Turkish politician and former Minister of Interior Meral Akşener.Wikicommons/Haber Medya Grubu (Haberaks TV).Some rights reserved.“It is not the voice that commands the story, it is the ear.” Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities.
“…language is the best model: a structure of meaning and continuity that is never still and ever open to the improvisations of all its speakers” James Scott, Seeing Like a State.
If legibility (of nature, and society) is the central problem of statecraft, as James Scott argues in his seminal work, Seeing like a State, what does remaining illegible look like in Turkey today? I offer a quick glance at three moments – the March 8 Women’s March protests, Women who say No campaigns, and the political campaign of a dissenting female politician – to show that despite attempts by the Turkish state to “make society legible”, there remain radical contingencies that are illegible which may render the social system unsustainable in the long run.
