Notes

Introduction

    1.  The “repertoire” of action, as relatively routine and coherent scripts of claims-making practices performed as part of contentious politics, comes from Tilly, Contentious Performances, 14–17.

    2.  Global Detention Project is a repository that documents some of these protests. See www.globaldetentionproject.org. Last accessed November 12 2013.

    3.  On recent hunger strikes in immigration and refugee detention centers, see, among others, McGregor, “Contestations and Consequences of Deportability”; Bailey, “Up Against the Wall”; Edkins and Pin-Fat, “Through the Wire”; Ticktin, Casualties of Care; Siméant, “La Violence d’un Repertoire.”

    4.  See, for example, Buntman, Robben Island; Carlton, Imprisoning Resistance; Silver, “Palestinian Threats as Jail Hunger Strike Starts.”

    5.  Amnesty International, United States of America.

    6.  Olshansky and Gutierrez, The Guantánamo Prisoner Hunger Strikes.

    7.  Ibid., 7.

    8.  For the struggle in the H-Blocks, see Campbell, McKeown, and O’Hagan, Nor Meekly Serve My Time; O’Malley, Biting at the Grave; Beresford, Ten Men Dead; and Feldman, Formations of Violence. For background, see Sweeney, “Irish Hunger Strikes and the Cult of Self-Sacrifice,” 422, and “Self-Immolation in Ireland.”

    9.  Associated Press, “Some Guantánamo Prisoners Have Gone on Hunger Strike.” Also see Olshansky and Gutierrez, The Guantánamo Prisoner Hunger Strikes, 10.

  10.  Lewis, “Guantánamo Prisoners Go on Hunger Strike.”

  11.  Nicholl et al., “Forcefeeding and Restraint of Guantánamo Bay Hunger Strikers”; Annas, “Hunger Strikes at Guantánamo”; Rubenstein and Annas, “Medical Ethics at Guantánamo Bay Detention Centre”; Dyer, “Force Feeding at Guantánamo Breaches Ethics.”

  12.  Rhem, “Guantánamo Tube Feedings Humane.”

  13.  U.S. Department of Defense, “News Briefing with Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.”

  14.  U.S. Department of Defense, “Medical Program Support for Detainee Operations.” Article 4.7.1 reads as follows: “In the case of a hunger strike, attempted suicide, or other attempted serious self-harm, medical treatment or intervention may be directed without the consent of the detainee to prevent death or serious harm.”

  15.  Olshansky and Gutierrez, The Guantánamo Prisoner Hunger Strikes, 8.

  16.  Dodds, “Terror Suspects at Guantánamo Attempted Mass Hanging.”

  17.  Ibid.

  18.  U.S. Department of Defense, “News Briefing with Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.”

  19.  Wood, “Three Guantánamo Bay Detainees Die of Apparent Suicide.”

  20.  Ibid.

  21.  Ahmad, “Resisting Guantánamo.”

  22.  Welch, “Guantánamo Bay as a Foucauldian Phenomenon”; Scraton and McCulloch, The Violence of Incarceration.

  23.  For a historical overview, see Scanlan, Stoll, and Lumm, “Starving for Change.”

  24.  However, unlike what James Scott calls “weapons of the weak,” I interpret the weaponization of life as encompassing actions that are overt and frontal confrontations, indeed collisions, with power. The suggestive term, coined by Scott, refers to everyday forms of peasant resistance, a wide range of spontaneous, unplanned, more or less anonymous, self-helping, petty, and yet stubborn and persistent acts that fall short of openly challenging and directly confronting authorities and dominant relations of power. Examples are foot dragging, evasion, dissimulation, false compliance, pilfering, feigned ignorance, slander, arson, and sabotage. By contrast, the weaponization of life involves open, visible, and spectacular challenges to dominant symbols, with clearly articulated political goals, a collective agency, and organized will. Cf. Scott, Weapons of the Weak, see especially 28–47.

  25.  Grojean, “Violence Against the Self,” 110.

  26.  Biggs, “Dying Without Killing.” In this light, Biggs maintains: “The suicidal attack is an extraordinary weapon of war whereas self-immolation is an extreme form of protest” (173).

  27.  Dingley and Mollica, “The Human Body as a Terrorist Weapon”; Hopgood, “Tamil Tigers, 1987–2002,” 68–69; Bornstein, “Ethnography and the Politics of Prisoners” and “Palestinian Prison Ontologies”; Nashif, Palestinian Political Prisoners; Rosenfeld, Confronting the Occupation; Ergil, “Suicide Terrorism in Turkey”; Bozarslan, Violence in the Middle East; Grojean, “Violence Against the Self,” 107; Criss, “The Nature of PKK Terrorism in Turkey”; Cline, “From Ocalan to Al Qaida.”

  28.  On the simultaneous use of different modalities of self-destruction, Biggs, for example, recognizes that there is a range or continuum of actions that can be classified as self-immolation, such as self-destruction by cyanide, jumping off buildings, fasts unto death, and other self-mutilations (“Dying Without Killing,” 192–95). However, he continues to construe hunger striking as a categorically different form of action. He also makes the claim that self-immolators “do not incline towards suicidal terrorism, or indeed any actions intended to kill their opponents” (ibid., 183). For him, the PKK and DHKP-C constitute “two marginal exceptions, both from Turkey” (ibid., 183–84).

  29.  On this point, also see Grojean, “Violence Against the Self,” 106.

  30.  According to Bell, the existential element is rather located in the aesthetic effects evoked by self-destructive acts. The sensory dislocation these violent acts produce, particularly horror, leads us to search for answers to existential questions raised by that dislocation. Bell’s reflections pertain to suicide attacks, but they can also be extended to other forms of self-destructive violence. See Bell, “The Scenography of Suicide.”

  31.  Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, 84, 86, 93–94.

  32.  For this argument, see Khosrokhavar, Suicide Bombers, 45–52; and Bozarslan, Violence in the Middle East, 10–13, 132–36.

  33.  Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, 38, 41.

  34.  Benjamin, “Critique of Violence,” 248.

  35.  While I argue for the specificity and irreducibility of form, however, I do not think its effects abolish the possibility of politically motivated human agency altogether. This is what Faisal Devji appears to suggest when he argues that

the attacks of 9/11, immaculately planned and executed though they were, lacked intentionality because Al-Qaeda could neither control nor even predict their global repercussions. Hence the actions of this jihad, while they are indeed meant to accomplish certain ends, have become more ethical than political in nature, since they have resigned control over their own effects, thus becoming gestures of duty or risk rather than acts of instrumentality properly speaking. This might be why a network such as Al-Qaeda, unlike terrorist or fundamentalist groups of the past, has no coherent vision or plan for the future.

Even if their intentions are instrumental, the argument goes, the uncontrollable effects of their actions at the global level, transform their actions into ethics rather than politics. Devji, Landscapes of the Jihad, 3–4.

  36.  Durkheim, Suicide, 217–40, 283–90.

  37.  McGray, “Bobby Sands, Suicide, and Self-Sacrifice”; Stern-Gillet, “The Rhetoric of Suicide”; and O’Keeffe, “Suicide and Self-Starvation.”

  38.  Sluka, Death Squad; George, Western State Terrorism; and Wright, State Terrorism in Latin America.

  39.  For an emphasis on fanaticism that is versatile and open to religious, sectarian, or nationalist valences, see Laqueur, The New Terrorism. For the particularly religious modality of fanaticism, see, for example, Juergensmeyer, Terror in the Mind of God; and Stern, Terror in the Name of God. For interpretations of terrorism as predominantly based on religious motivation, see Hoffman, Inside Terrorism, especially 81–130; and Israeli, “Islamikaze and Their Significance.”

  40.  Khosrokhavar, Suicide Bombers. But Khosrokhavar also identifies different strands of martyrdom within Islam, based on the writings of thinkers such as Ali Shariati, distinguishing between mujahids (the conductors of jihad), who risked death on the battlefield, and shahids who faced death and persecution without the possibility of immediate success in order to demonstrate the righteousness of the sacred cause (ibid., 41–48).

  41.  King, “They Who Burned Themselves for Peace,” 139–40; Khosrokhavar, Suicide Bombers, 5.

  42.  Juergensmeyer, Terror in the Mind of God, 10–15, 61–84.

  43.  Oliver and Steinberg, The Road to Martyr’s Square, xxiii; Reuter, My Life Is a Weapon, 14.

  44.  Grojean, “Violence Against the Self,” 109–14; Bozarslan, Violence in the Middle East, 132–36.

  45.  Hafez, “Dying to Be Martyrs,” 55, 61–75.

  46.  Andriolo, “Murder by Suicide.” Also see Stern, Terror in the Name of God, xxi–xxii; and Reuter, My Life Is a Weapon, 19–39. Reuter draws a line of succession between the assassins and al-Qaeda, through Khomeini. On the story of Hassan Sabbah, see Lewis, The Assassins.

  47.  Boyarin, Dying for God; and Bowersock, Martyrdom and Rome.

  48.  Cohn, The Pursuit of the Millenium, especially 127–47. Sacrificial practices, such as fasting, self-flagellation, self-abnegation and suffering, as well as the imitatio Christi, as the ritual repetition of the sacrificial act in order to prevent the imminent apocalyptic catastrophe of the world, were common during the Middle Ages. For fasting in particular, see Bynum, Holy Feast and Holy Fast.

  49.  King, “They Who Burned Themselves for Peace,” 127–50.

  50.  Asad, On Suicide Bombing.

  51.  For a discussion of the complex and multilayered account of motives, see Gambetta, Making Sense of Suicide Missions.

  52.  Elster, “Motivations and Beliefs in Suicide Missions,” 243.

  53.  Pape, Dying to Win, 21, 45–47, 83–94.

  54.  Gambetta, “Can We Make Sense of Suicide Missions?” 261.

  55.  Victor, Army of Roses.

  56.  For a discussion on the rationality of suicide bombers, see Hafez, “Dying to Be Martyrs”; Caplan, “Terrorism”; Sprinzak, “Rational Fanatics.”

  57.  Gambetta, Making Sense of Suicide Missions, 24–26, 71, 111–14, 142–46, 239–42.

  58.  Ibid., 89, 94, 99, 102, 159–63.

  59.  Reuter, My Life Is a Weapon, 18; Pape, Dying to Win, 29–33.

  60.  On the changing nature of warfare, see Kaldor, New and Old Wars; Münkler, The New Wars; and Jabri, War and the Transformation of Global Politics.

  61.  Kalyvas and Sánchez-Cuenca, “Killing Without Dying,” 210–25; Pape, Dying to Win, 30.

  62.  Reuter, My Life Is a Weapon, 87.

  63.  Crenshaw, “The Logic of Terrorism”; Bloom, Dying to Kill, 120–41. On the contagion effect, see Reuter, My Life Is a Weapon, 13; Moghadam, The Globalization of Martyrdom; Nacos, “Revisiting the Contagion Hypothesis.”

  64.  Bloom, Dying to Kill, 91–97.

  65.  Hill, “Kamikaze, 1943–45,” 1–42; Kalyvas and Sánchez-Cuenca, “Killing Without Dying,” 209–32; Laqueur, The New Terrorism, 16–46; Reuter, My Life Is a Weapon, 33–51; Andriolo, “Murder by Suicide,” 738.

  66.  Foucault, The History of Sexuality, 1:136–41.

  67.  Foucault, Discipline and Punish.

  68.  Foucault, Security, Territory, Population.

  69.  Extensive studies of various institutions and practices show the relevance of Foucault’s insights regarding their role in social control and the constitution of subjectivities. See, for example, Garland, Punishment and Welfare and his The Culture of Control; Garland and Young, The Power to Punish; Cohen, Visions of Social Control; Donzelot, The Policing of Families; Turner, Regulating Bodies; Petersen and Bunton, Foucault; Rose, Governing the Soul; Dean, Governmentality, among others.

  70.  Agamben, Homo Sacer.

  71.  Işık and Pınarcıoğlu, Nöbetleşe Yoksulluk; Erman, “The Politics of Squatter (Gecekondu) Studies in Turkey.”

  72.  Mignolo, Local Histories/Global Designs.

  73.  Taussig, “Culture of Terror—Space of Death.”

  74.  See, for example, Sharma and Gupta, The Anthropology of the State; Ferguson and Gupta, “Spatializing States”; Hansen and Stepputat, States of Imagination; and Das and Poole, Anthropology in the Margins of the State.

  75.  Das and Poole, “State and Its Margins,” 4.

  76.  Feldman, Formations of Violence, especially 147–217.

  77.  Foucault, “Society Must Be Defended,” 7.

  78.  Althusser, Machiavelli and Us, 42, 63, 80.

1. Biosovereignty and Necroresistance

    1.  Mehmet is the name I have chosen to call this hunger striker to conceal his identity.

    2.  There is no in-depth study of Küçükarmutlu’s history. However, studies of other shantytowns provide comparable findings regarding the development of these neighborhoods, their grassroot organization often based on familial and ethnic ties, the struggles around access to infrastructural and municipal services, and the involvement of their inhabitants in radical politics. See, for example, Aslan, 1 Mayıs Mahallesi; and Erder, Istanbul’a Bir Kent Kondu.

    3.  According to Holston, such urban spaces are “heterogeneous and outside the state” and sites where the boundaries of membership are contested. Holston, “Spaces of Insurgent Citizenship.”

    4.  Loïc Wacquant persuasively captures a trend within the United States between the ghetto and the prison create a “single institutional mesh.” He argues that these sites are brought together through a functional equivalency, structural homology, and cultural fusion in which the penal management of poverty redefines citizenship through the criminalization of race. In the Turkish context, it is difficult to make a similar observation at a general level. While there is a certain connection between the wards of political prisoners and the shantytowns in which their supporters live, exacerbated through radical politics, it is not accurate to characterize these spaces as homologous sites of governmental intervention combining the problem of poverty with racial criminalization. Cf. Wacquant, “Deadly Symbiosis.”

    5.  Interview with a participant of the death fast, May 18, 2005.

    6.  Interview with family members of a participant of the death fast, February 15, 2005.

    7.  Interview with a participant of the death fast, January 24, 2005.

    8.  Interviews with participants of the death fast, May 19–20, 2005.

    9.  Interview with a participant of the death fast, May 23, 2005.

  10.  Quoted in Foucault, Discipline and Punish, 3.

  11.  Ibid., 5.

  12.  Ibid., 3, 5.

  13.  See Weber, “Politics as a Vocation,” 33.

  14.  Foucault, “Society Must Be Defended,” 247.

  15.  Foucault, The History of Sexuality, 136, “Society Must Be Defended,” 240–41.

  16.  It is also possible to deduce alternative traditions of sovereignty from the history of political thought. One such tradition is sovereignty as constituent power. For the elaboration of this tradition and its distinction from sovereignty as command, see Andreas Kalyvas, “Popular Sovereignty, Democracy, and the Constituent Power.” Foucault does not consider this tradition, but rather takes the theory of sovereignty in its repressive, unitary, and juridical modality as his point of reference for sovereignty in Western societies.

  17.  Foucault, “Society Must Be Defended,” 37, The History of Sexuality, 144, Discipline and Punish, 141, 215.

  18.  Foucault, “Society Must Be Defended,” 34–39.

  19.  Foucault, Security, Territory, Population, 11, 65, 96.

  20.  Foucault, Abnormal, 82–83, Discipline and Punish, 3–6, 33–35, 47, The History of Sexuality, 135–36.

  21.  Bodin, On Sovereignty, bk. 1, ch. 8, 1.

  22.  Foucault, Psychiatric Power, 73–79.

  23.  Foucault, Discipline and Punish, 26–27, 138, 170, 203.

  24.  Ibid., 26.

  25.  Foucault, “Society Must Be Defended,” 35–36.

  26.  Foucault, Psychiatric Power, 27, 46; “Society Must Be Defended,” 36; Discipline and Punish, 208.

  27.  Foucault, Psychiatric Power, 39–62, The History of Sexuality, 31–33, 49, 82–83, Discipline and Punish, 170, 183, 208, “Society Must Be Defended,” 37.

  28.  Foucault, Discipline and Punish, 222, “Society Must Be Defended,” 37, 56, Psychiatric Power, 64.

  29.  Foucault, Security, Territory, Population, 79.

  30.  Foucault, “Society Must Be Defended,” 241.

  31.  Foucault, Security, Territory, Population, 11, 20, 45, 96.

  32.  Foucault, “Society Must Be Defended,” 241.

  33.  Foucault, The History of Sexuality, 138.

  34.  Ibid., 139.

  35.  Foucault, Security, Territory, Population, 237, 246.

  36.  Foucault, “Society Must Be Defended,” 248.

  37.  Foucault, The History of Sexuality, 138, 140, Psychiatric Power, 66.

  38.  Foucault, The History of Sexuality, 136, 144, Discipline and Punish, 208.

  39.  Foucault, Discipline and Punish, 221.

  40.  Foucault, The History of Sexuality, 138–39.

  41.  Foucault, Security, Territory, Population, 8.

  42.  Ibid., 9–10.

  43.  Foucault, Discipline and Punish, 194, 222, The History of Sexuality, 144.

  44.  Foucault, “Society Must Be Defended,” 37, Psychiatric Power, 110; Power/ Knowledge, 73.

  45.  Foucault, The History of Sexuality, 139.

  46.  Foucault, “Society Must Be Defended,” 241–42, 248–60, Security, Territory, Population, 8, 107.

  47.  Foucault, Psychiatric Power, 64–66.

  48.  Ibid., 81–87.

  49.  Foucault, Discipline and Punish, 170, 232.

  50.  Ibid., 16.

  51.  Foucault, Security, Territory, Population, 36–37, 44–45, especially 66.

  52.  Foucault, Discipline and Punish, 217.

  53.  Foucault, Security, Territory, Population, 312, 322–27.

  54.  Ibid., 109.

  55.  Foucault, “Society Must Be Defended,” 254.

  56.  Ibid., 254, 260.

  57.  Foucault, “‘Omnes et Singulatim,’” 311.

  58.  Foucault, “The Political Technology of Individuals,” 405.

  59.  Foucault, Security, Territory, Population, 106.

  60.  Ibid., 107.

  61.  Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, 585.

  62.  Ibid., 87–88.

  63.  Phillips, “Agencement/Assemblage,” 109.

  64.  Rabinow situates the concept of assemblage between problematization and apparatus in terms of scale and endurance. He argues:

Assemblages are secondary matrices from within which apparatuses emerge and become stabilized or transformed. Assemblages stand in a dependent but contingent and unpredictable relationship to the grander problematizations. In terms of scale they fall between problematizations and apparatuses and function differently from either one. They are a distinctive type of experimental matrix of heterogeneous elements, techniques, and concepts. They are not yet an experimental system in which controlled variation can be produced, measured, and observed. They are comparatively effervescent, disappearing in years or decades rather than centuries. Consequently, the temporality of assemblages is qualitatively different from that of either problematizations or apparatuses.

Rabinow, Anthropos Today, 56

  65.  Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, 24.

  66.  Tampio, “Assemblages and the Multitude,” 394.

  67.  Venn, “A Note on Assemblage,” 107.

  68.  For a discussion of Foucault’s apparatus and Deleuze’s assemblage and the occasional slippage in Foucault’s lectures between the two concepts, see Legg, “Assemblage/Apparatus.”

  69.  The concept of assemblage has recently been productively deployed to theorize a wide range of phenomena, ranging from the combination of new technologies and politics to the composition of cities and the conjunction between nationalism and homonormativity. See, for example, Ong and Collier, Global Assemblages; and Farias and Bender, Urban Assemblages; Puar, Terrorist Assemblages.

  70.  Ong, “Scales of Exception,” 120–21.

  71.  Despite the wealth of studies that Foucault has inspired, the literature on resistance informed by Foucault’s ideas is relatively (and surprisingly) thin. An important example of scholarship that addresses resistance from a perspective informed by Foucault is Scott, Domination and the Arts of Resistance. Also see Sawicki, Disciplining Foucault; Diamond and Quinby, Foucault and Feminism; Pile and Keith, Geographies of Resistance; Butler, Bodies That Matter; and Selmeczi, “‘ … we are being left to burn because we do not count.’”

  72.  Foucault, “The Subject and Power,” 342.

  73.  Foucault, The History of Sexuality, 95–96.

  74.  Foucault, “The Subject and Power,” 346.

  75.  Simons, Foucault and the Political, 6.

  76.  On Foucault and resistance, see Poulantzas, State, Power, Socialism, 146–53; Pickett, On the Use and Abuse of Foucault for Politics, especially 35–54; Giddens, A Contemporary Critique of Historical Materialism, 158–81.

  77.  McCarthy, “The Critique of Impure Reason,” 258.

  78.  Habermas, “Some Questions Concerning the Theory of Power”; Fraser, Unruly Practices, 283.

  79.  Bernstein, “Foucault,” 229.

  80.  Foucault worked for prison reform through the “Groupe d’information sur les prisons” [Prison Information Group (GIP)] with Jean-Marie Domenach and Pierre Vidal-Naquet. See Patton, “Of Power and Prisons”; “Michel Foucault on Attica”; and Foucault, Remarks on Marx, 41, 138. On the prison struggles in France in the 1970s, see Soulié, “Années 70.”

  81.  Thompson, “Forms of Resistance.”

  82.  Kantorowicz, The King’s Two Bodies, 1–23.

  83.  Foucault, Discipline and Punish, 3.

  84.  Ibid.

  85.  Ibid., 4.

  86.  Ibid., 38.

  87.  Ibid., 67.

  88.  Ibid., 73.

  89.  Ibid., 29, 170.

  90.  Ibid., 197.

  91.  Ibid., 237.

  92.  Foucault, Abnormal, 87.

  93.  Ibid., 96–102.

  94.  Foucault, Discipline and Punish, 285.

  95.  Garland, Punishment and Modern Society, 154, 167–173.

  96.  “Michel Foucault on Attica,” 154–61; Patton, “Of Power and Prisons,” 109–10.

  97.  McNay, Foucault and Feminism; Foucault, Power/Knowledge, 163–64.

  98.  Foucault, Power/Knowledge, 161.

  99.  Feldman, Formations of Violence, 144.

100.  Ibid., 178.

101.  Ibid., 177. Feldman relies on a Nietzschean framework in order to conceptualize the body as the product of “unequal and differential effects of intersecting antagonistic forces” (ibid., 176).

102.  Ibid., 178.

103.  Siméant, La Cause des Sans-Papiers, 302–10.

104.  Foucault, “Alternatives to the Prison,” 12–24.

105.  Foucault, Discipline and Punish, 268, 270.

106.  Foucault, The History of Sexuality, 95–96.

107.  Ibid., 145.

108.  Ibid.

109.  For the relatively recent turn to recognition in political and social struggles, see Taylor, Multiculturalism and “the Politics of Recognition”; and Honneth, The Struggle for Recognition. However, for a critical theory of recognition that fruitfully combines with redistributive struggles, see Fraser, “From Redistribution to Recognition?”

110.  According to Prozorov, who insists on keeping sovereignty and biopower apart: “If resistance to sovereignty … consists in disobedience and revolt either for the purposes of establishing a new form of sovereignty or refusing sovereignty as such in a variably conceived ideal of anarchism, resistance to biopower must entail the refusal of care, an attitude of indifference no longer to the threat of power, but to its loving embrace.” Prozorov, “The Unrequited Love of Power,” 62.

111.  Foucault, Security, Territory, Population, 125–29.

112.  Ibid., 154.

113.  Ibid., 195.

114.  Ibid., 193–216.

115.  Ibid., 200–1.

116.  Ibid., 196.

117.  Ibid., 228.

118.  Ibid., 198–99.

119.  Ibid., 204.

120.  Ibid., 204–15.

121.  Ibid., 355.

122.  Ibid., 356.

123.  Foucault, The History of Sexuality, Vol. 3: The Care of the Self, and The Hermeneutics of the Subject.

124.  Afary and Anderson provocatively suggest that Foucault’s turn to the “aesthetics of existence” was directly influenced by his experience with the Iranian revolution. Afary and Anderson, Foucault and the Iranian Revolution, 4–5.

125.  Foucault, Remarks on Marx, 134.

126.  Ibid., 135.

127.  Ibid., 136 (my emphasis).

128.  Ibid., 139.

129.  For a collection of Foucault’s writings on Iran, see Foucault, “Appendix: Foucault and His Critics.”

130.  Foucault, “Tehran,” 201–2.

131.  Foucault, “The Revolt in Iran Spreads on Cassette Tapes,” 216.

132.  Foucault, “What Are the Iranians Dreaming [Rêvent] About?” and “Is it Useless to Revolt?” 209 and 265, respectively.

133.  “Dialogue Between Michel Foucault and Baqir Parham,” 186–87. Also Foucault, “What Are the Iranians Dreaming [Rêvent] About?” 208.

134.  Foucault, “Tehran,” and “Iran,” 201 and 255 respectively.

135.  Foucault, “Is It Useless to Revolt?” 264.

136.  “Iran,” 255.

137.  Foucault, “Tehran,” 202–3.

138.  Foucault, “Is It Useless to Revolt?” 265.

139.  Foucault, “What Are the Iranians Dreaming [Rêvent] About?” 204, 207, 209.

140.  Foucault, “A Revolt with Bare Hands” 211.

141.  “Iran,” 254.

142.  Ibid., 257.

143.  Foucault, “Is it Useless to Revolt?” 264.

144.  Miller, The Passion of Michel Foucault, 308, 314, 324.

145.  Afary and Anderson, Foucault and the Iranian Revolution, 106–62. The authors critique Foucault’s assessment of the Iranian revolution as seduced by an orientalist appreciation of the non-West that leads him to an erroneous assessment of what eventually became a theocracy in Iran. Of central importance to their critique is Foucault’s enthusiasm for antimodernism and his blindness to gender, especially as it plays out in the Iranian context. I think Afary and Anderson are largely correct in their feminist critique of Foucault. However, their framing of Foucault’s reaction to the Iranian revolt as a function, on the one hand, of his personal fascination with death and non-Western homosexuality, and, on the other hand, of his hostility to Western modernism and rationality, does not do justice, in my opinion, to Foucault’s complexity as a thinker, and especially to his attention to alternative forms of rationality and his nuanced critique of modernity, which remains well attuned to appreciating different forms of “political spirituality” rather than writing them off as antimodern.

146.  “Iran,” 253.

147.  Foucault, “The Mythical Leader of the Iranian Revolt,” 222.

148.  “Iran,” 253.

149.  For the different articulations of the relationship between sovereignty and biopower, with an increasing emphasis on their conjunction and mutual operation, see Butler, “Indefinite Detention”; Connolly, “The Complexities of Sovereignty”; Dillon, “Correlating Sovereign and Biopower”; Reid, The Biopolitics of the War on Terror; De Larrinaga and Doucet, “Sovereign Power and the Biopolitics of Human Security.”

150.  Agamben, Homo Sacer.

151.  Ibid., 7, 111.

152.  Schmitt, Political Theology.

153.  Agamben, Homo Sacer, 7. Also, Agamben, “Form-of-Life.” For a critique of Agamben’s philological generalizations and how they color his conclusions, see Dubreuil, “Leaving Politics.”

154.  Agamben, Homo Sacer, 7.

155.  The sovereign in Hobbes’s Leviathan best exemplifies this case. In this political formation the sovereign has absolute power over each and every individual in order to assure his self-preservation as well as the preservation of the whole. The sovereign preserves the “state of nature,” the violence, and the “exception” within the political state, even though he is the source of law. The dissenters to this new juridical order are considered to have stayed in (or reverted back to) the “state of nature” and are stripped of their right to the civil order; they become homo sacer. Agamben, Homo Sacer, 107.

156.  “Bare” or sacred life is not the equivalent of natural life. For an elaboration of four different conceptions of life in Agamben, see Mills, The Philosophy of Agamben, especially 59–80.

157.  For a critique of Agamben’s genealogy of homo sacer, see Fitzpatrick, “Bare Sovereignty.”

158.  Agamben, Homo Sacer, 85.

159.  Ibid., 83.

160.  Ibid., 6.

161.  Agamben indicates this structural relationship as follows: “The sovereign is the one with respect to whom all men are potentially homines sacri, and homo sacer is the one with respect to whom all men act as sovereigns.” Agamben, Homo Sacer, 84.

162.  Ibid., 89.

163.  Ibid., 101.

164.  In fact, all of the occurrences of the term “bio-sovereignty” in the existing scholarly literature are tied to Agamben’s arguments. According to Caldwell, “bio-sovereignty” is “a form of sovereignty operating according to the logic of the exception rather than law, applied to material life rather than juridical life, and moving within a global terrain now almost exclusively biopolitical” (par. 7). She coins the term as an amalgamation of the Schmittian “exception” and the Agambenian articulation of life and power, but expands its applicability to the sphere of international politics. She asserts that “bio-sovereignty” is what replaces nation-state sovereignty on a global scale (par. 35) and acts directly on a universalized construct of “humanity” (par. 40). See Caldwell, “Bio-Sovereignty and the Emergence of Humanity.” On the other hand, Kalyvas uses the concept to denote a specifically Agambenian inflection of sovereignty. Kalyvas, “The Sovereign Weaver.” Finally, according to Ong, “bio-sovereignty” is the exercise of state control over biological resources by claiming the realm of “sheer life” as a domain for ethical intervention. Discussing the example of Indonesian authorities’ refusal to share samples of the bird flu and its reception by the world health community and drug companies, Ong argues that the exertion of sovereign rights over virus samples is a way in which the realm of biological life is claimed from the domination of global capital through the mechanism of the “exception.” For Ong, then, “bio-sovereignty” is less about the form or nature of power that is exercised than about the domain in which it is exercised and claimed. “Bio-sovereignty,” in this conception, remains juridical and tied to the Schmittian definition of the right to decide on the “exception.” Thus Ong’s use of the term, while important in the way in which it pinpoints the exercise of state control over the realm of life, reveals little about the changing nature of sovereignty in tandem with its exercise in the biopolitical domain. Ong, “Scales of Exception,” 124.

165.  Agamben, Homo Sacer, 9.

166.  Agamben, Remnants of Auschwitz and Homo Sacer, 185.

167.  Agamben, Means Without Ends, 41.

168.  Agamben, Homo Sacer, 20, 119, 123 and State of Exception.

169.  Agamben, Homo Sacer, 166.

170.  Ibid., 124–25, 139–40.

171.  Ibid., 9–10.

172.  Ibid., 142.

173.  Agamben, Remnants of Auschwitz, 155.

174.  Fitzpatrick, “These Mad Abandon’d Times.”

175.  Laclau, “Bare Life or Social Indeterminacy?” 11.

176.  Lemke, “A Zone of Indistinction,” 10.

177.  For a comparative discussion of Agamben and Foucault’s method in which the camp as paradigm ostensibly replaces the panopticon as paradigm, see de la Durantaye, Giorgio Agamben, 219–26.

178.  Agamben, Homo Sacer, 142.

179.  Ibid., 187.

180.  Bigo, “Detention of Foreigners,” 12.

181.  Mitchell, “Geographies of Identity”; Masters, “Femina Sacra”; Ziarek, “Bare Life on Strike”; Sanchez, “The Global E-rotic Subject.”

182.  Reinert, “The Persistence of Sacrifice,” par. 28.

183.  Lemke, “A Zone of Indistinction,” 8.

184.  Ibid.

185.  DeCaroli, “Boundary Stones,” 46.

186.  Fitzpatrick, “Bare Sovereignty,” note 24.

187.  Huysmans, “The Jargon of Exception,” 175.

188.  Agamben, Homo Sacer, 59. For a further elaboration of this rather elusive, nonetheless provocative alternative, see Agamben, The Coming Community, and his Means Without Ends. A helpful review is by Mills, “Agamben’s Messianic Politics.”

189.  Agamben, “Form-of-Life,” 154.

190.  Agamben, Homo Sacer, 188.

191.  Agamben, “Form-of-Life,” 154.

192.  Agamben, Homo Sacer, 48.

193.  Ibid., 62. For Agamben’s interpretation of Bartleby, see his “Bartleby, or On Contingency.”

194.  Agamben, “Bartleby, or On Contingency,” 254.

195.  For a comparative evaluation of Deleuze’s and Agamben’s interpretations of Bartleby, see Cooke, “Resistance, Potentiality and the Law.”

196.  For a critique of Agamben’s messianism, see Sinnerbrink, “From Machenschaft to Biopolitics.”

197.  Passavant argues that Agamben’s theory is ridden with a fundamental contradiction in that his subjects can only move beyond sovereignty if they violate his theory of sovereignty. Accordingly, the potentialities of refusal and exodus embedded within the figure of Bartleby, anomic carnivals, and messianism do not constitute meaningful political action. Passavant, “The Contradictory State of Giorgio Agamben.”

198.  Rajaram and Grundy-Warr, “The Irregular Migrant as Homo Sacer”; Ahmetbeyzade, “Gendering Necropolitics”; Biehl, “Vita”; Enns, “Bare Life and the Occupied Body”; Jenkins, “Bare Life”; Parfitt, “Are the Third World Poor Homines Sacri?”; Žižek, “Biopolitics”; Cadman, “Life and Death Decisions in Our Posthuman(ist) Times.”

199.  Mbembe, “Necropolitics.”

200.  Ibid., 40.

201.  Ibid., 27.

202.  Ibid., 39.

203.  Instead of necropolitics, Murray calls this form thanatopolitics because, he argues, the politics of the suicide bomber is not reducible to a politics of the corpse but should rather “invoke the inassimilable mythic and rhetorical dimensions of Thanatos, with its long tradition from the Greeks through to Freud.” Murray, “Thanatopolitics.”

204.  Mbembe, “Necropolitics,” 36.

205.  Edkins and Pin-Fat, “Through the Wire,” 3.

206.  Ibid., 20.

207.  Ziarek, “Bare Life on Strike.”

208.  Following Maurice Blanchot, Guenther argues that the human relation to alterity, which persists despite the destruction of the subject, remains the source of resistance. In other words, even in the greatest abjection there exists an intersubjective dimension whose presence provides the possibility of resistance. Guenther purports “life is never bare—not because bios cannot be separated from zoē, but because the relation to the Other cannot be destroyed. Even when reduced to a ‘naked relation to naked existence,’ even when exposed to an unimaginable extremity of need and affliction, even when forced to steal from others in order to secure one’s own survival, the subject retains a relation to alterity which provides a starting point, however minimal, for resistance.” Guenther, “Resisting Agamben,” 75.

209.  Feldman, Formations of Violence, 144, 178.

210.  Enns, “Bare Life and the Occupied Body,” par. 33.

211.  Ibid., par. 28.

212.  Ibid., par. 31.

213.  Ibid., par. 38.

214.  Owens, “Reclaiming ‘Bare Life’?” 578.

215.  Weigel, “The Critique of Violence.”

216.  Bailey, “Up Against the Wall.”

217.  Ibid., 121.

218.  Ibid., 118–19.

219.  Murray, “Thanatopolitics,” 195.

2. Crisis of Sovereignty

    1.  Heper, The State Tradition in Turkey.

    2.  Heper, “The Ottoman Legacy and Turkish Politics.”

    3.  CHF Programı.

    4.  Parla, Türkiye’de Siyasal Kültürün Resmi Kaynakları 3:40, 325.

    5.  An important exception is the brief period of the first National Assembly in Ankara (1920–23) before the proclamation of the republic. Mete Tunçay, Türkiye Cumhuriyeti’nde Tek Parti Yönetiminin Kurulması.

    6.  Parla, Türkiye’de Siyasal Kültürün Resmi Kaynakları.

    7.  For the origins of the Father State image and its role in constructing national identity, see Delaney, “Father State, Motherland, and the Birth of Modern Turkey.”

    8.  Zürcher, Political Opposition in the Early Turkish Republic; and Weiker, Political Tutelage and Democracy in Turkey. The “tutelary” character of the Kemalist regime refers to the role of the governing elite in deciding when the masses become mature enough for democracy and to the justification of their authoritarian rule through the unrealized conditions of socioeconomic development that necessitate their intervention. In contrast, scholars from the modernization school have interpreted “tutelage” as a transitory phase of authoritarianism between traditional and modern government where the regime creates the conditions conducive to democracy and prepares the nation through the inculcation of democratic values to ensure the success of the transformation. In the meantime, the very success of a tutelary regime in this transitional/ preparatory role is expected to undermine the grounds for its own legitimate existence. However, this view is inflicted with a linear schema of development and the problem of attributing a predetermined democratic essence to the tutelary regime. Cf. Özbudun, “The Nature of the Kemalist Political Regime”; and Köker, Modernleşme, Kemalizm ve Demokrasi, 210–21, 235.

    9.  Parla, Türkiye’de Siyasal Kültürün Resmi Kaynakları 3:40, 326.

  10.  Yerasimos, “The Monoparty Period,” 69ff. Similarly, despite the incorporation of secularism into Kemalist ideology, definitions of national identity involved monosectarian religious interpretations based on Sunni Islam as a supplementary aspect of the homogeneous and indivisible nation.

  11.  Parla, Türkiye’de Siyasal Kültürün Resmi Kaynakları 3:41–44, 326.

  12.  Some scholars hold populism to be the “source of democratic rights” of the Kemalist regime because of its dimension of legal equality, dismissing the implications of the latter corporatist part. See Karal, “The Principles of Kemalism.” Others argue that the initial formulation of the principle entailed an anticapitalist content. See Özbudun, “The Nature of the Kemalist Political Regime.” Yet evidence for an anticapitalist substance depends on a few commentaries by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk that might also be evaluated as tactical maneuvers to accommodate leftist opposition or to maintain a left-leaning image. An ex post facto evaluation of Kemalist practices would validate the maneuver view.

  13.  Boratav, Türkiye’de Devletçilik.

  14.  Hershlag, “Ataturk’s Étatism.”

  15.  Boratav, “Kemalist Economic Policies and Etatism”; Tezel, Cumhuriyet Dönemi’nin İktisadi Tarihi.

  16.  Köker, Modernleşme, Kemalizm ve Demokrasi, 180.

  17.  Ibid., 209. Mehmet, “Turkey in Crisis”; Tachau, “The Political Culture of Kemalist Turkey.”

  18.  The substitution of science in place of religion, as a modernizing step in societal evolution, reflected the influence of the Comtean project of positivism over the Kemalist secularizers. According to Kadıoğlu, it “gave secularism a teleological as well as a theological character.” Kadıoğlu, “Republican Epistemology and Islamic Discourses,” 5–7.

  19.  According Sakallıoğlu, Islamic elements were incorporated into national discourse in the early years of the republic to establish legitimacy. This incorporation led to the formation of the “double discourse” of the state, i.e., the repeatedly used strategy of combining the control and exclusion of Islam with its accommodation and inclusion. Sakallıoğlu, “Parameters and Strategies of Islam-State Interaction in Republican Turkey.”

  20.  Parla, Türkiye’de Siyasal Kültürün Resmi Kaynakları 3: 45, 328; İnsel, “Laiklik, Cumhuriyet ve Sosyalist Hareket.”

  21.  Especially after 1980, the inclusion of Islamic elements into Kemalist ideology became more overt and systematic, both as a “bulwark against communism and a substitute for class-based ideologies” as well as a means of legitimizing policies of economic liberalization. Sakallıoğlu, “Kemalism, Hyper-Nationalism and Islam in Turkey,” 262. For the latter point, see Birtek and Toprak, “The Conflictual Agendas of Neo-Liberal Reconstruction”; Öniş, “The Political Economy of Islamic Resurgence in Turkey”; and Yavuz, “Turkey’s Fault Lines and the Crisis of Kemalism.”

  22.  Dumont, “The Origins of Kemalist Ideology,” 38.

  23.  With language reform, the Ottoman Turkish word for “reform” or “transformation” (inkılâp) was replaced with the new Turkish word for “revolution” (devrim) in 1935, but it was later changed back to its original. The dual usage still continues to date, signifying different ideological interpretations of the Kemalist past.

  24.  Parla, Türkiye’de Siyasal Kültürün Resmi Kaynakları 3: 47, 328.

  25.  Adak, “National Myths and Self-Na(rra)tions.”

  26.  Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks.

  27.  Özbek, “Osmanlı’dan Günümüze Sosyal Devlet.”

  28.  Akın, “Gürbüz ve Yavuz Evlatlar”; Alemdaroğlu, “Politics of the Body and Eugenic Discourse”; Buzgan, “History of Vaccination Policies, in Turkey”; Evered and Evered, “State, Peasant, Mosquito,” “Governing Population, Public Health, and Malaria,” and “Syphilis and Prostitution.”

  29.  Ergin, “‘Is the Turk a White Man?’” and “Biometrics and Anthropometrics.”

  30.  Aybers, “Eugenics in Turkey During the 1930s”; Salgirli, “Eugenics for the Doctors.”

  31.  Köker, Modernleşme, Kemalizm ve Demokrasi, 236.

  32.  Özbek, “Osmanlı’dan Günümüze Sosyal Devlet,” 20–26.

  33.  Sunar, “Populism and Patronage.”

  34.  According to Carl Schmitt, “sovereign is he who decides on the exception.” Schmitt, Political Theology, 5.

  35.  As Schmitt teaches us, the right of naming the enemy is one of the most important qualities of a political entity’s claim to sovereignty and a constitutive quality of its own identity. See Schmitt, The Concept of the Political, 38–39.

  36.  According to Paker, the continuous expectation of danger from internal and external threats, always aiming to weaken, divide and destroy the country, acts as a “paranoid fantasy” that has become a consistent feature of the security discourse of the state. Paker, “Paranoyanın Zaferi,” 33.

  37.  Mardin, “Opposition and Control in Turkey.”

  38.  Tunçay, Türkiye’de Sol Akımlar 1908–1925; Tunçay and Zürcher, Socialism and Nationalism in the Ottoman Empire; Harris, Origins of Communism in Turkey; Quataert and Zürcher, Workers and the Working Class in the Ottoman Empire; Sayılgan, Türkiye’de Sol Hareketler; and Şişmanov, Türkiye İşçi ve Sosyalist Hareketi Kısa Tarihi are important resources for this turbulent period in Turkish history. For a study of the way in which the founders of the Communist Party were collectively eliminated, see Gökay, “The Turkish Communist Party.”

  39.  An instance of this precarious position of the Communist Party of Turkey toward the Kemalist regime was the ethnic revolt of 1925, in relation to which the socialists supported the Kemalist “bourgeois” government against the “feudal” dissenters (in line with the view of the Communist International). However, the Law for Maintenance of Order (Takrir-i Sükûn) promulgated as a preventive measure by the government was soon to ban all opposition, outlawing, first and foremost, all socialist and communist organizations. See Akdere and Karadeniz, Türkiye Solu’nun Eleştirel Tarihi 1:158–59.

  40.  One of the predecessors of the turn of the socialists toward the promotion of a “Third Way,” that is, a strategy of development that was not capitalist and that constructed the unity and interests of the “nation” as superior to those of the working class, was the Kadro movement, which materialized around a journal published by a group of leftist intellectuals affiliated with the socialist movement. Interestingly, the members of this movement also partook of the initial attempts of the ideological formulation of Kemalism. For more information, see Türkeş, “The Ideology of the Kadro [Cadre] Movement.”

  41.  Landau, Radical Politics in Modern Turkey, 96–103.

  42.  For information related to the socioeconomic transformations of the early Republican and Democrat Party periods, see Hershlag, Turkey; Keyder, “The Political Economy of Turkish Democracy” and State and Class in Turkey; Owen and Pamuk, A History of the Middle East Economies.

  43.  Samim, “The Tragedy of the Turkish Left,” 66.

  44.  For a history of the party, see Aybar, Türkiye İşçi Partisi Tarihi; and Aren, TİP Olayı.

  45.  The term comes from Yerasimos, “The Monoparty Period.” For the politics of transition to democracy, see Eroğul, “The Establishment of Multiparty Rule.”

  46.  For the evolution of the Turkish left after the 1950s, see Sosyalizm ve Toplumsal Mücadeleler Ansiklopedisi, vol. 7.

  47.  Samim, “The Tragedy of the Turkish Left,” 61.

  48.  Alevis constitute the Shia community in Turkey. A heterodox and tolerant sect, the Alevis have usually supported the Republican People’s Party and secular politics. They have also been a major source of support for the social-democratic and radical left. For a history of Alevi politics in Turkey, see, in particular, Çamuroğlu, “Alevi Revivalism in Turkey”; Korkmaz, Alevilere Saldırılar; van Bruinessen, “Kurds, Turks and the Alevi Revival in Turkey”; Erman and Göker, “Alevi Politics in Contemporary Turkey”; and Poyraz, “The Turkish State and Alevis.”

  49.  DİSK was allowed to reopen only in 1991.

  50.  These figures come from TİHV, İşkence Dosyası, 19. Also available in Cumhuriyet, “Darbenin Bilançosu”; and Radikal, “12 Eylül’le 20 Yıl.”

  51.  In 1980 individuals between the ages fifteen and sixty-four made up 25 million of Turkey’s total population, which was about 45 million.

  52.  Among those who were eventually executed by the military regime, eighteen were leftists, eight were rightists, twenty-three were convicted of “ordinary” crimes, and one was a militant of ASALA (the Armenian organization responsible for the assassination of Turkish diplomats abroad). These figures come from TİHV, İşkence Dosyası, 19. According to Tanör, the number of approved executions was fifty-five, out of which thirty-five were convicted of political crimes. Two of these executions were approved in 1984 by the first civilian parliament constituted after the elections of 1983. Tanör, Türkiye’nin İnsan Hakları Sorunu, 28–29.

  53.  Öniş, State and Market; and Aricanli and Rodrik, The Political Economy of Turkey.

  54.  As Article 68 of the new constitution stipulated, “The statutes and programmes, as well as the activities of political parties shall not be in conflict with the independence of the state, its indivisible integrity with its territory and nation, human rights, the principles of equality and rule of law, sovereignty of the nation, the principles of the democratic and secular republic; they shall not aim to protect or establish class or group dictatorship or dictatorship of any kind, nor shall they incite citizens to crime” (http://www.anayasa.gov.tr/Mevzuat/Anayasa1982/). Last accessed November 15, 2013.

  55.  Campaigning against the new constitution before the referendum was illegal. However, the constitution was approved with the support of an overwhelming majority of voters (91.4 percent). Turnout for the referendum was also quite high (91.3 percent of the registered electorate), partially due to the stipulation in the new constitution forbidding electoral participation for those who failed to cast their votes for the next five years (Provisional Article 16).

  56.  For example, according to Article 13 of the constitution, “Fundamental rights and freedoms may be restricted by law, in conformity with the letter and spirit of the Constitution, with the aim of safeguarding the indivisible integrity of the state with its territory and nation, national sovereignty, the Republic, national security, public order, general peace, the public interest, public morals and public health.” Similarly, Article 14 stipulated:

None of the rights and freedoms embodied in the Constitution may be exercised with the aim of violating the indivisible integrity of the State with its territory and nation, of endangering the existence of the Turkish State and Republic, of destroying fundamental rights and freedoms, of placing the government of the State under the control of an individual or a group of people, or establishing the hegemony of one social class over others, or creating discrimination on the basis of language, race, religion or sect, or of establishing by any other means a system of government based on these concepts and ideas.

Constitution of the Republic of Turkey (http://www.anayasa.gov.tr/Mevzuat/Anayasa1982/). Last accessed November 15, 2013.

For the legal critique of the 1982 Constitution, see Tanör’s Türkiye’nin İnsan Hakları Sorunu, 249–61, and his İki Anayasa, 97–114. For a comparative political analysis of Turkey’s constitutions, see Parla, Türkiye’de Anayasalar.

  57.  Schmitt, Political Theology, 5.

  58.  The so-called Provisional Article 15 of the 1982 Constitution guaranteeing the impunity of military commanders from any allegation of criminal, financial, or legal responsibility for their use of sovereign authority in this interim period has only recently been rescinded with the referendum of September 12, 2010.

  59.  Batman, Bingöl, Bitlis, Diyarbakır, Hakkari, Mardin, Siirt, Şırnak, Tunceli and Van were the ten provinces kept longest under this “state of emergency.” Hakkari and Tunceli were taken out on July 30, 2002, Diyarbakır and Şırnak were the last ones to return to normalcy on November 30, 2002.

  60.  The definition of “internal threat” comes from the Secretariat General of the National Security Council, www.mgk.gov.tr/Turkce/sss.html (last accessed June 7, 2010).

  61.  United Nations, Report of the Committee Against Torture, 9. On allegations of widespread and systematic torture in Turkey in the 1980s and 1990s, see, for example, Amnesty International, Torture in the Eighties, 217–20 and Turkey: Still Waiting for Change; TİHV, Türkiye İnsan Hakları Raporu ’91 and İşkence Dosyası.

  62.  On Islamist politics in the shantytowns, see White, Islamist Mobilization in Turkey. However, the same phenomenon has been interpreted as a manifestation of growing poverty and the increased marginalization of the shantytowns. Cf. Işık and Pınarcıoğlu, Nöbetleşe Yoksulluk.

  63.  See Terörle Mücadele Kanunu. This law was promulgated in lieu of Articles 140, 141, 142, and 163 (with the exception of 142/3) of the Penal Code. All of these articles contained significant restrictions on freedom of expression and organization. Hence, despite the problems regarding the stipulations of this law (see further on in this chapter), it also intended to lift some of the previously imposed restrictions. For a legal critique of the antiterror law and the evaluation of the legal system from the perspective of human rights, see Tanör, Türkiye’nin İnsan Hakları Sorunu.

  64.  The prevalence of torture in the 1990s has been well documented by international and national sources alike. See, for example, Amnesty International, Turkey: Torture, Extrajudicial Executions, Turkey: Recommendations for Action, and Turkey: No Security Without Human Rights; Helsinki Watch, Nothing Unusual and Twenty-One Deaths in Detention in 1993; Human Rights Watch, Turkey: Torture and Mistreatment; İnsan Hakları Derneği İstanbul Şubesi, Cezaevleri Komisyonu Raporu; İstanbul Barosu Cezaevleri Komisyonu, Cezaevleri Durum Raporu; Yıldız and McDermott, Torture in Turkey; Pişkinsüt, Filistin Askısından Fezlekeye; and Sevimay, TBMM İnsan Hakları Komisyonu Raporlarında Resmen İşkence. For a scholarly collection on different aspects of the human rights regime in Turkey, see Arat, Human Rights in Turkey.

  65.  The term was coined by Candar, “Redefining Turkey’s Center.”

  66.  For the rise of political Islam, see Yavuz, Secularism and Muslim Democracy in Turkey.

  67.  Rumford, “Human Rights and Democratization in Turkey”; Keyman and Içduygu, “Globalization, Civil Society and Citizenship in Turkey”; and Özbudun, “Democratization Reforms in Turkey.”

  68.  I use the concept of the “crowd” both as a counterpoint to the official discourse on “overcrowding” (see further on in this chapter) and in order to capture the political character of the prisoners as a “face-to-face” “living and many-sided,” riotous ensemble. My understanding of the crowd is indebted to E. P. Thompson and George Rudé whose historical work on the preindustrial and protoindustrial crowds have rescued the concept from its pejorative connotations (criminal, irrational, and racist) in previous works (such as Le Bon, The Crowd) and given it a social and political character in contrast to psychologist and behaviorist explanations. See Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class and his “The Moral Economy of the English Crowd”; and Rudé, The Crowd in History.

  69.  Law for the Struggle Against Terror (Terörle Mücadele Kanunu) went into effect at the date of its publication in the Official Gazette on April 12, 1991.

  70.  This article was amended in 1995, obliging the state to show criminal intent and reducing prison sentences for offenses that fell under this article as “thought crimes.”

  71.  For example, the right to remain silent and the right to inform family members were only allowed with legal amendments in 1998 and 2002.

  72.  Law No. 2845 on State Security Courts and Law No. 3842 on the Criminal Procedural Code were amended in 1997. This amendment limited detention periods for “terror” suspects in collectively committed crimes to four days, which could be extended to seven by the public prosecutor. In regions under the “state of emergency,” this period could be extended up to ten days. The amendment also permitted detainees to meet with their lawyers, though not immediately with detention, but after the extension of detention (after two days for individual crimes, four days after collective crimes).

  73.  Interview with state official, July 5, 2005.

  74.  Hürriyet, “Devletin İtirafı”; Radikal, “Devletin Cezaevi İtirafı.”

  75.  Sabah, “Cezaevleri Suç Fabrikası Gibi.”

  76.  See, for example, İstanbul Barosu İnsan Hakları Merkezi Cezaevi Çalışma Grubu, “Cezaevleri Sorunları ve Çözüm Yolları” and 1999–2000 Yılları Çalışma Raporu.

  77.  TBMM, Genel Kurul Tutanakları, November 21, 2000, 49.

  78.  According to the statistics released at the time, the political prisoner population was 9,642 out of 73,748 individuals. According to updated statistical information currently published by the Ministry of Justice, the political prisoner population was made up of 10,348 out of 68,764 individuals at the end of 1999. The overall percentage ranges between 13–15 percent of the whole population (depending on the figures). See Adalet Bakanlığı Ceza ve Tevkifevleri Genel Müdürlüğü (hereafter ABCTGM), “Statistics,” www.cte.adalet.gov.tr/. Last accessed December 1, 2012.

  79.  A list of prisoners as of May 2002 according to political affiliation is available in Taşkın, Cezaevi İstatistikleri, 294–5.

  80.  This security operation took place after political prisoners in the fourth and fifth wards invaded the seventh ward allotted to “ordinary” prisoners. This internal invasion was conducted because of the excessive crowding in the political prisoners’ wards. On September 2, 1999, the prisoners tore down the wall separating these wards and claimed the enlarged space for themselves until the security operation on September 26. TBMM İnsan Haklarını İnceleme Komisyonu, 26 Eylül Ulucanlar Cezaevi Raporu, 112 ff.

  81.  ABCTGM, “Açlık Grevi ve Ölüm Orucu Eylemlerinin Gerçek Nedenleri.” This document has now been removed from the official Web site. Last accessed August 19, 2003.

  82.  While the share of the Ministry of Justice in the government’s budget was 3 percent until 1960s, it decreased steadily in the following years. Since 1996 this share had decreased to less than 1 percent of the general budget. In 2000 its share was 0.77 percent. In contrast, for example, the share of the Ministry of Defense was 8.1 percent.

  83.  On the problem of governing prisons by executive decrees, Erdal, “Devletin Cezaevi Politikası.”

  84.  TBMM, Genel Kurul Tutanakları, November 21, 2000, 50.

  85.  Ibid.

  86.  Ibid.

  87.  Agha is a term used for powerful local landlords who dominate and exploit peasants connected to them through semi-feudal ties. TBMM, Genel Kurul Tutanakları, November 21, 2000, 63 (my emphases).

  88.  Ibid.

  89.  Ibid., 54–55 (my emphasis).

  90.  Weber, “Politics as a Vocation,” 33.

  91.  The term was introduced into modern economics by Robinson, The Economics of Imperfect Competition.

3. The Biosovereign Assemblage and Its Tactics

    1.  Churchill and Vander Wall, Cages of Steel; Immarigeon, “The Marionization of American Prisons”; King, “The Rise and Rise of Supermax”; Kurki and Morris, “The Purposes, Practices, and Problems of Supermax Prisons”; Mears, and Reisig, “The Theory and Practice of Supermax Prisons”; Pizarro and Stenius, “Supermax Prisons”; Sparks, Bottoms, and Hay, Prison and the Problem of Order; and Ward and Werlich, “Alcatraz and Marion.”

    2.  ABCTGM, “Ülkemizde Ceza İnfaz Kurumları.”

    3.  Kaptanoğlu, “Panopticon’dan F Tipine Tecrit,” 33.

    4.  TBMM, Genel Kurul Tutanakları, November 21, 2000, 51.

    5.  ABCTGM, “Açlık Grevi ve Ölüm Orucu Eylemlerinin Gerçek Nedenleri.”

    6.  Interviews with state officials, July 5–8, 2005.

    7.  Council of Europe, Report to the Turkish Government on the Visit to Turkey Carried Out by the European CPT from 16 to 24 July 2000, especially 11–12. While endorsing the new prisons, the CPT did caution, however, that the “moves towards smaller living units for prisoners in Turkey must be accompanied by measures to ensure that prisoners spend a reasonable part of the day engaged in purposeful activities outside their living unit” (12). This recommendation, repeated in the 2001 report, in fact dated from an earlier visit. See Council of Europe, Report to the Turkish Government on the Visit to Turkey Carried Out by the European CPT from 19 to 23 August 1996.

    8.  Green, “Turkish Jails, Hunger Strikes.”

    9.  Interviews with state officials, July 5–6, 2005.

  10.  Interview with state official, July 6, 2005 (my emphasis).

  11.  DSP Genel Merkezi, Ne İstedi, Nasıl Çıktı? 33–34 (my emphases).

  12.  Ibid. (my emphases).

  13.  Ibid.

  14.  In fact, a similar committee had been utilized for the talks that ended the 1996 death fast.

  15.  The members of this committee were Orhan Pamuk, Yaşar Kemal, Oral Çalışlar, Can Dündar, Zülfü Livaneli, Enver Nalbant, and Mehmet Bekaroğlu. The prisoners were represented by Şadi Özbolat, Ercan Kartal, and Aydın Hanbayat.

  16.  Ecevit declared: “I wish them success in the mission of humanity they have undertaken. We will properly evaluate the information and suggestions they will bring us as a result of their observations.” DSP Genel Merkezi, Ne İstedi, Nasıl Çıktı, 34 (my emphasis).

  17.  The members of this committee were Kamer Genç, Mehmet Bekaroğlu, Tunay Dikmen, and the commission secretary. The member of the ultranationalist MHP who chaired this committee was asked by the prisoners not to participate in the talks.

  18.  DSP Genel Merkezi, Ne İstedi, Nasıl Çıktı, 40–1.

  19.  Ibid.

  20.  The militant who conducted this attack was Ahmet Metin Koyuncu, allegedly a member of the illegal MLKP. Sabah, “Kimliği Parmak İzinden Bulundu.”

  21.  The group of hunger strikers claimed that twenty-two-year-old Cafer Dereli was attacked by supporters of a fascist group from Turkey. Hürriyet, “Destek Orucu Kana Bulandı.”

  22.  In this incident, Özkan Tekin was killed and two militants were wounded. Yaşamda Atılım, “Özkan, Cafer, Ahmet Hücrelere Barikat.”

  23.  All those organizations that issued the October 21 declaration about the premature launching of the hunger strike (with the exception of TKEP/L) now participated in the struggle by going on hunger strike.

  24.  TKP(ML) later admitted that the timing for the attack was wrong and would have been correct only if it had been conducted after the Operation Return to Life. In their critical assessment of the death fast struggle, the party conceded that their mistake gave ammunition to state propaganda against the death fast. See Sınıf Teorisi, “20 Ekim 2000,” 43.

  25.  Sabah, “Polis de Yürüdü” and “Müdürlerini Çiğnediler.”

  26.  The riot police make up a separate branch of the police force since 1983. They are responsible for establishing security and order at events such as political demonstrations, meetings, labor strikes, press conferences, protests, house demolitions, funeral processions, symposia, concerts, festivals, contests, and natural disasters.

  27.  Hürriyet, “Ecevit: Devlete Dayatma Kabul Edilemez.”

  28.  Ibid.

  29.  Ibid.

  30.  At this point, the composition of this committee was slightly different than the one before. In addition to the prisoner representatives, the committee now comprised of Mehmet Bekaroğlu (member of parliament and the Human Rights Commission), Yücel Sayman (head of the Istanbul Bar Association), Metin Bakkalcı (associate president of the Turkish Medical Association), Kaya Güvenç (president of the Architects’ and Engineers’ Chambers Association of Turkey), Oral Çalışlar (columnist of the newspaper Cumhuriyet), Behiç Aşçı (lawyer representing many hunger strikers), and Tekin Tangün (president of the Solidarity Association for Families and Relatives of the Arrested [TAYAD]).

  31.  See Dündar, “Ölüm Koridoru.” For excerpts from the transcriptions of the meetings, see Kurtuluş Yolu, “Ölüm Orucu Direnişinin Talepleri Üzerine Görüşme Tutanakları,” 129–60.

  32.  Hürriyet, “Bekaroğlu: Ölüm Orucu Bugün Biter.”

  33.  Ibid.

  34.  Hürriyet, “Ölüm Orucunda İpler Koptu.”

  35.  DSP Genel Merkezi, Ne İstedi, Nasıl Çıktı, 51.

  36.  Hürriyet, “Ölüm Orucuna DGM Yasağı.”

  37.  Although the issuing of parliamentary amnesties is not a new practice in Turkey, it is highly controversial. In the history of the Turkish republic, forty-three amnesties have been issued prior to this one, ranging from general and unconditional to partial and specialized amnesties and conditional releases. The 1982 Constitution foreclosed the issuing of a “general amnesty” (by Articles 14, 87, and 169). Prisoners convicted of crimes committed with the purpose of disrupting the “indivisible unity of the State with its country and nation,” destroying basic rights and liberties, harming the “democratic and secular republic” as well as burning, annihilating or contracting forests were deemed ineligible for amnesty (Constitution, http://www.anayasa.gov.tr/Mevzuat/Anayasa1982/). Last accessed November 15, 2013.

  38.  See TBMM, Genel Kurul Tutanakları, December 8, 2000, 443.

  39.  Ibid., 462.

  40.  Ibid., 482.

  41.  In fact, if the constitutional court decided that the bill contradicted the equality clause in the constitution, the effect would be to expand the scope of the law. In which case, prisoners convicted with “terror crimes,” including prisoners associated with PKK, for example, might also benefit from conditional release.

  42.  TBMM, Genel Kurul Tutanakları, December 8, 2000, 447.

  43.  This firm stance was taken by the coalition government despite the ambivalence of Nationalist Action Party (MHP). Member of Parliament Mehmet Şandır, speaking on behalf of MHP, argued: “In this law’s text … there are elements that we are not satisfied with, either. Forgive me, we are not the ones that made the promise to society, as MHP, we are not responsible for these mistakes, for this issue coming to this point.” When a member of the opposition cut him off and said, “Don’t give your vote, propose a motion, then,” Şandır responded, “Of course, we are evaluating the issue from where we stand. We say, this problem, which demands urgency before society, which cannot be postponed, which becomes a problem for society, which leads to the polarization of society, its separation into fronts, which has the tendency to block the agenda of Turkey, has to be solved in some way and at once. Therefore, because of this necessity, we will support this bill, despite all our worries and objections” (ibid., 453–54).

  44.  Ibid., 465.

  45.  For example, capital punishment for crimes against the state could not be commuted even while capital punishment for murder in the first degree could.

  46.  Ibid., 467.

  47.  Ibid., 444 (my emphasis).

  48.  The expression “organization camp” is commonly used in Turkish political discourse to refer to the headquarters of “terrorist” parties. Ibid., 459.

  49.  In addition to the antiterror law, which stipulated that high security prisons would be allotted for prisoners held for terror crimes, Article 13 of the Law for the Struggle Against Interest Based Criminal Organizations promulgated in 1999 (Law No. 4422) added that those imprisoned for crimes according to this law should also be subject to Article 16 of the antiterror law. In other words, those imprisoned for crimes relating to the mafia and criminal gangs were also to be kept in high security institutions designated for terrorist offenders. Further, according to the Bylaw for the Execution of Sentences (Article 78/B), among those held for “ordinary” crimes, prisoners who created unrest, instigated uprisings, and were not responsive to “rehabilitation programs” in medium security prisons would also be transferred to these high security institutions.

  50.  DSP Genel Merkezi, Ne İstedi, Nasıl Çıktı, 33–34 (my emphases).

  51.  Sezer, “Türkiye Cumhurbaşkanlığı Belgesi,” 32–33.

  52.  Hürriyet, “Her An Ölebilirler.”

  53.  Devletoğlu, “Demir Leydi 20 Yıl Önce Söylemişti.”

  54.  Hürriyet, “İşte Avrupa’nın F Tipi Raporu,” and “Türkiye Haklı.”

  55.  These prisons were Adana Kürkçüler, Ankara Ulucanlar, Aydın, Bartın, Sağmalcılar (Bayrampaşa), Buca, Bursa, Ceyhan, Çanakkale, Çankırı, Elbistan, Ermenek, Gebze, Kırşehir, Malatya, Nevşehir, Nazilli, Niğde, Uşak, and Ümraniye Prisons.

  56.  Interview with state official, July 5, 2005.

  57.  Hürriyet, “Düğmeye Böyle Basıldı.”

  58.  Sabah, “Operasyonu Bir Yılda Hazırladık.”

  59.  Hürriyet, “Türk: Şefkat Operasyonu.”

  60.  Interview with state official, July 5, 2005.

  61.  Interviews with state officials, July 6–7, 2005.

  62.  Interview with state official, July 5, 2005.

  63.  Interview with state official, July 6, 2005.

  64.  Ibid.

  65.  Interview with state official, July 8, 2005.

  66.  DSP Genel Merkezi, Ne İstedi, Nasıl Çıktı, 58.

  67.  Hürriyet, “Operasyonun Bilançosu.”

  68.  The prisons where the greatest resistance was put up against the operation were the Sağmalcılar and Ümraniye Prisons in Istanbul and the Çanakkale Prison.

  69.  942 prisoners were taken to three F-type prisons put into immediate use: 308 prisoners were taken to Sincan F-type Prison in Ankara, 317 prisoners were taken to Edirne F-type Prison, and 317 prisoners were taken to Kocaeli F-type Prison. 95 female prisoners were taken to Bakırköy Women and Children’s Prison and Kartal Special Type Prison. 237 prisoners were taken to hospitals. Hürriyet, “Hayata Dönüşün Bilançosu.”

  70.  Interview with state official, July 5, 2005.

  71.  Upon visiting Sincan F-type Prison on December 22, 2000, in the immediate aftermath of the December 19 operation, ten lawyers issued a joint statement drawing attention to the severity of the prisoners’ situation. Lawyers Kazım Bayraktar et al., “Basına ve Kamuya Açıklama.” A direct testimony of Bilal Ertürk, who was imprisoned for alleged participation in street protests against the F-type prisons before the operation and discharged soon after being transferred to Sincan F-type Prison, confirmed the violent procedures of entry into the high security prison, procedures including severe beatings and degrading body searches. See Göktaş, “F Tipinde Üç Gün Yetti.”

  72.  The report prepared by the Contemporary Lawyers’ Association (ÇHD), based on the initial observations of lawyers and families, documented the prisoners’ injuries due to exposure to violence during the operation. Çağdaş Hukukçular Derneği İstanbul Şubesi, Cezaevleri Çalışma Komisyonu Raporu.

  73.  İHD İstanbul Şubesi, F Tipi Cezaevleri Raporu, 3–5.

  74.  Bekaroğlu, TBMM İnsan Hakları İnceleme Komisyonu Başkanlığı’na Sunulan Rapor.

  75.  DSP, Ne İstedi, Nasıl Çıktı, 60 (my emphases).

  76.  In order to emphasize that only the unruly prisoners were transferred, the minister noted that the prisoners affiliated with PKK had been left in their wards. These prisoners were not participating in the death fast.

  77.  Hürriyet, “Cezaevlerindeki Terör Karargahları Temizlendi.” However, according to Judge Taşkın at the Ministry of Justice, “it would be very wrong to reduce the reason for carrying out the Operation Return to Life to hunger strikes. Even if there had not been any hunger strike, a prison operation would have been carried out under a different name. The operation does not concern an event but the system; it is not destruction, but a transition; it is not the end to the hunger strike or a similar event, but the beginning and end of a system.” Taşkın, Basında Cezaevleri ve Gerçekler, 193.

  78.  The two soldiers who died in the operation were Nurettin Kurt and Mustafa Mutlu. It has been alleged that their deaths were caused by friendly fire.

  79.  Foucault, Discipline and Punish, 50, 58.

  80.  Bora, “‘Hayata Dönüş’ ve Medya,” 45–47; Görmüş, “‘Hayata Dönüş’te Medya”; Fatih Polat, “Bir Savaş ve Operasyon Gücü Olarak Medya”; Demirer and Özgür, “‘Andıç’lı F-Tipi Medya.”

  81.  Milliyet, “Sahte Oruç, Kanlı İftar.”

  82.  Hürriyet, “Devlet Girdi.”

  83.  Mengi, “Devlet Uyandı!”; Altaylı, “Halkı Anlasalardı Böyle Olmazdı!”; Ülsever, “Cezaevi Operasyonlarında Hükümeti Destekliyorum”; Çölaşan, “İnsan Hakları!”; Korkmaz, “Nihayet …”.

  84.  Sabah, “Sol Örgütlerin Cinnet Eylemi”; Hürriyet, “Yakılanlar Kurban” and “Kadın Militanı Yaktılar.”

  85.  Kaliber, “F Tipi Gelişmeleri ve Cezaevleri Operasyonu,” 97.

  86.  The alleged conversations over cell phones smuggled into prisons were considered suspect by various human rights groups because they contained expressions used primarily by the police. Cell phone companies also announced that they had shut off communications in the area of the Sağmalcılar Prison, Bayrampaşa, Istanbul, when the operation began. TİHV, “Ölüm Orucuna Müdahale Devam Ediyor.”

  87.  DSP Genel Merkezi, Ne İstedi, Nasıl Çıktı, 58.

  88.  Right before the operation, there were 287 prisoners on the death fast and 1,269 prisoners on hunger strike, making a total of 1,556 prisoners. Taşkın, Basında Cezaevleri ve Gerçekler, 386. On December 26 the number of prisoners on hunger strike was reported as 1,596, of whom those on the death fast numbered 432. Türk, “Press Conference.”

  89.  Yaşadığımız Vatan, “Şişli Emniyet Müdürlüğüne Yönelik Feda Eylemi,” 8–9.

  90.  Until the 1970s, artificial feeding has been a major tool used by governments around the world for the termination of hunger strikes. This practice goes back to the early 1900s, when British suffragettes on hunger strike were resuscitated with this method. A major turning point in this policy occurred when two prisoners (the Price sisters) sued the Ministry of Interior Affairs in Britain for nonconsensual feeding. Government policy changed after the British Medical Association adopted the position that no doctor could be pressured to perform nonconsensual medical intervention and that the final decision on intervention should be left to individual doctors. As a result of this shift, the Provisional IRA militants on hunger strike in 1976 and 1981 were not subjected to artificial feeding, resulting in casualties. Elsewhere, artificial feeding is still being used. For example, GRAPO militants were artificially fed in the 1989 hunger strike in Spain, Moroccan militants were artificially fed in their 1990 hunger strike, and prisoners on hunger strike at Guantánamo Bay were artificially fed in 2002 and 2005.

  91.  DSP, Ne İstedi, Nasıl Çıktı, 60 (my emphasis).

  92.  Artificial feeding in Turkey was first sanctioned by an executive decree (No: 25–167) issued by the Ministry of Justice on December 31, 1997, as a response to the 1996 death fast that ended with a death toll of twelve prisoners. Accordingly, those prisoners on hunger strike whom the doctors find to be at risk of death or to have lost consciousness can be artificially fed.

  93.  For the ethics of treating hunger strikers, see Johannes Weir Foundation for Health and Human Rights, Assistance in Hunger Strikes; Annas, “Hunger Strikes”; Keeton, “Hunger Strikers”; Fessler, “The Implications of Starvation Induced Psychological Changes.”

  94.  World Medical Association, Declaration of Tokyo.

  95.  World Medical Association, Declaration of Malta on Hunger Strikers.

  96.  Hürriyet, “Müdahale Etmeyen Hekime Soruşturma Açılacak”; World Medical Association, “WMA Warned About Mounting Campaign Against Turkish Doctors.”

  97.  Lewey, “Force-Feeding”; Thorborn, “Croaker’s Dilemma”; “The Law and Force-Feeding”; Gregory, “Personal Views.”

  98.  Dr. Metin Bakkalcı, interview by Beraç Günçıkan.

  99.  Türk Tabipleri Birliği Merkez Konseyi, “Cezaevleri” and “Cezaevlerindeki Açlık Grevleri İçin Acil Çağrı Metni”; Soyer, “Açlık Grevleri/Ölüm Oruçları.”

100.  Hatun, “Ölüm Oruçları ve Hekimlik.”

101.  Oguz and Miles, “The Physician and Prison Hunger Strikes,” 171 (my emphasis).

102.  İnsan Hakları Derneği, Ölüm Oruçları. Of these individuals subject to interventions, eleven individuals suffered memory loss, six were diagnosed with Korsakoff syndrome and another with Korsakoff psychosis.

103.  The amendment to the Turkish Penal Code and the Law for the Administration of Prisons (Law No. 4806), passed on February 5, 2003, upheld medical intervention on those whose life is endangered or whose consciousness is lost in a hunger strike or death fast, regardless of the consent of the prisoner concerned. The same law stipulated that those preventing the nourishment of prisoners (including those who encourage or convince prisoners to conduct hunger strike) would be punished with two to four years of imprisonment. In case death followed such action, the sentence would be increased to ten to twenty years (Article 307/b in Penal Code). The same stipulations were adopted in the new Turkish Penal Code (Law No. 5237) passed on September 26, 2004 (Türk Ceza Kanunu, www.tbmm.gov.tr/kanunlar/k5237.html). Last accessed November 2012.

104.  See Yaşadığımız Vatan, “Polis Otosuna Silahlı Saldırı,” 39.

105.  The prisoners survived for much longer durations on this hunger strike in comparison to previous fasting experiences (where the horizon of survival was restricted to forty to seventy days) mainly because they supplemented their otherwise restricted diet with vitamin B1.

106.  For a list of the names of the dead, see table 6.1.

107.  Foucault, Discipline and Punish, 256, 269.

108.  The antiterror law was amended on May 1, 2001, and this amendment went in effect on May 5, 2001, when it was published in the Official Gazette No. 24393.

109.  The law for these specialized courts (Law No. 4675) was passed in the parliament on May 16, 2001, and was put in effect with its publication in the Official Gazette No. 24410 on May 23, 2001. With this law, 140 new courts were established. The law for monitoring boards (Law No. 4681) was passed on June 14, 2001, and went into effect on June 21, 2001 with its publication in the Official Gazette No. 24439; 130 monitoring boards have been established since then. For a complete list of changes introduced by the Ministry of Justice as part of the “penal reform” in the fields of legislation, prison construction, and educational services to personnel, see ABCTGM, “Cezaevi Reformu Çalışmaları ve İnsan Hakları.”

110.  One of the vocal critics of this proposal was Mehmet Bekaroğlu, a member of the parliament’s Human Rights Commission and part of the committee conducting the talks with the prisoners before December 19, 2000. While he welcomed the establishment of monitoring boards, he argued that these should be comprised of members not appointed by the state but chosen out of a list proposed by civil society institutions in the province of the relevant prison. He argued that the selection procedure of who would serve on these boards, as outlined in the current proposal, was based on the Justice Commission (upon recommendations by the governor of that province), which meant, in effect, that they would be appointed by the state. As such, he argued, the members would be like civil servants and greatly limited in their actions. See TBMM, Genel Kurul Tutanakları, June 12, 2001, 53.

111.  İnsan Hakları ve Mazlumlar için Dayanışma Derneği Cezaevleri Komisyonu, Cezaevi …

112.  Türk, “Press Conference,” and Taşkın, Basında Cezaevleri ve Gerçekler, 32.

4. Prisoners in Revolt

    1.  Devrimci Demokrasi, “Devrimci Tutsaklar Teslim Alınamaz!”

    2.  Interview with a participant of the death fast, May 23, 2005.

    3.  Marx and Engels, “The German Ideology,” 47.

    4.  Interviews with participants of the death fast, February 15, May 18, and May 23, 2005.

    5.  Interview with a participant of the death fast, May 23, 2005.

    6.  Interview with a participant of the death fast, February 15, 2005.

    7.  Interview with a participant of the death fast, January 24, 2005.

    8.  Interview with a participant of the death fast, February 15, 2005.

    9.  De Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life.

  10.  Interview with a participant of the death fast, May 22, 2005.

  11.  Yılmaz, İçimizdeki Hapishane. On the problem of the widespread use of violence in factional conflict within the radical left, see Boyoğlu, Ölümden Öte.

  12.  Interviews with participants of the death fast, February 15, May 18, and May 23, 2005.

  13.  Lefebvre, The Production of Space.

  14.  According to Wacquant, we can find the phenomenon of “advanced marginality” produced through the uneven development and forms of exclusion that operate in urban centers of post-Fordist economies. This marginality, as a structural position, is not unlike the marginality of these prisons vis-à-vis the public sphere, even though economic factors are not the main determinants of the exclusion of prisoners. However, Wacquant associates advanced marginality with a loss of a positive identification with space as a source of identity. By contrast, in the case of prison wards, the radicalization of identity through a positive and intense identification with space becomes the driving force of violent forms of self-expression. See Wacquant, “The Rise of Advanced Marginality.”

  15.  Gould, Insurgent Identities.

  16.  On the concept of constituent power, see Negri, Insurgencies. However, the spatial dimension of constituent power has not been fully explored. A notable exception is Schmitt, The Nomos of the Earth.

  17.  On the spatialities of resistance, see Pile and Keith, Geographies of Resistance.

  18.  Öztürk, Türkiye Solunun Hapishane Tarihi, 123–24.

  19.  Coşkun, “Nâzım Hikmet’in Açlık Grevi,” 16.

  20.  Öztürk, Türkiye Solunun Hapishane Tarihi, 224.

  21.  Fişekçi, “Nâzım Hikmet’i Açlık Grevine Götüren Yol,” 9.

  22.  Coşkun, “Nâzım Hikmet’in Açlık Grevi,” 31; Öztürk, Türkiye Solunun Hapishane Tarihi, 226–27.

  23.  Behram, Darağacında Üç Fidan, 94–95.

  24.  Ibid., 96–97.

  25.  For testimonies of former political prisoners from various prisons since the 1980s, see Mavioğlu, Asılmayıp da Beslenenler. For testimonies of female political prisoners of three generations, see Çelik, Demir Parmaklıklar Ortak Düşler.

  26.  Bozyel, Diyarbakır 5 Nolu; Zana, Prison No. 5; Zeydanlıoğlu, “The Period of Barbarity”; Çürükkaya, 12 Eylül Karanlığında Diyarbakır Şafağı; Welat, Auschwitz’den Diyarbakır’a 5 No’lu Cezaevi; Kısacık, İşkence ve Ölümün Adresi; Miroğlu, Dijwar.

  27.  Kukul, Bir Direniş Odağı Metris.

  28.  Bora, “Hapishane Rejimi,” 17, 20.

  29.  “Political” wards stood in stark contrast with the wards of the “independents,” where militants who had broken down under interrogation in police custody (usually involving torture) or those who would like to break away from their organizational affiliations were placed during the military coup. See Mavioğlu, Asılmayıp da Beslenenler, 60.

  30.  Interview with families of participants of the death fast, January 20 and May 18, 2005.

  31.  İnsan Hakları Derneği, 1981–1995 Cezaevlerinde Yaşamını Yitirenler.

  32.  Yetkin and Tanboğa, Dörtlerin Gecesi; and Yüce, 12 Eylül Sömürgeci-Faşist Rejimine Karşı Diyarbakır Zindan Direnişi.

  33.  Mavioğlu, Asılmayıp da Beslenenler, 109–10. On Mamak, also see Dönmez, Mamak … Ey Mamak.

  34.  Interview with a participant of the death fast, May 31, 2005.

  35.  See Kukul, Bir Direniş Odağı Metris, and Karataş et al., 12 Eylül’de Direniş Ölüm ve Yaşam.

  36.  ABCTGM, 1 Ağustos Genelgesi, July 7, 1988. On this also see Mavioğlu, Asılmayıp da Beslenenler, 309–10.

  37.  Şeşen, Tutsak Aileleri.

  38.  İHD İstanbul Şubesi, Sessiz Çığlık, 102.

  39.  Kanar, “Azaphane ya da Cezaevleri,” 70.

  40.  Mavioğlu, Asılmayıp da Beslenenler, 311; TİHV, İşkence Dosyası.

  41.  See TİHV, Türkiye İnsan Hakları Raporu ’91, 109–16.

  42.  For the various decrees, see ABCTGM, Genelgeler, May 6, 1996, May 9, 1996, and September 29, 1997.

  43.  Council of Europe, Report to the Turkish Government on the Visit to Turkey Carried Out by the European CPT from 19 to 23 August 1996.

  44.  Several accounts of 1996’s resistance are available. See, for example, Direniş Ölüm ve Yaşam-II; Okuyucu, ’96 Ölüm Orucu; Uğur, Zafere Mahkum Edilenler Ölümü Küçülterek Yenerler; and Yılmaz, Ölümü Yenenleri Kimse Yenemez. As the 2000 death fast began, the family organization of the prisoners published a brief pamphlet to remind the public of what had happened in 1996. TAYAD, “12 İnsan.”

  45.  Interview with a participant of the death fast, May 29, 2005.

  46.  In 1999, when Kemal Ertürk and Bülent Ertürk, two prisoners under arrest as the suspects of the assassination upon the Governor of Çankırı, were transferred to Eskişehir Special Type Prison from Ankara Central Closed Prison, they went on hunger strike. The CCP coordinated prisoners around the country to create greater pressure on the Ministry of Justice by acts such as resisting counts, invading different sections of their prisons, and taking wardens hostage. Forty-three wardens were taken hostage overall. These actions came to an end when the demands of the CCP were met. Interviews with participants of the death fast, April 22, May 22, and May 29, 2005.

  47.  For a narrative of the prisoner resistance at Ulucanlar Prison, see Bektaş, Zafere Halay; and TAYAD, “Yalanları Parçalayan Ulucanlar Katliamı.” For a collection of accounts of the operation by lawyers, see Bayraktar et al., Ulucanlar. For a list of allegations of other infractions on prisoner rights during this period, see Özgür TAYAD, “Hapishaneler Gerçeği.”

  48.  TBMM İnsan Haklarını İnceleme Komisyonu, 26 Eylül Ulucanlar Cezaevi Raporu, especially 112–20.

  49.  Interview with a participant of the death fast, May 29, 2005. In order not to hasten the looming security operation on all prisons, the CCP did not coordinate prison riots across the country when the security operation in Burdur Prison took place. Other tactics, such as boycotting court appearances, were pursued.

  50.  TKP(ML) was later renamed as MKP.

  51.  Devrimci Demokrasi, “Devrimci Tarihi(ni) Unutma …!” 3.

  52.  Devrimci Demokrasi, “Devrimci Tutsaklar Teslim Alınamaz!” 8.

  53.  These three organizations made up over two-thirds of the prison population on the Turkish left, corresponding to over one thousand individuals.

  54.  Kızılbayrak, “Hücre Saldırısını Püskürtmenin Sorunları ve Sorumlulukları.”

  55.  Kızılbayrak, “Hücre Saldırısı ve Yeni Zindan Direnişi.”

  56.  Interview with a participant of the death fast, May 10, 2005.

  57.  Devrimci Demokrasi, “Devrimci Tarihi(ni) Unutma!…” 3; Kızılbayrak, “Hücre Saldırısı ve Yeni Zindan Direnişi.”

  58.  Alınterimiz, “Faşizm Hücre Tipi Cezaevi Hükmünü Yürütüyor,” 1.

  59.  Yaşamda Atılım, “Ölüm Hücrelerini Yıkacağız,” 1, 9.

  60.  Ufuk Çizgisi, “Ölüm Orucu Değerlendirmesi (II).”

  61.  Ibid.

  62.  Interview with a participant of the death fast, January 24, 2005.

  63.  Interview with a participant of the death fast, July 1, 2005.

  64.  Interview with a participant of the death fast, February 15, 2005.

  65.  Saçılık, “Burdur Saldırısı Planın Bir Parçasıydı”; Devrimci Demokrasi, “Saldırı F Tipi Projesinin Provasıdır,” 16 and “F Tipine Geçişin Provası ve Burdur Direnişi,” 12; Yaşamda Atılım, “Buca’da Burdur Provası,” 5; Ufuk Çizgisi, “Ölüm Orucu Değerlendirmesi (II).”

  66.  Devrimci Demokrasi, “Devrimciliğin Yeniden Sınandığı Keskin Bir Dönemeçten Geçiyoruz,” 3.

  67.  Ufuk Çizgisi, “Ölüm Orucu Değerlendirmesi (II).”

  68.  Yaşadığımız Vatan, “Hapishanelere Yönelik Provokasyonlara Tutsaklardan Tepki,” 21.

  69.  Anderson, “‘To Lie Down to Death for Days,’” 820.

  70.  Devrimci Demokrasi, “Süresiz Açlık Grevi Direnişi Başladı,” 1; TAYAD Komite Nederland, Documentation on the Death Fast in Turkey; TİHV, 2001 Türkiye İnsan Hakları Raporu.

  71.  Bağımsız Vatan, “Direniş Tarihimize Onurla Yazılan Yeni Sayfalar Eklemeye Devam Ediyoruz,” 5, 12–13; Devrimci Demokrasi, “Direniş Tarihimize Onurla Yazılan Yeni Sayfalar Eklemeye Devam Ediyoruz,” 13. The participation of prisoners associated with TKİP was announced separately. Kızılbayrak, “Öleceğiz ama hücrelere girmeyeceğiz!…” 1; Yaşadığımız Vatan, October 30, 2000, 5, 16.

  72.  Bağımsız Vatan, “Direniş Tarihimize Onurla Yazılan Yeni Sayfalar Eklemeye Devam Ediyoruz,” 5, 12–13; Devrimci Demokrasi, “Direniş Tarihimize Onurla Yazılan Yeni Sayfalar Eklemeye Devam Ediyoruz,” 13.

  73.  Ibid.

  74.  Ibid.

  75.  Ibid.

  76.  State security courts were established according to Article 143 of the 1982 Constitution, which assigned them the responsibility of dealing with “offences against the indivisible integrity of the State with its territory and nation, the free democratic order, or against the Republic whose characteristics are defined in the Constitution, and offences directly involving the internal and external security of the State.” Constitution of the Republic of Turkey, www.anayasa.gov.tr/Mevzuat/Anayasa1982/. Last accessed November 15, 2013.

  77.  ABCTGM, Protokol, January 14, 2000. Available in İHD İstanbul Şubesi, Sessiz Çığlık, 30–50.

  78.  Established in 1992, All Judicial and Penal Institutions Employees’ Union has ten thousand members working in the justice system, ranging from prisons to the Ministry of Justice and the Constitutional Court. The trade union is organized as part of the Confederation of Public Laborers’ Trade Unions (KESK).

  79.  While the Kurdish prisoners lent support to the death fast of 1996, this did not happen in 2000. Instead, the Kurds distanced themselves from the death fast struggle. Their position on the 2000 death fast was summarized by their leader, writing with the pseudonym Ali Yılmaz in “F Tipleri, Devlet, Sol ve PKK Açısından Cezaevleri.”

  80.  Yaşadığımız Vatan, October 30, 2000, 4.

  81.  Interviews with participants of the death fast, February 15, April 17, and May 23, 2005.

  82.  Yücel, “Galatasaray.”

  83.  The Intelligentsia and Artist Initiative Against the F-type Prison (F-Tipi Cezaevine Karşı Aydın ve Sanatçı Girişimi) was comprised of intellectuals such as İlhan Selçuk, Adalet Ağaoğlu, Oral Çalışlar, Halil Ergün, Gencay Gürsoy, Ercan Karakaş, Yaşar Kemal, Zülfü Livaneli, Orhan Pamuk, and Eşber Yağmurdereli.

  84.  The proceedings of this conference are available: TAYAD, “Hapishaneler Gerçeği, Yaşanan Sorunlar ve Çözüm Önerileri Kurultayı.”

  85.  See Yaşadığımız Vatan, December 11, 2000, 34.

  86.  For the full text of this declaration, see Yaşadığımız Vatan, November 20, 2000, 6.

  87.  Yaşamda Atılım, “Uyarı Hepimize!” 1.

  88.  Ufuk Çizgisi, “Ölüm Orucu Değerlendirmesi (V).”

  89.  Yaşadığımız Vatan, December 11, 2000, 6.

  90.  Yaşadığımız Vatan, December 4, 2000, 49; Devrimci Demokrasi, “Avrupa’da Tutsaklarla Dayanışma Eylemleri Sürüyor,” December 1–16, 2000, 19.

  91.  Evrensel, “Cezaevlerinde Ölüm Engellensin.”

  92.  For a self-critique issued by TKP(ML) on this attack, see Sınıf Teorisi, “20 Ekim 2000,” 43.

  93.  İHD İstanbul Şubesi, “Ölum Oruçlarına İlişkin Ön Rapor”; Çağdaş Hukukçular Derneği İstanbul Şubesi, “19.12.2000 Tarihinde Başlatılan Cezaevleri Operasyonu.”

  94.  Hürriyet, “Hayata Dönüşün Bilançosu.” It is also noteworthy that although thirty prisoners died in these operations, the Death Fast Struggle only claims twenty-eight of these deaths as its “martyrs” (see table 6.1). The two other prisoners who died, Haydar Akbaba and Muharrem Buldukoğlu, have allegedly been killed by other prisoners while Operation Return to Life was taking place at Ümraniye Prison in Istanbul. These prisoners, who were allegedly executed as “enemies of the people,” were affiliated with MLKP, which later issued a self-critique about these executions in 2004, retracting the “false” accusations about them and restoring their names by the affirmation that these two prisoners were still in the revolutionary ranks when they died. See Özcan, “Akbaba ve Buldukoğlu'yu Hapiste Kim Öldürdü?”

  95.  For an overview of the report concerning Sağmalcılar (Bayrampaşa) Prison, where twelve prisoners were killed, see the newspaper article by Şık, “Gerçeğe Dönüş.” For a detailed list of the causes of death for each prisoner, see Şık, “İşte Böyle Öldüler.” According to the autopsy reports, only seven prisoners have died directly because they set themselves on fire while the remaining twenty-three were fatally shot, burned, or suffocated. These reports also proved that the prison scenes were not kept “as is” for legal inspection after the operation. Instead, some spots with large pools of blood were covered with cement or piles of books and other furniture, suggesting tampering with evidence to conceal the disproportionate use of violence. After the operation, Minister of Justice Türk claimed that prisoners had fired upon security forces with Kalashnikov guns and burned themselves to death. Minister of Interior Affairs Sadettin Tantan argued that no weapons were used by security forces, whereas prisoners utilized Kalashnikov guns, hunting guns, and hand grenades. See Radikal, “‘Mahkumlar Ateş Etti’ Demişlerdi.” Tantan also revealed that the operation had been planned weeks before it actually took place and that the gendarmes were well-trained (using model prisons), putting into doubt the sincerity and value of negotiations with the prisoners. Keskin, “Resmi Yalanlar.”

  96.  Yaşadığımız Vatan, “Şişli Emniyet Müdürlüğüne Yönelik Feda Eylemi,” 8–9.

  97.  İHD İstanbul Şubesi, “Press Release on January 20, 2001” and “Press Release on February 8, 2001,” in F Tipi Cezaevleri Raporu 2.

  98.  See Tüm Yargı-Sen Genel Merkez Yönetim Kurulu, “Sendikamıza Yönelik Baskılar.” Courtesy of Oral Çalışlar.

  99.  “Partiler, Dergiler, Yazarlar Ne Dediler?”; Yaşadığımız Vatan, “Sol Ne Tarafta?” “ÖDP, Kaçınılmaz Tartışmayı Yaşıyor,” and “ÖDP: Ölüm Orucu Gündemimiz Değil.” Also available in Kartal, Büyük Direniş ve Sol, 84–93, 118–21, 203–5.

100.  Güler, “Sola Dair,” 3.

101.  Özgür, “Terörize Et ve Yönet.”

102.  Laçiner, “‘Hayata Dönüş!’” 14.

103.  Ibid., 15.

104.  Devecioğlu, “‘Biz’den Uzaklaşan Hapishaneler,” 41.

105.  Ibid. For a critical exchange on these essays, see Uygun, “Hapishaneler Üzerine”; Poyraz, “Ömer Laçiner’e Mektup”; Laçiner, “Cevap Yerine.”

106.  Devrimci Demokrasi, “F Tipi Ölüm Hücrelerinde Direniş Büyüyor,” 1.

107.  Yaşamda Atılım, “Ölürüz ama Teslim Olmayız,” 2.

108.  Yaşadığımız Vatan, “F Tiplerinde İşkence,” 4.

109.  Türk, “Press Conference.”

110.  Even though prisoners associated with Kurdish nationalism, generally imprisoned for cases related to the outlawed PKK, did not participate in the death fast struggle (except for marginal support), there was one faction on the Kurdish left actively supporting the death fast struggle. This was a splinter group called Revolutionary Line Warriors (Devrimci Çizgi Savaşçıları) that had broken off from PKK after the capture and imprisonment of Abdullah Öcalan, the party leader. Prisoners of the PKK-DÇS group began a hunger strike of indefinite duration on December 3, 2000. Yaşadığımız Vatan, December 11, 2000, 37. Among prisoners associated with the Kurdish struggle, only members of this group were transferred to F-type prisons, along with others from the Turkish left.

111.  Cf. Anderson, “‘To Lie Down to Death for Days,’” 820.

112.  Yaşadığımız Vatan, March 25, 2001, 14.

113.  Interviews with participants of the death fast, January 20, February 15, April 17, and May 31, 2005.

114.  The latter situation arises when the termination of the hunger strike lacks the appropriate vitamin B1 support. When sugary liquids are fed into the body through the veins, without additional thiamin, the already critical levels of thiamin in the body are depleted in the processing of sugar, giving rise to the Wernicke-Korsakoff disorder. For an important study on the issue, see Gökmen,“Mayıs 1996 Açlık Grevi-Ölüm Orucu Katılımcılarının Klinik Değerlendirilmesi.” Other relevant medical studies on former hunger strikers and death fasters from Turkey reveal the full range of damage due to Wernicke-Korsakoff, despite the use of B1. Gürvit et al., “Hunger-Strike Related Wernicke-Korsakoff Disease”; Başoğlu et al., “Neurological Complications of Prolonged Hunger Strike”; Kınay et al.,“Early and Late Stage EEG Findings in Wernicke-Korsakoff Syndrome.”

115.  The most common symptoms of the Wernicke-Korsakoff syndrome are confusion, attention deficit, disorientation, vision impairment, hypothermia, hypotension, ataxia, and amnesia. Wernicke and Korsakoff can be diagnosed separately as two different disorders, but they are generally considered to be different stages of the same disorder, Wernicke being the acute phase while Korsakoff is the chronic. Korsakoff syndrome tends to develop as Wernicke’s symptoms diminish. Wernicke’s encephalopathy is mainly associated with damage to the central nervous system whereas Korsakoff psychosis is mainly associated with the impairment of memory. Mayda, “Wernicke-Korsakoff Hastalığı ve Rehabilitasyonu.”

116.  Ufuk Çizgisi, “Ölüm Orucu Değerlendirmesi (VI).”

117.  Ufuk Çizgisi, “Ölüm Orucu Değerlendirmesi (VII).”

118.  Ibid.

119.  Ufuk Çizgisi, “Ölüm Orucu Değerlendirmesi (VII).”

120.  When the declaration was first published at the end of May 2001, it was signed, rather vaguely, by “All Detainees and Convicts in Resistance.” A week later, however, it was republished, with the signatures of ten organizations now part of the movement. The list of signatories comprised DHKP-C, TKP(ML), TKİP, TKP/ML, TİKB, DH, TDP, MLKP, DY, and THKP-C/MLSPB. For the former version, Yaşadığımız Vatan, May 28, 2001, 12. For the latter, see Yaşadığımız Vatan, June 4, 2001, 6.

121.  The publication of the diary of a hunger striker who suffered from memory loss due to medical intervention is a poignant testimony to this problem. See Sadiç, Puslu Aydınlık.

122.  The antiterror law was amended on May 1, 2001, and this amendment went in effect on May 5, 2001, when it was published in the Official Gazette No. 24393.

123.  The law for the specialized courts (Law No. 4675) was passed in the parliament on May 16, 2001, and was put in effect with its publication in the Official Gazette No. 24410 on May 23, 2001. The law for monitoring boards (Law No. 4681) was passed on June 14, 2001, and went into effect on June 21, 2006, with its publication in the Official Gazette No. 24439. However, political prisoners considered these changes to be superficial gestures that did not address the real problem. Instead, they argued, these “reforms” further entrenched the F-type prisons and provided no basis for addressing their concerns. For a critique of these special courts prepared by the Izmir Bar Association with actual examples of their stipulations, see İzmir Barosu, “İnfaz Hakimlikleri.”

124.  Hundreds of prisoners were eligible due to the effects of self-starvation. See Taşkın, Basında Cezaevleri ve Gerçekler, 32.

125.  Interview with a participant of the death fast, May 29, 2005.

126.  The headline of the newspaper Sabah on the day of the raid announced the impending operation: “This Is Istanbul, Not Palestine.” Hopalı, “Burası Filistin Değil Istanbul.”

127.  Erdoğan, Sayman, and Özkan, “Open Letter”; Erdoğan (president of the Ankara Bar Association), Acar (president of the Antalya Bar Association), Sayman (president of the Istanbul Bar Association), and Özkan (president of the Izmir Bar Association), “Üç Kapı, Üç Kilit”; and İstanbul Barosu Merkez Kurulu ve Meslek Odaları Merkez Kurulları, “Statement on the Death Fasts in Prisons.” Courtesy of Yücel Sayman.

128.  Of these individuals, 8 were on hunger strike of indefinite duration and 142 were on the death fast. By the end of 2001, 182 convicted prisoners had received reprieve on their sentences and were discharged from prison according to Criminal Procedural Code Article 399 and 71 prisoners under arrest were discharged from prison by court decisions at their ongoing trials. Türk, “Press Conference.” In addition, the president had pardoned another 25 prisoners based on Article 104 of the Constitution. In the following months this policy would be continued. By October 2004 the number of prisoners discharged went up to 660 (out of which 189 were permanently pardoned by the president, 391 received postponements of their sentences, renewable every six months, and 80 were released by court decisions). See Taşkın, Basında Cezaevleri ve Gerçekler, 32.

129.  A list of signatory organizations and individuals to the proposal appeared in print: Cumhuriyet, “Ölümleri Durdurmak İçin Bir Çözüm.” Different branches of the trade unions, as well as union confederations such as DİSK and Türk-İş also issued a press release announcing their support on January 11, 2002. For news articles about the approach of the prisoners versus the Minister of Justice, see Evrensel, “Üç Kapı Üç Kilit Tartışması”; and Cumhuriyet, “‘Üç Kapı Üç Kilit’e Ret.”

130.  Adalet Bakanlığı, “İstanbul, Ankara, İzmir ve Antalya Barolarının Birlikte Hazırladıkları ‘Üç Kapı Üç Kilit Projesi.’”

131.  Kansu, “‘3 Kapı 3 Anahtar’ Teşvikçi Önerisi.”

132.  TKP(ML)-affiliated ex-prisoners withdrew from the death fast outside in January 2002; MLKP affiliated ex-prisoners followed suit in May 2002. DHKP-C affiliated ex-prisoners and TAYAD members continued. Devrimci Demokrasi, “Alibeyköy Direniş Evi,” 8; Evrensel, “Bir Grup Tutuklu Ölüm Orucunu Bitirdi,” 15.

133.  Kama et al., “Halkımıza!” 9.

134.  Ekmek ve Adalet, no. 11 (3 June 2002), 5.

135.  With the 2002 general elections, the parliament’s composition had greatly changed. The coalition government of Democratic Left Party (DSP), Motherland Party (ANAP), and Nationalist Action Party (MHP) was now replaced by the majority government of Justice and Development Party (AKP) under the leadership of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, with 354 out of the 550 seats in the parliament. The major party in opposition was Republican People’s Party (CHP) led by Deniz Baykal. Of the previous coalition, neither the Democratic Left Party nor the Nationalist Action Party could enter parliament, having received less than 10 percent of the votes of the general electorate. Motherland Party, from the previous government, obtained only twenty seats in this parliament.

136.  Aşçı had his “last supper” as part of the ceremony initiating him into revolutionary martyrdom with a large circle of militants, colleagues, friends, and members of TAYAD on April 4, 2006. His red headband was tied by Ahmet Kulaksız, the father of two militant-martyr Canan and Zehra, both of whom had fasted outside prison walls. See the news article in Istanbul Indymedia, “Devrimci Avukat Behiç Aşçı Ölüm Orucunda.”

137.  Behiç Aşçı, “Letter to the Public,” quoted in Temelkuran, Ne Anlatayım Ben Sana! 155–59.

138.  Behiç Aşçı, interviewed by Ahmet Tulgar, in Aşçı, “‘Bu 10 Dakikada Çözülecek Sorun.’”

139.  Istanbul Indymedia, “Devrimci Avukat Behiç Aşçı Ölüm Orucunda.”

140.  Ibid.

141.  Aşçı is a respected member of the Istanbul Bar Association, he serves on the general board of the progressive Contemporary Lawyers’ Association (ÇHD) and he has worked in the activist bureau called the People’s Law Bureau (Halkın Hukuk Bürosu) since 1994.

142.  Interviews with human rights defenders, June 11, June 17, June 20, 2005.

143.  Laçiner, “Hayata Dönüş!” 15; Ufuk Çizgisi, “Ölüm Orucu Değerlendirmesi (VII).”

144.  Interviews with human rights defenders, June 21, June 25, July 1, 2005.

145.  There is a substantial body of research that confirms the negative health implications of solitary confinement. See, among others, Andersen et al., “A Longitudinal Study of Prisoners on Remand”; Glancy and Murray, “Psychiatric Aspects of Solitary Confinement”; Haney, “Mental Health Issues”; Hrassian, “Psychopathological Effects of Solitary Confinement”; Miller and Young, “Prison Segregations”; Rhodes, “Pathological Effects of the Supermaximum Prison.”

146.  Aşçı, “‘Bu 10 Dakikada Çözülecek Sorun.”

147.  düzkan, behiç aşçı kitabı, 63–64.

148.  Kalyvas, “Hegemonic Sovereignty.”

149.  Aşçı, “Behiç Aşçı Kimdir?”

150.  Similarly, in the speech he gave at his red headband ceremony, Aşçı explained: “Why did I volunteer for the death fast? There are many things to be said. Imperialism, attacks against the peoples of the world, the oppression, terror, isolation, and censorship in Turkey. But one of the reasons of utmost determining significance from my perspective arises because I take up this problem as a problem of conscience. One hundred and twenty-one people have fallen martyr. I know a great many of them. I participated in their funerals. All of this accumulated. In a place where all this was lived, it would have been a lack of conscience to be cut off from this process.” See Istanbul Indymedia, “Devrimci Avukat Behiç Aşçı Ölüm Orucunda.”

151.  In the interview by Tulgar, Aşçı distinguished the death fast from an act of suicide as follows: “If I had thought that the death fast was an act of suicide, I would throw myself down from here and at least I would not have to endure the pains induced by hunger. It is not like that, we have a demand at stake. I don’t have an intention to die, neither did the 122 people who have died until today. I want to live, too. But the problem is how and in what way we shall live. If what is demanded from lawyers like myself is to turn [our] back against the living conditions of our clients, we can never accept such a life.” See Aşçı, “Bu 10 Dakikada Çözülecek Sorun.” Also see ayşe düzkan, behiç aşçı kitabı, 42.

152.  Temelkuran, Ne Anlatayım Ben Sana! 161.

153.  This irony finds expression in the hunger striker’s desire to be the final sacrifice in the death fast, the “sacrifice to end all sacrifice,” the last death that wins a victory for the movement. Fatma Koyupınar was the last death faster to die in the struggle. She passed away on April 27, 2006, three weeks after Behiç Aşçı began fasting. On May 1, 2006, Sevgi Saymaz began her fast unto death. In Sevgi Saymaz’s words: “Fatma had said, ‘Let me be the last.’ Now I am saying the same thing. But the only condition for this is the abolition of isolation.” Saymaz, “Tecridin Sona Erdirilmesi Talebiyle.”

154.  The declaration stated, “Aşçı has started his “death fast” action in his home in Istanbul with the demand of abolishing isolation. Both inside prisons and outside, the death fast action against isolation continues. The health and life of all of them is in danger. … The voice of lawyer Behiç Aşçı, who has put his life on the line in order to defend his clients’ right to live, must be attended to.” For the full declaration, see “Tecrit İşkencedir!”

155.  Temelkuran, Ne Anlatayım Ben Sana! 152.

156.  ABCTGM, Genelge 45/1, January 22, 2007.

5. Marxism, Martyrdom, Memory

    1.  “Iran: The Spirit of a World Without Spirit,” 255.

    2.  Sosyalizm ve Toplumsal Mücadeleler Ansiklopedisi, vol. 7.

    3.  Aydınoğlu, Türk Solu.

    4.  Cinemre and Çakır, Sol Kemalizme Bakıyor.

    5.  Samim, “The Tragedy of the Turkish Left,” 63–64.

    6.  Stephenson, “Kemalizmden Sonra Sol Nereye?”

    7.  Samim, “The Tragedy of the Turkish Left,” 67.

    8.  Atılgan, Yön-Devrim Hareketi, 52–60; Şener, Türkiye Solunda Üç Tarz-ı Siyaset, 77–171; Kahraman, “Türk Solunun Çıkmaz Sokağı,” 48–53.

    9.  Landau, Radical Politics in Modern Turkey, 122–70; Lipovsky, The Socialist Movement in Turkey, 21–48; Şener, Türkiye Solunda üç Tarz-ı Siyaset, 301–24.

  10.  Boran, İki Açıdan Türkiye İşçi partisi Davası, 80ff. Also see Karpat, “Socialism and the Labor Party of Turkey.”

  11.  Aren, TİP Olayı (1961–1971).

  12.  Lipovsky, The Socialist Movement in Turkey, 125–30, and “The Legal Socialist Parties of Turkey.”

  13.  Şener, Türkiye Solunda üç Tarz-ı Siyaset, 231–47.

  14.  Ibid., 175–207.

  15.  Belli, Milli Demokratik Devrim.

  16.  According to Aydın, what was inherent in this thesis was the supposition that the initial “good” state had been replaced by the ruling class of the comprador bourgeoisie and collaborationist classes. If these dominant strata could be overthrown with the help of the national classes, the “good” state could be reestablished. See Aydın, “Türkiye’de ‘Devlet Geleneği’ Söylemi Üzerine,” 75.

  17.  Doğan, “Türk Solunun Kısa Tarihi,” 136–40.

  18.  Ulus, The Army and the Radical Left in Turkey.

  19.  Akdere and Karadeniz, Türkiye Solu’nun Eleştirel Tarihi, 250–53.

  20.  Perinçek, Sosyal-Emperyalizm ve Revizyonizme Karşı 1970’te Açılan Mücadele. Also see Şener, Türkiye Solunda üç Tarz-ı Siyaset, 210–14.

  21.  Perinçek, Kemalist Devrim-1; Kahraman, “Türk Solunun Çıkmaz Sokağı,” 69–72.

  22.  Şener, Türkiye Solunda Üç Tarz-ı Siyaset, 225–30.

  23.  Kaypakkaya, “Şafak Revizyonizminin Kemalist Hareket, Kemalist İktidar Dönemi, İkinci Dünya Savaşı Yılları, Savaş Sonrası ve 27 Mayıs Hakkındaki Tezleri,” in Seçme Yazılar, 127–97.

  24.  Kaypakkaya, “TİİKP Program Taslağı Eleştirisi,” in Seçme Yazılar, 97, “Türkiye’de Ulusal Sorun,” in Seçme Yazılar, 211–16.

  25.  Kaypakkaya, “Türkiye’de Ulusal Sorun,” 252–53.

  26.  Kaypakkaya, “Şafak Revizyonizmi ile Aramızdaki Ayrılıkların Kökeni ve Gelişmesi,” in Seçme Yazılar, 356–64.

  27.  THKO Davası; Akdere and Karadeniz, Türkiye Solu’nun Eleştirel Tarihi, 313.

  28.  Töre, “THKO’nun Doğuşu-Gelişimi ve Sonu,” 2170–1.

  29.  Çayan, “Kesintisiz Devrim I,” in Bütün Yazılar, 234, 287; Şener, Türkiye Solunda Üç Tarz-ı Siyaset, 214–23.

  30.  Çayan, “Kesintisiz Devrim II-III,” in Bütün Yazılar, 292.

  31.  Ibid., 303.

  32.  Ibid., 311.

  33.  Ibid., 318–20.

  34.  Anderson, Imagined Communities, 9.

  35.  Ibid., 7.

  36.  Ibid., 10.

  37.  Bloch, “Karl Marx, Death and the Apocalypse.”

  38.  Ibid., 39.

  39.  Ibid, 41.

  40.  The Alevi sect, as the local Shia community in Turkey, has been historically subjugated and oppressed by the Sunni majority. Alevis have been long-standing supporters of leftist politics.

  41.  Faith here should be understood as an unqualified certitude in the theoretical premises of one’s position such that they are taken for granted as the truth and the legitimate basis of actions. Faith can thus arise in the absence of an overt fusion of Marxist theory with religious thought.

  42.  Freud uses the term displacement to indicate the process of dream work in which the various components of latent, preconscious thought-material is shifted upon a different object or impressionistic residue of the dream-day, distorting the dream-thoughts such that they become difficult to recognize in the dream-content. Althusser also adopts the term, but applies it to the social formation in which the overdeter-mined contradictions are diverted, serving the preservation of the status quo. My use of the term is informed by the work of both of them, but is restricted to the conceptual articulation and alignment of the theoretical elements of ideology, i.e., how these elements are deflected, dislocated, and reconfigured as a result of the introduction of elements largely foreign to that ideology. For Freudian displacement, see Freud, “On Dreams.” For Althusser’s version, see Althusser and Balibar, Reading Capital, 99–101, 243–50.

  43.  Unlike the religious forms of martyrdom, secular forms of martyrdom have not been thoroughly studied. For the religious roots of martyrdom, see Boyarin, Dying for God; Gregory, Salvation at Stake; and Shepkaru, Jewish Martyrs in the Pagan and Christian Worlds.

  44.  The word shahadat in Arabic also implies bearing witness or testimony (like its Christian counterpart). However, this is not an active connation in contemporary Turkish usages. On the social aspect of bearing witness, see Euben, “Killing (For) Politics.”

  45.  According to Becker, this might not be a paradox at all since the quest for heroism is a defense mechanism against the universal fear of death. However, such an approach is based on generalizations about human nature, whether psychological or philosophical, which I find problematic. Cf. Becker, The Denial of Death.

  46.  The movement from the hunger strike into the death fast can be fruitfully compared to the movement from the economic (and/or political) strike to the proletarian general strike in the thought of Georges Sorel. The first is limited and extortionist, while the latter aspires for a total break. The proletarian general strike, like the death fast, has its theological connotations, which Sorel associates with “myth.” For the contrast between the political general strike and the proletarian general strike, see Sorel, Reflections on Violence.

  47.  Crossley, “Ritual, Body Technique, and (Inter)Subjectivity.”

  48.  Interview with a participant of the death fast, February 15, 2005.

  49.  Interview with a participant of the death fast, April 8, 2005.

  50.  Parry, “Sacrificial Death and the Necrophagus Ascetic.”

  51.  Yaşadigimız Vatan, December 11, 2000, 43–46.

  52.  Interview with a participant of the death fast, January 17, 2005.

  53.  Interview with a participant of the death fast, March 18, 2005.

  54.  In spite of this decision to exclude those who had formerly participated in a death fast from the current one, some organizations later reversed their decision and allowed some of their 1996 death fast veterans to participate in 2000. This change was dictated mainly by the length of the struggle and the need for more participants. However, in the aftermath of the death fast, such relaxation of the participation criteria was considered to be a mistake and became a source of self-criticism. The decision was considered to be a mistake because the burden of sustaining a lengthy death fast on a body already suffering from the aftereffects of the former death fast turned out to be particularly heavy, leading to earlier and more difficult deaths or permanent disabilities. Such participation also turned out to be one of the accentuating factors behind the decision of many militants to leave the ranks of the struggle and, at times, to break with their organizations completely.

  55.  Interview with a participant of the death fast, March 18, 2005.

  56.  As Kant argues: “For in the case of what is to be morally good, that it conforms to the moral law is not enough; it must also be done for the sake of the moral law.” Kant, Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals, 3.

  57.  Interview with a participant of the death fast, January 24, 2005.

  58.  Ustuner, Ger, and Holt, “Consuming Ritual.”

  59.  Kaplan, “Din-u Devlet All Over Again?”

  60.  Interview with a participant of the death fast, May 31, 2005.

  61.  According to Reuter, the association of death with the wedding celebration goes back to the events that led to the formation of the Shia tradition. In Karbala, Hussayn’s nephew Qasim died before his wedding. See Reuter, My Life Is a Weapon, 48.

  62.  Berrin, Başeğmeyen Kadınlar, 43.

  63.  Interviews with participants of the death fast, April 7, May 18, and May 22, 2005.

  64.  Berrin, Başeğmeyen Kadınlar, 76.

  65.  Hasso, “Discursive and Political Deployments,” 35.

  66.  de Mel, “Body Politics.”

  67.  Acara, “The Militarization of Henna.”

  68.  Interview with a participant of the death fast, May 31, 2005.

  69.  The leader of each organization is different, though, perhaps not surprisingly, all leaders are exclusively male.

  70.  Interviews with participants of the death fast, January 17, January 20, May 29, May 30, and May 31, 2005.

  71.  In public discussions the similar use of the red headband in the religious ceremonies of the Alevi community has been singled out as evidence that the ideology of the death fast struggle is a form of Alevi leftism. While one could perhaps argue that this is an appropriation of Alevi cultural symbolism by the death fasters, the identification of the death fast with Alevism is an interpretation that, in my opinion, should be rejected because of the absence of declared Islamic beliefs by the participants of the movement.

  72.  In some organizations the comrade tying the headband is not chosen from among those who rank higher in the party. This is intended as a measure to challenge the fixity of hierarchies among militants. Interview with participants of the death fast, January 17 and March 11, 2005.

  73.  Speech delivered in the headband ceremony of TKP(ML) and DHKP-C militants in Sağmalcılar Prison, Bayrampaşa, Istanbul on November 26, 2000, Devrimci Demokrasi, “Kızıl Bantlı Direnişçilerin Kararlılığı, Zaferin Finalini Muştuluyor,” December 16–31, 2000, 8.

  74.  An example of this leftist solidarity is the rare occasion of a joint publication on the 1996 death fast by different organizations that participated in it, giving an account of the demands, process, martyrs, and achievements of the struggle. See Okuyucu, ed. ’96 Ölüm Orucu.

  75.  Seale, Constructing Death, 50–72.

  76.  Dönmez, Yaşatmak icin Öldüler, 131–40.

  77.  Gülsüman’s brother was imprisoned in 1995, an experience that connected her with other prisoners’ families. Gülsüman herself had been detained multiple times and once imprisoned in 1997 for four and a half months because of her activism in prisoner rights organizations set up by families and relatives of prisoners. Ibid., 485–86.

  78.  Gülsüman began the death fast on the same team with her best friend and neighbor, Şenay Hanoğlu, also a prisoner’s relative and the mother of two children. Fasting together with Gülsüman for many months, Şenay died less than two weeks after Gülsüman did. For the details of their comraderie and consecutive deaths, see ibid., 67–182.

  79.  In her analysis of undertakers, Howarth calls this process “humanizing the body.” Howarth, Last Rites, 147.

  80.  See picture in Dönmez, Yaşatmak icin Öldüler, 486.

  81.  Ibid., 138.

  82.  Cemevi is a house of worship and communal gathering place for practices including the eating of common meals, the conduct of celebrations and funerals, and the performance of cultural activities. It is mainly associated with urban Alevi communities as a social site for a variety of communal occasions. The overall significance of the Alevi house of worship is overdetermined, as its social-religious quality has been supplemented with a political one as a result of the repression of Alevi identity in Turkey. The funeral ceremonies of death fasters of Alevi background were conducted in these spaces located in the shantytown neighborhoods.

  83.  Dönmez, Yaşatmak icin Öldüler, 138.

  84.  There was another funeral ceremony for Gülsüman in another shantytown—the Gaziosmanpaşa neighborhood. She was buried, as she had stated in her will, in the Cebeci Cemetery along with the martyrs of the Operation Return to Life.

  85.  Townsend, Vile Bodies.

  86.  Kristeva, Powers of Horror.

  87.  Seale, Constructing Death, 193–210.

  88.  On the similar ways in which mourning is regulated in Plato’s Laws, see Naas, “History’s Remains.”

  89.  On the relation between the precariousness of life, its grievability, and the “right to life,” see Butler, Frames of War.

  90.  On symbols of fertility in funeral rituals, see Bloch and Parry, “Introduction: Death and the Regeneration of Life.”

  91.  Nora, “Between Memory and History.”

  92.  Feldman, “Political Terror and the Technologies of Memory,” 65–66.

  93.  Interviews with family members of participants of the death fast, May 18 and June 11, 2005.

  94.  Interview with a participant of the death fast, January 17, 2005 (my emphasis).

  95.  Interviews with family members of participants of the death fast, May 18 and June 11, 2005.

  96.  Hallam, Hockey, and Howarth, Beyond the Body, 42.

  97.  See Berrin, Başeğmeyen Kadınlar, 151. According to the excerpts from the diary of Sevgi Erdoğan, published in this book, she would begin every day of the death fast by saluting the pictures of the dead hung on the wall across from her bed.

  98.  “Support the Turkish Hunger Strike,” republican mural, Divis Street, Falls, West Belfast, 2001. Photographed by Tony Crowley.

  99.  The use of memory as a counterhegemonic device approximates Foucault’s term counter-memory. See Foucault, “Nietzsche, Genealogy, History.”

100.  Interview with a participant of the death fast, January 17, 2005 (my emphasis).