Neo(liberal) citizens of Europe: politics, scales, and visibilities of environmental citizenship in contemporary Turkey

Abstract

The aim of this article is to critically interrogate articulations of environmental citizenship in contemporary Turkey. Specifically, I analyse articulations of environmental citizenship through citizen and activist narratives taken from interviews and focus group discussions. I argue that first, scalar focus on local spaces and individuated responsibility for action that emerge from the narratives are crucial to understand future environmental politics and possibilities in this context. Invoking recent discussions related to the politics and performativities of scale, in particular, allows consideration of the politics of visibility and other consequences of these scalar foci. Second, themes from narrative analysis show key convergences with Europeanization- and neoliberalization-related discourses and shifts. The resonance and overlap between these discourses and practices is significant, particularly as it shows citizen receptivity towards broader ideas related to increased citizen responsibility. As such, the research contributes to efforts to move away from theorization of processes such as neoliberalism as top-down, instead enabling examination of ways that these ideals are taken up, expressed, and refashioned by everyday citizens. The third argument that emerges from the analysis, following from the first two, is the need to theorize power more fully in discussions of environmental citizenship. Bridging with neoliberalism discussions is one possible way to move such a project forward.

Keywords:

• subjectivity
• neoliberal
• citizenship
• scale
• environmental citizenship

Acknowledgements

My sincere thanks to Deniz Özesmi-Yildiz for research assistance, and to Becky Mansfield and Melissa Wright for organizing on sessions on Neoliberal Citizenship at the Association of American Geographers annual meetings in Chicago. My appreciation also goes to James McCarthy, Jamie Peck, and several anonymous reviewers for comments on earlier drafts of this paper, and also to NSF ADVANCE, Paul Robbins, and the Department of Geography at the University of Arizona for allowing me to present this as a work in progress. Funding for this research was generously provided by the Graduate School and the European Union Center of Excellence at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Notes

 1. The term neoliberalism commonly operates as shorthand for the ideologies, networks, and institutions that further implementation of market-oriented politics. This often includes dismantling of state institutions, marketization and commodification of goods and services, or devolution of governance (see Peck and Tickell 2002 for an overview).

 2. For overview on issues and challenges related to civil society in Turkey, including data related to relatively low levels of formal participation in civil society organizations generally, see Bikmen and Meydanoğlu (2006). They cite the figure that less than 6000 per every 100,000 citizens in Turkey are registered in formal associations or civil society organizations.

 3. İzci (2005) estimates that over €23 million have been granted for environmental capacity building in Turkey as part of the accession process.

 4. Scale debates have been central to political ecology studies (see Paulson and Gezon 2005, Neumann 2009), as well as debates in geography more generally (e.g. Delaney and Leitner 1997). Most notably, scholarship on this issue has focused on ways that certain geographic scales are defined and invoked (e.g. local, national, regional, global) as well as ways that scales are deployed for particular ends (e.g. invoking the idea of ‘global environmental issues,’ Taylor and Buttel 1992, or similar discussion in McCarthy 2005a). Gabrielson argues that scalar issues constitute a central contribution of environmental citizenship debates to theories of citizenship generally.

 5. With respect to recent environmental policy in Turkey, there has been some attention to the policies of the ruling AK party, but this also remains an important topic for consideration. Among those who have considered this issue, Duru (2006) suggests that under AK party rule, there have been significant policy changes in line with the EU accession process, and a fair degree of ecological discourse among party representatives during the election phase, but there has been less focus on policy implementation. Further, he suggests that many policies of the current government would be best characterized as market-oriented, for instance, with examples of the government opening forests or coastal areas to private investment (see also Ignatow 2005).

 6. My exploration of environmental citizenship here relies on narrative analysis to explore ideas of responsibility for environmental care as well as notions of what environmental issues and solutions might be. This examination thus offers only a partial lens on how people may understand themselves, and others, as ‘environmental subjects/citizens.’ A broader theoretical discussion about the links between narrative and subjectivity is beyond the scope of this paper. However, Bickerstaff et al. (2008), Szerszynski (2005), and Linnros (2001) provide examples of studies that use focus groups to query environmental narratives, perceptions, and values, while Yeh (2007) and Secor (2004) provide examples of works that engage narrative analysis to consider issues of identity, subjectivity, and citizenship.

 7. The analysis draws on interviews with activists and non-governmental organizations in all locations (carried out in 2005 and 2007), and also from nine focus groups conducted in three different cities of Turkey (Istanbul, and Diyarbakır and Şanlıurfa in the southeast). Focus groups in Istanbul were conducted through the Sosyal Araştırma Merkezi (SAM), and research assistants moderated those conducted elsewhere. Interviews and focus groups were held in urban areas, with the exception of two focus groups and several interviews that were conducted in rural areas around Şanlıurfa. Participants in Istanbul were drawn from the SAM database of over 10,000 people living and working in Istanbul. One focus group was held with women, and two with men (all participants were aged 20–40 years). Participants in the southeast region were drawn primarily from NGOs and informal social networks (with a slightly broader age distribution, aged 18–60 years).

 8. In Istanbul, the focus group participants were strangers, while for the focus groups in the southeast participants were more likely to know each other. This is because the groups in the southeast were organized though NGOs operating in these cities, as well as through social networks (see Note 6). The focus groups in Diyarbarkır were organized through a women's group that works on economic opportunities, through an NGO focused on new migrants who moved to the city (largely from rural mountainous areas in the southeast, primarily as a direct result of the Kurdish conflict and associated violence in the region), and the third included environmental NGO participants. The focus groups in Urfa were organized through a network of employees at a restaurant, with a group of men in a coffee shop, and through neighbourhood networks in rural villages.

 9. The inclusion of sites in the southeast is important because this region is relatively understudied, because it is a region of intense interest for the EU, and also given the region's low indicators of civil society activism and development. The Kurdish context in the southeast and other key geographic differences are also important. For instance, many more participants in the southeast tied environmental inaction to the context of war, illiteracy, and other problems of underdevelopment.

10. Environmental citizenship connotes more responsibilities and rights vis-à-vis the environment, including attention to state–society relations, while subjectivity connotes more questions of identity and sense of self in relation to the environment.

11. Others have waged this critique (e.g. Robbins 2006). Arguably, Agrawal's formulation leaves room for such issues, but this has not been a focus of work on environmental subjectivity to date. As such, a disconnect exists between this emergent literature and other works on green governmentalities.

12. This can also be read as consistent with Ignatow's (2006) argument that we need to attend more to the multidimensionality of environmental concerns (e.g. based on spiritual, ecological, or other models, rather than assuming that there is one environmentalism with consistent social and educational bases).

13. Focus group transcripts were iteratively read and coded for themes to create discursive tables that summarized the most important story lines (cf. Linnros 2001). Focus group analysis typically does not include ‘counting’ or quantitative assessment of narratives, but rather relies on the analyst to characterize frequency and extensiveness of focus on particular issues (Barbour and Kitzinger 1999). However, I do provide some indicators to substantiate claims with respect to the relative emphasis on certain themes (Table 1).

14. Once overarching themes were isolated upon initial reading of the transcripts, transcripts were re-read to identify all relevant exchanges and quotes related to these themes (local scale vs. transnational, citizen responsibility vs. state role, etc). Re-reading the transcripts, I also sought to identify any counter-examples related to my arguments.

15. It is noteworthy that earlier studies found high degrees of concern among Turks for national environmental issues over local issues (Dunlap et al. 1993). Ignatow (2005) attributes this to strong nationalist traditions in Turkey among other issues, and also offers several other interesting issues for consideration related to environmental concern in the Turkish context. My work corroborates elements of these earlier studies, but in this sense presents somewhat contradictory findings.

16. Perhaps not surprisingly, narratives also directly connected cleanliness and green space to Islam. For instance: ‘Islam is cleanliness’, or ‘planting a tree is emphasized in our religion. [When you plant a tree] you get prayers of those who enjoy its shade and fruits. Despite that we don't give much importance to the environment’ (05FC9, 19). Another said, ‘We learned cleanliness at school … cleanliness comes from faith, it is good to be clean always’ (05FC6, 30). Others suggested links with all religions, ‘A man of religion doesn't pollute, he is educated. Christian, Muslim [it doesn't matter], cleanliness is at the heart of all religions’ (05FC6, 50).

17. Some mention the need for more fines or the need to deal with unemployment as a first step to be able to appropriately tackle environmental challenges. For instance: ‘What is lacking in Turkey is a strong regulation (by the state). Fines, fees, police as they exist in Europe are needed’ (05FC7, 5). I deal more directly with this issue in an article that considers constructions of Turkishness and Europeanness in relation to visions of environmentalism, as lack of regulation in Turkey was often juxtaposed against notions of strong regulations in Western Europe.

18. The state statistical agency estimates literacy rates to be 87% overall, 80% for females, and 94% for males (based on the 2000 census).

19. This approach suggests that everyday practices, and narratives, may serve to sediment particular scalar notions, giving them the appearance of naturalness – even if they are never fixed or given. As Kaiser and Nikiforova explain (2008, p. 543), ‘The performativity of scale focuses attention not on the production of scales and scalar hierarchies as end products of social construction, but on “the reiterative and citational practices by which discourse produces the effect” of scale. Instead of treating scales as things in the world that (inter)act … performativity approaches (seek to understand) scale as a naturalized way of seeing the world, and explore the enacted discourses that over time work to produce “scale effects”’.

20. Indeed, ‘hierarchy of needs’ sorts of connections were made often, although I do not detail them here (see analysis in Gökşen et al. 2002).

21. Szerszynski (2005) considers the ways that different social groups might be able to understand environmental questions ‘across scales’ in ways that will enable the type of enlarged thinking demanded by environmental citizenship, while McCarthy (2005a) argues for more work on this theme generally.

22. See the discussion in Rankin (2001), Bacchi and Eveline (2003), and Phillips and Ilcan (2004), on ways that individuation is central to neoliberal agendas. Larner (2000) and Maniates (2001) offer some discussion that parallels my arguments here. Larner is interested in how New Zealander subjectivities become aligned with individual assumptions that underpin neoliberalism, while Maniates is interested in ways that individuation of environmentalist discourses limits political possibilities. With respect to these themes in Turkey, Bikmen and Meydanoğlu (2006) offer a discussion of devolution in the Turkish context and other transformations underway that affect civil society and state–society relations.

23. Here, I am referring to power dynamics with respect to Turkey–EU relations, or those at play with neoliberalization, including the role of International Financial Institutions and loan conditionalities, uneven trade relationships, and so forth (see Peck and Tickell 2002 for an overview of neoliberalism to consider some of these issues).

24. In the Turkish context, one can trace clear links between similar discourses of self-control, and the need to forge new types of citizen subjectivities in relation to Kemalist policies and discourses related to the ‘modern, civilized, and enlightened Turkish subject’, if not before (Kadıoğlu 1998).

25. This is consistent with Guthman's (2008) suggestion that in order to understand why people become ‘Lawn People’ who use chemical treatments, we might also consider how or why people also respond to alternative approaches to lawn care.

26. It is implicit, and explicit, in most discussions of this type that individuals can, and should, take on more responsibility for environmental issues (e.g. Bell 2005). Given the focus on ‘good citizenship’ in neoliberal discourses as associated with voluntary governance of the self (cf. Katz 2005), here I am calling for a need to be more self-reflexive about the underlying assumptions and imperatives of these literatures.