Bulldozer Capitalism: Accumulation, Ruination and Dispossession in Northeastern Turkey

Erdem Evren is a political and economic anthropologist living in Berlin and Istanbul. He is currently working as an adjunct instructor at the University of Bremen and the Boğaziçi University. His next research project will study how the narratives, policies and practices that develop around the demands for sustainability transform the hazelnut frontiers in Turkey and Italy.

Bulldozer Capitalism: Accumulation, Ruination and Dispossession in Northeastern Turkey

Set in the resource frontier of northeastern Turkey, Bulldozer Capitalism studies the rise and decline of an anti-dam/anti-displacement campaign and the political responses to other extractive projects that it helped to shape in its aftermath. It shows that people can accommodate their own dispossession and displacement if they are directed to negotiate, invest in and speculate on the destruction of their built environment and nature. In the town of Yusufeli, Artvin, for nearly a decade the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) carefully cultivated and managed the residents’ future-oriented speculative investments on property related to the Yusufeli Dam project through its local branches and networks. The formation of a consensual political practice at the intersections of economy, identity and infrastructure as such, I argue, lies at the heart of the success of not only the AKP but also other authoritarian political projects of the past two decades. My talk will therefore discuss how consent is generated amid the experiences of crisis, be it social, political or environmental, by paying attention in particular to fluctuations and contradictions of the global capitalist system, and the new opportunities that they provided for conservative-nationalist governments, parties and leaders.