This edited collection brings together academics, artists and members of civil society organizations to engage in a discussion about the ideas of living with others, through concepts such as cosmopolitanism, solidarity, and conviviality, and the practices of doing so. In recent years, right wing and populist movements have emerged and strengthened across Europe and North America, rejecting the value of cultural, ethnic and religious plurality. Governments in Europe and North America are weakening their commitment to the international refugee regime, erecting new barriers to entry. Even as governments fail to accommodate growing pluralism, however, civil society initiatives have emerged with the aim of welcoming newcomers, such as migrants and refugees, and finding alternative ways of living together in diverse societies. Motivated by a desire to show solidarity, these initiatives demonstrate enormous creativity in fostering pluralism in an environment that has largely become hostile to the arrival of newcomers. The contributions gathered here seek to explore such initiatives and the important work that they do in fostering ways of living together with others from diverse cultural and religious backgrounds. In focusing conceptually and empirically on discussions and examples of civil society initiatives, this book interrogates why, how and under what circumstances are some communities more welcoming than others.

Istanbul explores how to live with difference through the prism of an age-old, cutting-edge city whose people have long confronted the challenge of sharing space with the Other. Located at the intersection of trade networks connecting Europe, Asia, and Africa, Istanbul is western and eastern, northern and southern, religious and secular. Heir of ancient empires, Istanbul is the premier city of a proud nation-state even as it has become a global city of multinational corporations, NGOs, and capital flows.  Rather than exploring Istanbul as one place at one time, the contributors to this volume focus on the city’s experience of migration and globalization over the last two centuries. Asking what Istanbul teaches us about living with people whose hopes jostle with one’s own, contributors explore the rise, collapse, and fragile rebirth of cosmopolitan conviviality in a once and future world city. The result is a cogent, interdisciplinary exchange about an urban space that is microcosmic of dilemmas of diversity across time and space.    

In recent years there has been an upsurge of interest in Turkey's ability to create a secular, constitutional democracy within a predominantly Muslim population. Remaking Turkey provides a comprehensive and detailed account of how Turkey has achieved the possibility of modernity and democracy in a Muslim social setting as well as the important problems and challenges confronting this achievement. Turkey has demonstrated that as an alternative modernity and as a significant historical experience of the co-existence between Islam and democratic modernity in a secular political structure it could make an important contribution to the most needed democratic global governance for the creation of a secure, just and peaceful world. Remaking Turkey starts its investigation with an analysis of the Ottoman legacy, then focuses on identity-based conflicts and civil, economic, and global processes, all of which have brought about significant challenges to modernity and democracy in Turkey. The book concludes with an account of the recent changes and transformations that have given rise to the process of "remaking Turkey." In this way, editor E. Fuat Keyman presents a political theory-based approach to Turkish modernity and its recent changing formation, creating an original study of contemporary Turkey.

This edited collection brings together academics, artists and members of civil society organizations to engage in a discussion about the ideas of living with others, through concepts such as cosmopolitanism, solidarity, and conviviality, and the practices of doing so. In recent years, right wing and populist movements have emerged and strengthened across Europe and North America, rejecting the value of cultural, ethnic and religious plurality. Governments in Europe and North America are weakening their commitment to the international refugee regime, erecting new barriers to entry. Even as governments fail to accommodate growing pluralism, however, civil society initiatives have emerged with the aim of welcoming newcomers, such as migrants and refugees, and finding alternative ways of living together in diverse societies. Motivated by a desire to show solidarity, these initiatives demonstrate enormous creativity in fostering pluralism in an environment that has largely become hostile to the arrival of newcomers. The contributions gathered here seek to explore such initiatives and the important work that they do in fostering ways of living together with others from diverse cultural and religious backgrounds. In focusing conceptually and empirically on discussions and examples of civil society initiatives, this book interrogates why, how and under what circumstances are some communities more welcoming than others.

In recent years there has been an upsurge of interest in Turkey's ability to create a secular, constitutional democracy within a predominantly Muslim population. Remaking Turkey provides a comprehensive and detailed account of how Turkey has achieved the possibility of modernity and democracy in a Muslim social setting as well as the important problems and challenges confronting this achievement. Turkey has demonstrated that as an alternative modernity and as a significant historical experience of the co-existence between Islam and democratic modernity in a secular political structure it could make an important contribution to the most needed democratic global governance for the creation of a secure, just and peaceful world. Remaking Turkey starts its investigation with an analysis of the Ottoman legacy, then focuses on identity-based conflicts and civil, economic, and global processes, all of which have brought about significant challenges to modernity and democracy in Turkey. The book concludes with an account of the recent changes and transformations that have given rise to the process of 'remaking Turkey.' In this way, editor E. Fuat Keyman presents a political theory-based approach to Turkish modernity and its recent changing formation, creating an original study of contemporary Turkey.

Turkey now hosts the largest number of Syrian refugees in the world, more than 3.6 million of the 12.7 million displaced by the Syrian Civil War. Many of them are subject to an unpredictable temporary protection, forcing them to live under vulnerable and insecure conditions. The Precarious Lives of Syrians examines the three dimensions of the architecture of precarity: Syrian migrants' legal status, the spaces in which they live and work, and their movements within and outside Turkey. The difficulties they face include restricted access to education and healthcare, struggles to secure employment, language barriers, identity-based discrimination, and unlawful deportations. Feyzi Baban, Suzan Ilcan, and Kim Rygiel show that Syrians confront their precarious conditions by engaging in cultural production and community-building activities, and by undertaking perilous journeys to Europe, allowing them to claim spaces and citizenship while asserting their rights to belong, to stay, and to escape. The authors draw on migration policies, legal and scholarly materials, and five years of extensive field research with local, national, and international humanitarian organizations, and with Syrians from all walks of life. The Precarious Lives of Syrians offers a thoughtful and compelling analysis of migration precarity in our contemporary context.