2 - Thinking/acting with migrants under neoliberalism: “It’s horrible to perceive solidarity as merely absorbing the sorrow of one side”

Summary

Introduction

Let me start by sharing the ‘must-be-told’ side of this research story for the chapter you are about to read. I was detained and arrested on 25 September 2020, in Istanbul where I came to do my doctorate field research including the interviews I was hoping to conduct for this chapter. Linked to a lawsuit related to the ‘Kobani protests’ seven years ago in Turkey, I was being held in an f-type high-security prison as a political hostage in what can only be described as a Kafkaesque absurdity. The kind editors of this book have been extremely encouraging and supportive so that my chapter can still be included. Between December 2020 and March 2021, my former master's supervisor Associate Professor Derya Fırat identified potential participants through our connections with activists working in the field and academics who could act as ‘gatekeepers’. She recruited five currently engaged activists from the anti-capitalist and migrant rights struggle. Beforehand, I prepared interview questions and shared the detailed intention of the research with Professor Fırat. We then exchanged letters regularly to advance the fieldwork. Professor Fırat, bringing her own expertise and integrating additional questions to deepen the interviews, conducted these semi-structured interviews via Zoom. She played a crucial role in this research. With the participants’ approval, interview recordings were transcribed by my two close friends Zilan Kaki and Levent Soy. The organisation of this unusual process could not have been possible without my life partner Ömer Ongun. The articles and books I required were provided to me by Professor Fırat, my doctoral supervisor Professor Jacqueline Kennelly, Ömer, my lawyers and other visitors who came to see me in the prison. I believe I am not exaggerating when I say the process of writing this chapter behind bars has turned into a ‘coalitional dynamism’ in itself.

What I am calling a coalitional dynamism implies more than a courteous act of solidarity shown within my situation. The people, my professors from Canada and Turkey, my life partner, friends, lawyers and other visitors, who had never gathered before to act together or even met each other, formed a community not only to free me but also secure me from the ‘extreme loneliness’ (Arendt, 1994) of an f-type prison, encouraging me to keep thinking, writing and hoping behind bars.