Ethemcan Turhan

A perspective on radical transformations to sustainability: resistances, movements and alternatives

A transformation to sustainability calls for radical and systemic societal shifts. Yet what this entails in practice and who the agents of this radical transformation are require further elaboration. This article recenters the role of environmental justice movements in transformations, arguing that the systemic, multi-dimensional and intersectional approach inherent in EJ activism is uniquely placed to contribute to the realization of equitable sustainable futures. Based on a perspective of conflict as productive, and a “conflict transformation” approach that can address the root issues of ecological conflicts and promote the emergence of alternatives, we lay out a conceptual framework for understanding transformations through a power analysis that aims to confront and subvert hegemonic power relations; that is, multi-dimensional and intersectional; balancing ecological concerns with social, economic, cultural and democratic spheres; and is multi-scalar, and mindful of impacts across place and space. Such a framework can help analyze and recognize the contribution of grassroots EJ movements to societal transformations to sustainability and support and aid radical transformation processes. While transitions literature tends to focus on artifacts and technologies, we suggest that a resistance-centred perspective focuses on the creation of new subjectivities, power relations, values and institutions. This recenters the agency of those who are engaged in the creation and recuperation of ecological and new ways of being in the world in the needed transformation.

Environmental History of Modern Migrations

that economic geographers work on, I am to be convinced this is the best approach to providing an overview of the discipline. In particular, I think a short introduction and conclusion to each of the sections to bind the different chapters together would have been helpful. The editors state the NOHEG is aimed at “advanced-level undergraduate students, graduate students, researchers, strategists and policy-makers” (12). I would concur that the book is more suited to those with some background knowledge of key economic and/or geography concepts. Comparing this volume to, for example, the SAGE handbook of economic geography, it is clear that the individual chapters in this volume tend to have a narrower, more specific focus. I do also wonder whether some of the contributors also struggled with this question of who the book is aimed at, with some chapters noticeably more complex than others. Nonetheless, the NOHEG can serve as a useful reference guide, particularly for scholars who might be relatively new to specific aspects of economic geography, who will find individual chapters useful to obtain a quick overview of a specific topic, with generally plenty of sources cited to follow up for further consideration.

Cutting the Fence, Sabotaging the Border: Migration as a Revolutionary Practice

In order to protect Americans, the United States must ensure that those admitted to this country do not bear hostile attitudes toward it and its founding principles. The United States cannot, and should not, admit those who do not support the Constitution, or those who would place violent ideologies over American law. (Executive Order on Protecting the Nation from Foreign Terrorist Entry into the United States, White House, January 27, 2017)

Price and prejudice: the politics of carbon market establishment in Turkey

ABSTRACT Despite concerns on their effectiveness and legitimacy, carbon markets are often presented as the main tool of climate policy. Developing countries are particularly eager to establish and interlink their carbon markets to benefit from global climate investment flows. Turkey is a belated but willing player in this endeavor. In tracing the ambivalent politics of establishing a carbon market in Turkey, we focus on the perceptions of different actors vis-à-vis carbon marketization attempts. Using policy documents, 22 expert interviews, and process tracing, we question the underlying assumptions on carbon markets in a country with unambitious climate targets. Our findings suggest that the making of carbon market in Turkey is not necessarily a rational, national interest-driven process but instead one promoted by the international organizations including World Bank and the EU. We conclude that this preference for market-based instruments defer public interest, favor more incremental policies, and ignore distributive justice concerns.

Towards a Political Ecology of EU Energy Policy

At the root of energy policy are fundamental questions about the sort of social and environmental futures in which people want to live and how decisions over different energy pathways and energy futures are made. The interdisciplinary field of political ecology has the capacity to address such questions, while also challenging how energy policy conventionally gets done. We outline a political ecology perspective on EU energy policy that illuminates how the distribution of social power affects access to energy services, participation in energy decision-making and the allocation of energy’s environmental and social costs.

Democracy Happens Where the People Are

The turmoil in Turkey’s domestic politics has been exacerbating at an unforeseen pace since the Gezi protests in 2013. What made this protest period particularly remarkable was the multiplicity and diversity of youth discourses, that crossed the borders of a single issue-based opposition. The Gezi period and its aftermath in this sense can be understood as a tipping point in contemporary Turkish politics. Hence, in an attempt to understand the converging and diverging viewpoints of the young people who were the protagonists of the Gezi protests, this study utilizes Q-methodology and deciphers diverging and converging narratives of urban, secular, educated young people, who are said to have constituted the main body of protestors. Following the analysis of the primary data, the author observes three emerging discourses dominant among 21 young people (aged 20–30). The results hint at shared viewpoints on the Gezi protests as an “apolitical movement”, a “violent movement” and a “Jacobin movement”. The author argues that this divergence points at the exacerbating social polarization among youth groups in Turkey, which reached dangerous heights after the putsch on 15 July 2016.