‘Asılmak Tehlikeli Ve Yasaktır’: Unintelligible Mobility and Uncertain Manhood in Istanbul’s Old City

Abstract

This chapter explores the experiences of young men in the touristic Sultanahmet district of Istanbul, whose masculine selfhood is defined through their capacity to achieve freedom of movement. I argue that ‘mobility’ and ‘migration’ are best understood as discrete categories in contemporary Turkey, and that the modern state and social institutions which gatekeep the former are difficult to access by those from peripheral backgrounds. As a result, these young men’s projects of self-actualization as mobile citizens become ‘unintelligible’ (Butler in AIBR: Revista de Antropologia Iberoamericana 4 (3): 1–13, 2009) to normative sociability and therefore risky. At this point foreign women visiting Turkey become implicated in their ‘masculine trajectories’ (Ghannam in Live and Die Like a Man: Gender Dynamics in Urban Egypt. Stanford, Stanford University Press, 2013) as they attempt to transgress the state and social impediments to their aspirations of international mobility.

The tableau of children hitching a free ride down the high street of Istanbul’s contemporary city centre on the backs of ‘nostalgic’ red trolley cars is iconic among Istanbulites. In reaction, the transportation authority stencils the warning Asılmak tehlikeli ve yasaktır (Hanging on is hazardous and prohibited) onto the cars, but it is a feeble deterrent. The relationship between ‘hanging on’ and ‘hazards’ up to and including legal sanction makes a compelling metaphor for the topic at hand.