In Gaining Freedom, Berna Turam examines the articulation of alternative democratic alliances and inclusive modes of political participation in urban spaces. She examines such processes in a neighborhood and a university campus in Istanbul and a neighborhood in Berlin. Looking beyond visible ideological clashes and violent confrontations, Turam explores how ordinary individuals labor for “civic rights and freedoms to live, talk, think, dress, and act as they choose” (4), and articulate new alliances and shared engagements in small spaces. She is interested in what happens before visible conflicts (like the Gezi protests) and the possible prior dynamics that can trigger larger confrontations. Turam shows that in small and safe spaces urbanites discover commonalities, formulate democratic demands, and devise modes of inclusion. Political opponents can become allies and create shared democratic agendas that can inspire larger changes. Without much upheaval, these spaces mediate ideas, remake identities, and foster inclusive democratic processes.
Turam illustrates how shifting governments and political discourses are reflected in struggles over and redefinitions of urban spaces in Istanbul. In the 1990s sharper demarcations of secular and pious spaces emerged. While urban spaces “were open to everyone in principle,” they “were not preferred and utilized in practice” (29; emphases in original). In the new millennium, this divide was undermined by the emerging “mixed city” where pious urbanites “permeated the entire city landscape, as well as bourgeois lifestyles” (30). Some spaces transformed from “mutually exclusive Islamic or secular neighborhoods into a contested proximity and integration between these groups” (30). Simultaneously, the AKP government challenged secular spaces and lifestyles. In this complex cityscape, where groups mixed and integrated, bourgeois lifestyles flourished, consumerism transcended political alliances, and aggressive government efforts redefined oppositional lifestyles and spaces, Turam identifies “contested zones of freedom” that remained relatively autonomous from the state (35).
The first case study is the secular quarter of Teşvikiye which in recent years witnessed an influx of pious visitors representing consumerist trends among newly wealthy pious classes. What happens, Turam wonders, “to a staunchly secular neighborhood once pious Muslims become attracted to it, because of their newly adopted lifestyles and patterns of high consumption?” (41). Initially pious visitors (women identified by headscarves) caused little concern among locals. Political upheavals in 2007 ended this tolerance and many on both sides of the divide withdrew to their localities. Inclusion turned into resentment in Teşvikiye as some locals complained that women with headscarves entered “their” streets and caused tension (51). If secular residents, Turam asks, believed in individual freedom and lifestyle choices, why did they not support pious women's rights? She argues that Teşvikiye's historical diversity, however, created openings for “affinities in the zones of freedom” (57). A local artist, for example, fuses “religious, sacred symbols with his liberal politics” and suggests a productive interaction between both sides (62). Some secular residents defend the pious’ urban rights and demand neighborliness for all. These democratic voices, rooted in daily neighborhood encounters, challenge the dominant local ethos. Turam detects a new urbanism that disregards the secular–pious divide as diverse locals articulate shared democratic demands.
Turam's second example is Istanbul's University of Freedom (UF; a pseudonym) which Turam identifies as a site for political struggles. She outlines national Turkish education policies which resulted in increasingly authoritarian control of campuses. Turam describes the UF as the site of “a series of place-based, mundane interactions, debates and practices” and occasional “abrupt events and infrequent short-lived protests” (80). She probes into the dynamics of safe spaces that facilitate unorthodox interactions and alliances. Because of its academic reputation, the UF long acted politically independently and allowed students to wear headscarves. Turam examines campus headscarf controversies as conflicts and alliances shifted over time. After 2007, the UF became caught in broader political struggles, including headscarf policies. Some faculty challenged the university's tolerance and advocated a headscarf ban in fear of perceived creeping Islamization. Ban-opponents called the ban anti-liberal and anti-democratic. This conflict did not pit Islamists against secularists, but split the latter. A 2008 UF headscarf ban caused student protests and women in headscarves continued their studies. In 2013 the government legitimized headscarves on campuses. Turam illustrates that episodes of the UF's headscarf controversy represent interactions that bridge the secular–pious divide in pursuit of democratic rights. Inclusive campus politics allowed pious and secular students to voice opinions against the government together. This cooperation “against the pro-Islamic government revealed the triviality and fragility of existing fault lines” (107).
The third example explores the gentrifying immigrant neighborhood of Berlin-Kreuzberg where Turks and Turkish-Germans form a sizable part of the population. Turam examines processes of participation of individuals and groups in the face of discrimination and Islamophobia in Germany, and analyzes how the Turkish secular–pious divide is reflected, enacted, and challenged in Kreuzberg. She introduces Kreuzberg's history as an immigrant neighborhood and odd geographical island in the larger island of Berlin before 1989 and its gentrification after reunification. Turam explains that as religion “was becoming more visible and self-imposing in the Turkish immigrant community” (134), secular individuals felt pressured to conform to pious standards. Turam traces the secular–pious split among Turkish associations and residents. Regardless of discrimination and exclusion from the German side, the secular–pious divide among the Turkish community, non-cooperation among Turkish association, and other complex and divisive dynamics, Turam finds examples of cooperation among diverse individuals and constituencies in Kreuzberg through friendships, art, identity politics, and other forms of cooperation. Turam concludes that even in the case of an established democracy, small spaces of freedom remain the basis for critical politics, new alliances, and democratic transformations. She explains that complex diasporic places like Kreuzberg can challenge established discourses, sentiments, and politics and foster new forms of cultural cooperation and political engagement. The Berlin chapters, while very interesting, do not entirely connect to the other cases as the political circumstances are rather different, as Turam herself notes. The Istanbul chapters argue for the relevance of small urban spaces for democratization in an increasingly authoritarian political context, whereas the Berlin chapters examine the formulation of identities and alliances at the complex intersection of mainstream discrimination, and divisive Turkish politics. These are valid arguments, but Turam does not connect them or bridge their differences. Indeed, she does not appear entirely comfortable with the Berlin chapters, as she makes next to no reference to them in the conclusion.
The conclusion contains interesting notes about the Gülen Movement (GM), which Turam only briefly mentioned in the Berlin section. On the last ten pages of the book, she examines the emerging rift between the GM and the AKP starting in 2011, which foreshadows events in 2016 (after the book's publication). Turam identifies dividing lines between these pious groups, like she had illustrated similar secular ones. She wonders if this rift could produce new alliances across the secular–pious divide. This divide widened dramatically and resulted in the massive purge of thousands allegedly associated with the GM from government positions in the aftermath of the July 2016 coup.
Gaining Freedoms is a timely monograph that addresses invisible negotiations for democratic agendas in diverse urban contexts. Turam shows how small spaces accommodate free, safe, and consequential interactions between diverse constituencies. They can engender cooperation, ways of local empowerment, and the formulation of shared democratic agendas. They can prepare larger conflicts/confrontations, but they don't have to. Their seeds can take hold in other spaces and effect long-term transformations, but they don't have to. Turam makes an important argument that highlights the power of ordinary people in small spaces.
