Turkish Region: State, Market & Social Identities on the East Black Sea Coast

by Ildikó Bellér-Hann, C.M. Hann

Ethnicity, language, and religion are significant aspects of contemporary social identities in Turkey’s little-known eastern Black Sea coast. Based on fieldwork carried out between 1983 and 1999, the authors analyze recent economic and political developments in the region in the context of more general changes in Turkish civil society and widespread doubt about the continued viability of the secular institutions of Atatürk’s republic.

Genres: Nonfiction

244 pages, Paperback

First published October 8, 2000

Reviews

[Utku · Rating 5 out of 5]

İki Buçuk Yaprak Çay provides you with a regional study of the Laz-dominated Eastern Black Sea in the turbulent 1990s. It is an ethnographic narrative that captures how state power, market dynamics, and identity negotiations are lived, contested, and re-imagined in everyday life.

The book is also interesting for those who want to see how contemporary anthropological research is conducted among modern ethnic groups. How fieldwork unfolds, how voices are listened to, and how meaning is patiently derived from the ordinary. A good read for those curious about anthropology as a discipline, as well as anyone interested in the political economy of the Black Sea region in Turkey.

On a personal note, reading this as someone who’s Laz but was born and raised outside of Lazistan made it hit differently. I kept catching familiar little things, bits of language, habits, ways of thinking that felt like they’d been passed down indirectly, even if I didn’t grow up in the region.