Paper short abstract:

This paper examines how Syrian women's solidarity networks in Antakya trouble the prevailing models of feminist solidarity in Turkey, and expand the notion of the political to include material interdependencies that entangle organized acts of care with ambiguity, mistrust, and mutual indifference.

Paper long abstract:

Since the start of the Syrian War in 2011, Turkish-Syrian border cities have been home to over two million refugees. Drawing on ongoing fieldwork in Antakya, the southernmost border city of Turkey with Syria, this paper probes the political possibilities and limits of solidarity as the condition of urban cohabitation between a diverse group of displaced Syrians and Turkish citizens. We ask what solidarity, or lack thereof, signifies for these groups whose lives transcend the right-, status-, or sect-based politics of identity. In particular, we examine Syrian women's solidarity networks that entangle organized acts of support, care, and intimacy with ambiguity, mistrust, or mutual indifference. These networks entail but often also surpass the right-, status-, or sect-based politics of identity underpinning the prevailing models of solidarity and feminist politics in Turkey. Their political significance resides not so much in self-consciously ideological forms of collective action between Syrians and locals, but in their material interdependencies in daily contexts of crisis that frequently traverse the interpersonal, institutional, and national realms. In expanding the realm of politics beyond formal political institutions and mechanisms, these gendered social spaces require us to think beyond not only the humanitarian and state-centered approaches to refugee resettlement and integration in Turkey, but also the conventional domains and practices of solidarity and political action in feminist circles and beyond.