Architectures of Similarity: Fragments, Islands and other Escapes from the Turkey and Europe Framework

Abstract

State-centric explanations of life in Europe and (or, including) Turkey often do much more than account for differences between the two – they reify them. This paper notices similarities instead. Such an analytical exercise does not simply turn the older narrative upside down. It starts with accepting the pluriverse of relations unfolding within Turkey-EU spaces and chooses to experiment with the idea that what seems marginal can in fact be formative. My argument is situated in discussions about mobility – the latter being a chief destabilizer of the conventional idea of space as a perennial entity. Building on observations of diplomatic process, ethnographic moments and conversations with refugee rights workers and volunteers in the period around adoption of the 2016 Turkey-EU refugee deal, I show the analytical possibilities of studying spatiality through the eyes of islands dissenting from the current border regime. Their very existence, on both sides of Turkey/EU border is an invitation to pay closer attention to splits and similarities that run across inter-national borders, rather than along them.