Ekin Kurtiç

A growing ethnographic literature attends to maintenance and repair practices in the face of decay and ruination. This article explores the forms of decay that become an integral part of infrastructure maintenance. In Turkey’s Çoruh Basin, hydroelectric dam constructions lead to a concern about the landscape’s erosive character, which requires foresters’ practices of watershed rehabilitation in the uplands to protect the dams against sediment accumulation in the reservoirs. The work of repairing ecologies for the long-term maintenance of dams, I contend, is undergirded by the gradual decay of another maintenance labor—that is, the villagers’ arduous practices of tending landscape through farming and husbandry. Through an ethnographic study of how foresters and villagers experience the landscape under rehabilitation, this article offers a novel anthropological analytical perspective that foregrounds the continuum between maintaining and decaying, tracing the role of labored landscapes in this continuum. I argue that maintenance practices, while intending to counter decay, entail other forms of decay.

Articles in this collection explore the past, present, and future
infrastructural configurations that enable specific forms of state rule and power as well as enact particular political configurations of everyday life by ordinary people and nonhumans. Bringing these two perspectives together – namely, state-making and politics from below – this collection contributes to the study of infrastructural politics as a practice deployed and mobilized not only by the elite to control, oppress, or govern but also by human and nonhuman actors to raise critique, forge collective lives, and reshape the material conditions of production and circulation. Informed by the concepts of infrastructural power and technopolitics, we collectively show that state power and collective politics do not constitute a pre-existing, stable ground upon which material or social infrastructures arise; rather, they emerge, get consolidated, or unsettled in and through the processes of infrastructure design, building, maintenance, or dismantling.

Why is Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan so enthusiastic about planting trees? The answer is more complicated than authoritarian greenwashing. In this Middle East Brief, Ekin Kurtiç argues that the AKP government’s interest in greening Turkey is an attempt to monopolize the environmental agenda and turn environmental activism into a criminal activity. From anti-mining movements in the 1990s to the Gezi Park occupation in the 2010s and the wildfires of the 2020s, Kurtiç charts how community organizers, legal activists, and forestry experts have formed new fronts of opposition against environmental degradation. While state-led initiatives to plant trees throughout Turkey might appear benevolent, Kurtiç argues, in reality AKP environmentalism is rooted in coercion.

What does the experience of living with future submergence entail? How do multiple and intersecting temporalities shape the politics of dam building? This article examines the practices and imaginaries through which its inhabitants currently experience the future submergence of the landscapes they dwell in. I shift attention from anti-dam movements – the topic that critical scholarship has primarily focused on (Baviskar 1995; Ghosh 2006; Sneddon and Fox 2008) – to the everyday lives of those who continue living under the shadow of a planned and already accepted inundation. Dam building engenders an experience of inescapability shaped at the intersection of the past, the present, and the future (Bromber, Féaux de la Croix, and Lange 2014; Evren 2021). The process of waiting for the future submergence, I show, is not an eventless present. It is a time frame during which sacrifice and its politics acquire significance for the town inhabitants in their efforts to navigate the changes in the landscape.

Full text available at https://pomeps.org/living-with-a-future-submergence-dams-temporality-and-sacrifice-in-northeastern-turkey

In this paper we examine the ways in which biodiversity offsets (BDOs) “capture” value. More specifically, we analyze the tools of biodiversity offset creation in terms of the inclusion or exclusion of the values that are invoked in the discursive justification for BDO. We ask: How do BBOP’s primary tools of cost benefit analysis and metric creation constrain what values can actually be captured? What is lost between principles (found in BBOP documentation and justification) and application (using the suggested tools)? To answer these questions, we analyze both the discourse on value and the technical operation of “capturing” these values using metrics and CBA in BDO creation. Through this analysis, we show that the techniques reveal a tension vis-à-vis the discourse of multiple values on the one hand, and the aims of capturing and quantifying these values on the other hand. In other worlds, we find that there exists a discrepancy in the BBOP approach between an all-encompassing attitude towards values and closed-ness of tools of quantification used in the creation of biodiversity metrics or currencies. We approach these tensions as internal contradictions that emerge from BBOP’s own approach and conclude that this fundamental contradiction reflects how BDO proponents deal with and intend to accommodate the critiques against the quantification and capitalization of nature. The discourse of flexibility in fact operates as leverage for accommodating the BDOs, and the calculative practices, in every context. We suggest that without closer attention to these internal contradictions and tensions, we cannot fully comprehend how the practices of capitalization and marketization of nature and non-monetary values operate discursively and practically.

This chapter is an inquiry about the intertwined relationship between the biophysical landscape and infrastructure. It examines dam reservoirs as infrastructures embedded in a landscape in constant flux. More specifically, I trace the history of dams in Turkey through the lenses of concerns over sediment accumulation in dam reservoirs, carried by the river waters over long distances. I first show that the making of hydraulic infrastructures in early republican Turkey was constitutive of both the nation state and the national “natural resources.” This process rendered water a natural resource to be known, controlled, and tapped into by the nation-state, while transforming forests into infrastructures protective of dams from erosion and sedimentation. The entangled history of hydraulic works and forestry further consolidated in the post-WWII era when “developing” the nation-state entangled with the idea of “developing” entire river basins. Lastly, I show that contemporary practices of sediment control in dams on the Çoruh River in Turkey are framed within the novel paradigm of participatory integrated watershed management. All in all, I argue that dam construction is a site where nature conservation converges with infrastructural expansion, taking different forms in historically and politically situated contexts. What sedimentation in dams – that seems to be “hidden” under the curtail of the reservoir – in fact reveals is a politics of hydraulic works where infrastructural and environmental interventions collide.

Although wildfires in Turkey’s Mediterranean forests are not unusual, the ferocity of last summer’s fires sparked new political debates around the issues of government forest management and post-fire restoration. Turkish forestry experts and the public are now questioning conventional solutions promoted by the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), such as planting trees, that promise a quick and convenient recovery—and green the state’s image.

Artesia'da tutuklu bulunan kadın ve çocuklar, sadece bir mağduriyet, baskı ve şiddet hikâyesini gözler önüne sermiyor. Geldikleri ülkede, oradan kaçmak için çıktıkları yolda ve ABD'de gördükleri zulüm yadsınmaması gereken bir gerçek. EKİN KURTİÇ*­ GAYE ÖZPINAR** New Mexico'nun Teksas sınırına 100 mil uzaklıktaki Artesia kasabasına bir pazar akşamüstü vardık. Havaalanından Artesia'ya giden geniş ve karanlık yol dakikalarca dümdüz devam ediyordu. Karanlık yüzünden henüz pek göremediğimiz coğrafyaya dair neredeyse tek ipucumuz ise yol boyunca bizi takip eden

Bu yazı, Kolektif Dergisi'nin 2011 tarihli 10. Sayısında yayınlanmıştır. Türkiye'nin yoğun olarak sanayileşmiş şehirlerinden biri olan Kocaeli'nin " tarım ambarı " Kandıra ilçesi bugünlerde çok önemli bir dönüşüme doğru yol alıyor. Kandıra köylüleri için kaçırılmaz bir " kalkınma " fırsatı olarak sunulan projenin adı Kandıra Gıda İhtisas Organize Sanayi Bölgesi (KGİOSB). Asıl olarak çalışmalarına 2008 yılında başlanan proje, geçtiğimiz yıl ekim ayı itibariyle yaşanan yoğun tartışmalar eşliğinde ilçe gündeminin ilk sıralarına oturdu. OSB kurulması için ilgili kurumlardan alınan onaylardan sonra arazilerin istimlak edilmesi için köylülere tebligatlar gitmeye başladığında 1 Kandıra köylüleri yetkililer tarafından hiç beklenmeyen bir direnç göstermeye başladılar. Bu arazilerin 700 yıldır tarım yapılan verimli topraklar olduğunu savunan köylülerin OSB kurulmasına karşı gösterdikleri mücadele, ekim ayında traktörlerini tarlalarına sürerek gerçekleştirdikleri performatif eylem ile başladı ve çeşitli gösteri, yürüyüş ve toplantılarla devam etti. Fakat geçtiğimiz aylarda bir yandan eylemlerinin en büyük ayağı olarak Ankara'ya Meclis'e giden köylülerin seslerini duyurmakta büyük güçlük çekmeleri, diğer yandan istimlak kararlarına dair hukuki sürecin başlamasıyla beraber toplumsal hareketten hukuki bir mücadeleye doğru bir geçiş yaşanıyor Kandıra'da. Ekim ayından hazirana kadar geçen 8 aylık süreci gözlemlediğimizde küçük köylülük, tarım ve sanayi arasındaki ilişkiyi bizlere yeniden düşündürtecek bir tablo ortaya çıkıyor. Köylüler, kendileri için kaçırılmaz bir " kalkınma " fırsatı olarak sunulan bu projenin meşruiyetine neden inanmıyor ve karşı çıkıyorlar? Hali hazırda yoğun olarak sanayileşmiş bir şehrin tarıma dayalı bir ilçesi olarak kalmış olmak Kandıra'nın çiftçisinin sanayi ile arasındaki ilişkiyi bugüne kadar nasıl şekillendirmiş? Peki ya projenin uygulayıcı ve savunucuları için köylülük, tarım ve sanayi neyi ifade ediyor? Kandıra'da nasıl bir dönüşüm öngörülüyor? KGİOSB henüz başlangıç aşamasında. Arazi kamulaştırma süreci ise beklenilenden uzun sürüyor. Belki henüz bu projenin yöreye neler getireceğine dair kesin konuşmak için çok erken. Fakat bir dönüşüm gerçekleştikten sonra yaşanan sonuçları incelemek kadar, dönüşüm henüz tezahür etmemişken sürecin içindeki aktörler tarafından nasıl kurgulandığına, hangi tepkilerin ortaya çıktığına, meselenin ne üzerinden tartışıldığına ve hangi iktidar ilişkilerinin açığa çıktığına bakmanın da önemli olduğunu düşünüyorum. Yörede bu zamana kadar yapmış olduğum gözlem ve görüşmelerimden 1 2000 yılında çıkarılan 4562 sayılı Organize Sanayi Bölgeleri Kanunu uyarınca OSB'ler özel hukuk tüzek kişiliği olarak tanımlanmış olduğundan adlarına kamulaştırma yapılabilmektedir.

Material infrastructures are technological systems that have long shaped the social, economic, and political life in the Middle East and North Africa. Ranging from historic infrastructures such as the Suez Canal, the Aswan Dam, and the Trans-Arabian Pipeline to contemporary large-scale constructions such as the Istanbul Airport, solar power plants in Morocco, and desalination plants in Saudi Arabia, the making of these systems require assembling material resources, labor, and capital as well as ideologies, desires, and aspirations. While infrastructures promise spatial and social connectivity, modernization, and development, they also engender disconnections and reproduce inequalities. Further, these projects transform the immediate and distant ecologies in drastic ways, often leading to environmental injustices and destruction. Analyzing them provides a unique lens into the transformations of ecologies, economies, societies, and politics in the region. This conference brings together scholars across disciplines to examine the interplay between material infrastructures and daily life in the region.

Articles in this collection explore the past, present, and future infrastructural configurations that enable specific forms of state rule and power as well as enact particular political configurations of everyday life by ordinary people and nonhumans. Bringing these two perspectives together – namely, state-making and politics from below – this collection contributes to the study of infrastructural politics as a practice deployed and mobilized not only by the elite to control, oppress, or govern but also by human and nonhuman actors to raise critique, forge collective lives, and reshape the material conditions of production and circulation. Informed by the concepts of infrastructural power and technopolitics, we collectively show that state power and collective politics do not constitute a pre-existing, stable ground upon which material or social infrastructures arise; rather, they emerge, get consolidated, or unsettled in and through the processes of infrastructure design, building, maintenance, or dismantling.