Social Transition Across Multiple Boundaries: The Case of Antakya on The Turkish-Syrian Border

Situated on the Turkish border with Syria, Antakya, known in ancient times as Antioch, is a Mediterranean city which can still be regarded as multicultural . When visiting the city, one immediately feels its historical mysticism and cultural charm that has developed since Roman times. Antakya was not very well known by the citizens living in the other cities. However, it was known to have a complex history which was apart fromthe other cities of Turkey and a cultural, social and linguistic plurality, which influenced many to regard it as a different, marginal city. The improved relations between the EU and Turkey, which have triggered the discussions about cultural diversity in Turkey, resulted in the re-discovery and valorization of Antakya. This valorization has been supportedby plenty of activities which reflect the new publicity of the multiculturalism of the city to the world. Antakya s multiculturalism is a visible fact. There is a locally embedded experience of diversity regardless of the non-existence of multiculturalism as a state policy. Some specific aspects of such a multiculturalism are diachronically derived throughout the pre-modern and modern history of Turkey. Today s inter-ethnic cohabitation and identities in Antakya have been shaped through many dynamics, changing in time and context, based on the local and global political developments related to Turkey such as the modernization process, the policy influence of the EU, the political and economic relationships between Turkey and its neighboring countries and US politics in the Middle East. However, what is out of sight in the historiography of the multiculturalism of Antakya is the very complex mechanism lying beneath this cultural experience, in which there is a historically builtexperience of living together, a balance of power, strategies for survival and struggle for equality, that could protect an authentic culture of a locality on a border of an Unitarian Nation-State. Antakya is a borderspace that functions within a complex web of inter-ethnic and power relations. The aim of this research through participant observation, in depth interviews and textual analysis of local and national archives is to provide an understanding of how much the visual and symbolic expression of multiculturalism is or could be grounded in its societal relations and everyday practices; to match the visible, with the unknown histories in Antakya. In this study, Antakya is analyzed through the interrelationship of many variables, which are in transition, such as history, governmentality , the demographic profile, the multifaceted social relations, the multiple cultural faces of the city, the economic and political structures that provide a macro-anthropological perspective inthe study of power relations and of global economics, and also in the study of the relation between the nation and the State. Hence, this studytheoretically takes mobility and flow as key metaphors to describe the multicultural experience and cohesion, grounding on border approaches (Wilson and Donnan 1998; Kumar and Grundy-Warr 1997); Foucault s (1973, 1980, 2007) notions of space , power relations , governmentality , conduct and counter-conduct , heterotopia that serve as an analytical perspective for relations of power in general ; processual and constructivist approaches of ethnicity and culture (Barth 1969, 1994, Hannerz 1992, Eriksen 1993); a historical anthropological approach that defines identity and citizenship formation in Antakya and Turkey (Ada 2005; Oran 2001; Zurcher 2004; Ahmad 1993; Keyman and İçduygu 2005; Yıldız 2001); complementary approaches by Appadurai (1996) and Robertson (1992) on globalization and its effect on ethnicity and imagination; as well as other relevant themes and concepts (e.g. social cohesion, social capital, hybridity, liminality, agency), from Anthropology, Political science and other social sciences.nrpages: X, 270status: publishe