Political twists and turns in left-behind places: reactions of an extractive heartland to changing state strategies

ABSTRACT

This paper investigates the twists and turns that characterise the political reactions of some ‘left-behind’ places. Offering a situated, context-sensitive and temporal analysis of Turkey’s once extractive heartland, we unveil a volatile and particularly fragile political terrain and throw light on its contingency on changing modes of state intervention and power-laden strategies responsive to disaffection and discontent. We suggest that this power-laden mechanism that plays down, if not eradicates, the ability of places to transform and thrive precludes conceptions that invariably position left-behind places as ‘vengeful’ and invites dynamic and context-sensitive comprehensions of discontent and agential and processual reconceptions of left-behindness.

KEYWORDS:

• left-behind places
• geographies of discontent
• uneven development
• neoliberalisation
• state spatial strategies
• modalities of power
• territorial politics

JEL:

• F6
• R58

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

The article was written during Özatağan's visiting fellowship at Newcastle University, Centre for Urban and Regional Research (CURDS), funded by the Council for at Risk Academics and the Institute of International Education's Scholar Rescue Fund (2021-2023). Earlier versions of the paper were presented at a CURDS internal seminar and at the 6th Global Conference on Economic Geography, 7-10 June 2022, Dublin, Ireland. We thank our colleagues who participated in these sessions for their thought-provoking questions and comments, including Danny MacKinnon, Andy Pike, Kean Fan Lim and Emma Ormerod. We also appreciate the careful reading and constructive comments of the three referees and the guest editors, from which the paper benefitted greatly. Any errors that remain lie entirely with the authors.

DISCLOSURE STATEMENT

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. Of the four workshops carried out, this paper draws on the qualitative data derived from the first workshop only.

2. In compliance with the larger project’s strict compliance with national and international ethical guidelines (approved by the main applicant), study participants were informed about the purpose, methods and possible uses of the research and asked to provide verbal consent before participating in the workshop, focus groups and interviews. Any information on the identity and the affiliation of the study participants has been anonymised and coded by ascribing a pseudonym to each participant that reflects the organisation they represent and their position in the institution.

3. The quotations presented in this paper have not been previously published.

4. The locality ranked 86th among 872 settlements in the country in terms of socio-economic development. Unemployment rose to 9.13% in 2004, slightly below national average (10.8%), placing it 167th in rank out of 872 settlements in the country (Dinçer & Özarslan, 2004).

5. Authors’ own calculation based on data from www.tuik.gov.tr

Additional information

Funding

This study was supported by Joint Programming Initiative Urban Europe [grant number 693443].