State-making through disaster management: The case of Soma

Abstract

This thesis analyzes the functions of the emerging governmental field of disaster management in Turkey. By analyzing the government response after the Eynez mine incident in Soma and comparing it with the government’s response after the Van earthquake and to the ‘refugees’ in Suruç, this thesis maps out the practices and discourses around disaster management. It analyzes Soma, which was turned to be a post-disaster space by state, as a margin of state, in which the state had to be remade through various practices and performances. The representation of state as a compassionate service provider through officials’ reference to successful disaster management consolidated the dominant political and economic imagery on which the state is built—neoliberalism. These discourses and performances also designated the borders of ‘humanitarian space’ and delegitimatized some actors’ involvement in this space. Representation of this incident as national mourning also stripped off its causes, for which the state was also responsible. The disaster management in Soma functioned for state to perform itself as an actor who knows and is able to provide what is defined as the common good. This thesis explains the way the state’s hegemony consolidated in Soma through these performances of state that were built around disaster management. One of the main points of this thesis is that disasters are productive in that they lead to a proliferation of new policies, technologies, actors, discourses and new bodies. It also demonstrates ways in which the state’s hegemony is disrupted through people’s everyday encounters with it.