sciences, 2011., 2011.) Taşkın, Nilüfer.; Ahıska, Meltem.
This study examines the process by which second generation Laz migrants have reappropriated Laz identity through music and dance performances held in the major metropolitan cities of twenty first century Turkey. The relevant cultural performances are interpreted as a response to repercussions of Turkey’s ‘modernization project’ and its related cultural policies. Conceptualizing the performances, particularly through language, music and dance, this thesis tries to understand how the Laz experience respond to this ‘modernization’. Another significant concern of this study is to analyze how Lazness is defined and constructed within mainstream discourses. As a part of this, the crucial role of the Laz middle class position is discussed. In addition, the recent wave of ‘multiculturalist discourse’ provides a convenient conceptual framework for positioning the Laz as the “good citizens” of contemporary Turkey. Finally, the so-called ‘oppositional stance’ of both the performances and the constructed Laz identity are criticized with consideration given to their marketability and political moderation.
The local culture of in vitro fertilization in Turkey: women's narratives of "test-tube baby" technologies
(Thesis (M.A.)-Bogazici University. Institute for Graduate Studies in Social Sciences, 2009., 2009.) Mutlu, Burcu.; Ahıska, Meltem.
This study aims to analyze the complex relationship between women and testtube baby technologies in Turkey through women’s narratives of In Vitro Fertilization (IVF). This study focuses on the ways in which how these global biomedical technologies are produced, practiced, experienced and narrativized within the local context of Turkey. In this study, these processes are discussed over the three basic interrelated points. Firstly, the major social processes and actors that converge to produce “the local culture” of IVF in Turkey are examined. It is mainly focused on the legal, religious, economic and popular conditions of its production, through which IVF is defined as a medical treatment, infertility is described as a medical disease and the couple is constructed as a patient unit of IVF. By examining the local production of testtube baby technology in Turkey, this study aims to reveal that power relations are at stake in the practice of science and medicine. Secondly, it is discussed how gender is at play in the practice of test-tube baby technologies by focusing on the construction of “the couple” within the field of IVF and women’s narratives of “becoming a couple” in this process. Finally, the discourse of hope surrounding the world of IVF is problematized. Although through hope discourse test-tube baby technology is represented as a miracle treatment for “infertile” couples, women’s narratives of IVF reveal quite different picture of IVF. This study claims that women’s narratives shed light on the ignored aspects of their test-tube baby experiences.
The lost lullaby and other stories about being an Armenian in Turkey
(Thesis (M.A.)-Bogazici University. Institute for Graduate Studies in Social Sciences, 2004., 2004.) Bilal, Melissa.; Ahıska, Meltem.
This thesis tries to understand the experience of being an Armenian in Turkey today. It focuses on lullabies as a gendered medium of transmitting memories. By analyzing the change in the contexts within which lullabies are transmitted today, it argues that displacement and loss are two interrelated experiences shaping the sense of being an Armenian in Turkey. By conceptualizing these experiences as tools for understanding the cultural politics in Turkey, liberal perspective of multiculturalism is criticized in this thesis. It is argued that such a perspective dwells on the idea of dead cultures since it cuts the link between the past and the present with regard to the existence of different cultures in Anatolia and its destruction.In a context where the Armenian culture is represented as detached from its lived experiences and memory, it becomes impossible to share the grandmothers' stories in the public sphere and the loss itself becomes the experience of Armenianness. Young Armenians in Istanbul today, in their search for the Armenian identity, develop a certain way of belonging to the space and culture that is shaped very much by the experience of loss.
Visual economies of disaster: The circulation of an image of the Van earthquake
(Thesis (M.A.) - Bogazici University. Institute for Graduate Studies in the Social Sciences, 2017., 2017.) Kaya, Funda.; Ahıska, Meltem.
This thesis focuses on the production and circulation of an earthquake victim’s photograph in order to see the processes behind becoming a cultural icon, a symbol of a disaster and an object of pain. It follows the material trajectory of the image that belongs to a 13-year-old victim of the Van Earthquake (2011) in different spaces and temporalities; such as in mainstream print media, in award ceremonies, in political ceremonies and in outdoor campaigns. By following Yunus’ photograph, this thesis provides insights on the economy of visuality, dynamics of news production, and formation of news discourses through which, I problematize the formation of hegemonic visual regime of Turkey for disasters. Throughout the thesis, social aspects of disasters, objectivity claims of the photographic medium, the realist gaze, politics of affect, unity of nation via discursive formations, politics of pose, production of idealized victims, framing, politics of pity and humanitarian discourse are discussed to historicize the particular event. The thesis also includes a semi structured in-depth interview with the photojournalist who took the photograph of Yunus, to reveal the production processes in journalism field. In addition, based on the archival data from mainstream national newspapers, an elaborative discourse analysis is held to locate the image in the disasters news discourse. I argue that Yunus’s image as an object of pain is constructed as a product of deeply colonial gaze and as an ahistorical depoliticized victim category, and this in return had material effects on the victim’s family.
Voice as a space of memory and sonorous object in the dengbêj tradition
(Thesis (M.A.) - Bogazici University. Institute for Graduate Studies in the Social Sciences, 2019., 2019.) Salık, Dilan.; Ahıska, Meltem.
Voice as a Space of Memory and Sonorous Object in the Dengbêj Tradition This thesis studies the dengbêj tradition as a space of memory where alternative interpretations of the past and present, acoustic communication of different voices and female singing voices dwell in. This study initially argues that dengbêjs’ kilams include rich historical contents by addressing that kilams have been regarded as alternative narratives bearing different interpretations of the past. Secondly, it has been pointed out that dengbêjs’ voices embody a kind of acoustic language that is beyond a certain system of language. Each dengbêj possesses her/his unique timbre; therefore, their singing voices are explicated as sonorous objects that introduce dengbêjs as unique beings. Lastly, this study addresses that women dengbêjs create their public spheres through a reciprocal communication of different female singing voices. Women dengbêjs reconceptualize public spheres within which they re-establish their positions in the society by showing solidarity among women and resisting against the double oppression based on the pressure of the patriarchal Kurdish society and the politics of denial. Methodologically, this thesis is composed of textual analyses, semi-structured and unstructured interviews, and sociological observations. Existing studies on the dengbêj tradition usually consist of textual analyses focusing on the semantic substance of kilams. At that point, this thesis aims to contribute to these studies by pointing dengbêjs’ voices as a sonorous object that manifests the performer as a unique being.

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