Two years into the new millennium, there were many questions in the minds of those pondering the future of Turkey.
On one side, burgeoning civil initiatives... On the other, the aftermath of 28 February 1997 and yet another party closure, persistent violence in eastern Turkey and northern Iraq, the General Staff’s conspiracy against journalists, the instability of the Tansu Çiller and Mesut Yılmaz governments, and the early rise of the AK Party…
It was a time of new quests, caught between crises.
The Symposium on Rethinking the Social Sciences, published as a book that will remain in the hands of both professors and students for years, was organised in such an environment to address an urgent and long-deferred need. Organised by the journals Toplum ve Bilim and Defter, the symposium brought together academics from various social science disciplines to foster critical thinking and collaboration.
Take a look at the authors and titles in the book in front of you. Some of the theses presented were ground-breaking, although they faced considerable challenges.
Just like the "Sensitivity Training on Sexism in the Legal and Trade Union Field” organised that same year.
These events marked significant, albeit small, steps towards mainstreaming the intersectionality of the rights struggle.
And every step was crucial. The following year, Merve Kavakçı would be expelled from parliament, Abdullah Öcalan would be captured, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan would be imprisoned for reciting a poem, Ahmet Kaya would be forced to leave the country due to racist attacks, and the 1999 earthquake would shake Bülent Ecevit’s newly formed government. Turkey would enter the new millennium wounded and burdened by its political establishment just before announcing its EU candidacy in Helsinki.
1 – Nilüfer Kuyaş’s interview with symposium organizers Tanıl Bora and Semih Sökmen. (Entelektüel Bakış) 2 – The outputs of the Rethinking Social Sciences Symposium, supported by hbs Istanbul, were later published as a book by Metis Publishing and used as a textbook for many years. 3 – Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, imprisoned for four months for a poem he recited while serving as the Mayor of İstanbul, with his lawyer Hayati Yazıcı, just before his release. (Hayati Yazacı) 4 – A meeting in the first shared office in Beyoğlu. (Fügen Uğur) 5 – 1999 was an election year, and the controversy over Istanbul MP Merve Kavakçı’s headscarf, as she entered Parliament representing the Virtue Party, became a defining event shaping the political climate of the years to follow, marked by identity polarization. (Radikal) 6 – The Marmara Earthquake of August 17 profoundly shook trust in Turkey's administration and political institutions. On the other hand, the active and voluntary involvement of civil society in the aftermath highlighted the importance of organization. (AA)