The Drug Business as a Field of Struggle in Turkey

ABSTRACT

The organization of the street-level drug business has been a central concern of many contemporary urban crime ethnographies in the West; however, it has never been researched in Turkey. Addressing the literature gap, this article examines the methods of a local drug enterprise in Ankara through offender-based research. Ethnographic data demonstrates that the local drug trade tends to be structured as a field of struggle in which agents make affective investments and wrestle for material and symbolic rewards, characterized by fast cash and notoriety. Resultantly, two main ranks emerge, of drug enterprise owners and dealers/lookouts. Enterprise owners journey far in their criminal trajectories and thus hold a higher level of street capital dependent on their prestige and infamous reputations. However, lookouts consist of lower-class, disadvantaged youths lacking any experience aside from daring and physical prowess. Their search for recognition and an ethos of criminal cultural consumerism create a potential source of conflict and therefore nourishes the dynamism of the field. Unless the marginalized youths’ such psychosocial dynamics are considered, anti-drug policies will go wide of the mark due to their ignorance.

Disclosure

This paper has not been published elsewhere, nor do the authors have a conflict of interest. Nor has it been submitted simultaneously for publication elsewhere.

Notes

¹ The Kurdistan Workers’ Party represents a politico-military dimension of the Kurdish liberation question and is officially declared a terrorist organization by the Turkish state. Particularly post-1980s, the Kurdish issue has become a unique political problem in Turkey, with the PKK undertaking a central role (Yeğen 2007).

² http://www.tuik.gov.tr/UstMenu.do?metod=temelist (retrieved 15/10/2019). This number was 5.1 million in 2014 when the study was conducted. See http://eng.ankara.gov.tr/geography-and-demographics (retrieved 03/03/2016).

³ http://www.ankara.gov.tr/nufus-ve-idari-durum (retrieved 04/12/2019).

⁴ https://www.altindag.bel.tr/#!mahalle_muhtar (retrieved 5/12/2019).

⁵ The gatekeeper was allowed to talk freely using their own concepts and terminology, with the questions focused on the organization and operation of the drug trade, how he became involved in the business and performed its economic relations. I conducted interviews with him more than once, with the length of these varying depending on the conditions at the field site. Recorded conversations were later transcribed verbatim into Turkish; transcripts were coded and translated into English where necessary.

⁶ Bonzai was publicly disputed to have adverse, lethal effects on its users following a series of deaths at the time. The incidents had successively broad repercussions in the press. See https://www.aa.com.tr/en/turkey/turkey-grapples-with-bonzai-drug-phenomenon/144375 and https://www.dailysabah.com/investigations/2018/11/03/so-called-organic-drug-responsible-for-most-drug-related-deaths-in-turkey (retrieved 15/09/2019). Furthermore, for a medical article written on its deadly consequences, see Aksel et al. (2015).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Allcorn Box Memorial fund in the University of Kent at Canterbury in 2014.

Notes on contributors

Boran Ali Mercan

Boran Ali Mercan, completed MSc Social and Political Theory in Birkbeck, University of London. He then received his PhD in Sociology from the University of Kent at Canterbury. He is Research Fellow in the Faculty of Political Science in Ankara University