Migrant States, Mobile Economies - Part I: Rethinking the Political in Contemporary Turkey

​8 October 2015 @ 3:00-8:00pm
Merten Hall 1201
George Mason University

Sponsored by Middle East & Islamic Studies, Arab Studies Institute, Global Programs, Political Economy Project, Ali Vural Ak Center for Global Middle East Studies, Global Affairs, Middle East Studies Student Assoc., SPGIA ​

Open to the public 
Pizza & Refreshments Served

 This event brought together scholars from anthropology and political science to interrogate the conceptual relationship between state formation and capital accumulation as related but distinct technologies of power in contemporary Turkey.  From gold traffic between Turkey and Iran and smuggling economies in Turkey’s Kurdistan to the historical development of energy infrastructures and im/mobilities across the Turkey-Syria border, the authors aimed to chronicle the shifting and transnational operations of economic and political power. By exploring states of migrancy as well as economies of mobility in conjunction with state formation and capital accumulation, Migrant States & Mobile Economies aimed to rethink the political in both political economy and political theory through the historiography and ethnography of contemporary Turkey. 
 
 
Schedule -
 
Introductory Remarks 
Huseyin Yilmaz, Co-Director, Ali Vural Ak Center for Global Islamic Studies, GMU
Bassam Haddad, Director of the Middle East Studies Program, GMU
 
Panel 1 
Money in Black or Blood? The Political-Moral in the Smuggling Economies of Turkey’s Kurdistan
Firat Bozcali, Stanford University 
 
Rethinking the History of Turkey's Political Economy: Generating Consent by Infrastructure  
Cihan Tekay, CUNY—The Graduate Center 
 
Panel 2 
Who/What Can Cross the Border? Mobilities and Immobilities at the Turkey-Syria Border 
Elif Sari, Cornell University 
 
Golden Shoes and Tobacco Seats: Scaling Sanctions and Transactions across the Iran/Turkey Border 
Emrah Yildiz, Harvard University 
 
Keynote Address 
Introduction by Huseyin Yilmaz, Co-Director, Ali Vural Ak Center for Global Islamic Studies
 
Seeking Refuge: Lip-Sewing and Truth-Telling 
Banu Bargu, Associate Professor of Politics, The New School for Social Research

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