Street Politics in Istanbul: Thresholds of Dissent, Endurance, and Agency

Abstract

This dissertation examines revolutionary politics in Candere, a working-class district in Istanbul once known for its militant leftist past. Drawing on 36 months of ethnographic fieldwork, it develops foreclosure as an analytic to trace how political, ethical, and spatial possibilities are systematically closed off under contemporary governance. As revolutionary telos fades, endurance emerges not as heroic survival but as a political form shaped by structural constraint. Through an analysis of revolutionism in post-revolutionary times, the research shows how dissent is made to signify more than it can do, offering a diagnostic of governance and a rethinking of agency under conditions of constraint.