Paper short abstract:

This paper aims to show and analyse public discourses and practices surrounding the experience and imagination of cosmopolitan life among the unrecognised minority citizens – Kurds, Arabs and Syriac Christians – in the city of Mardin, south-eastern Turkey

Paper long abstract:

Drawn from the ethnographic work in Mardin, Southeastern Turkey, this paper aims to explore the experience and imaginary of the 'cosmopolitan life' among the minority subjects, namely Kurds, Arabs, Syriac Christians in the aftermath of the emergency law. The social and political structure of the city went through drastic transformation as a result of the military conflict between the PKK (Kurdistan Workers Party) and the Turkish military forces. In the post-emergency context, the city turned into an example of the rehabilitation and redemption centred official policies. Having been nominated as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, the city attracted the attention of experts, transnational organisation agents and international NGO activists working in collaboration with the locals in order to re-structure and re-fashion Mardin. The public discussions engendered contestations and negotiations among the locals about the imagined and experienced cosmopolitan life in the city. In conveying these discussions, this paper, on the one hand, analyses the contestations between different communities regarding the political and cultural representation of the city, on the other hand, it discusses the ways in which the local discourse of culture was affected by the global discourses of 'multi-culturalism', 'cultural heritage' and 'human rights'.