Ghostly Cruisings: Encounters In The City

Official URL: https://risc01.sabanciuniv.edu/record=b3403593

This thesis explores the lives and interactions of Armenians and trans women sex workers in Istanbul through the lens of urban spaces and emotions, focusing on how they relate to state violence and each other. First, it delves into the over centurylong history of Armenians subjected to dispossession, displacement, and (in)visible violence practices in Beyoğlu and Şişli, highlighting the erasure of their traces in urban spaces through cemeteries. Simultaneously, it examines the cumulative increase in violence against trans women sex workers in Beyoğlu, documented since the 1970s, and their encounters with Armenians in the same spaces at different times, aiming to establish a connection between these “accidental” encounters. Focusing on the disruptive temporalities and uncertain emotions of past, present, and afterlives, this study explores how Armenians and trans women can envision alternative futures despite the state’s linear temporal framework and erasure policies, as well as the cracks in this possibility. Subsequently, it delves into the spatial relationships between Armenians and trans women in the Şişli district through semi-auto ethnographic fieldwork. In particular, I discuss how Kurtuluş evolved from an Armenian neighborhood to a minority neighborhood through queering. In conclusion, by looking at the everyday encounters of “others” who are haunting and who are haunted by the state in different ways, the study aims to show that in post-genocidal nation-state geography like Turkey, communities ghosted in terms of ethnicity and sexuality cannot be evaluated separately but are intertwined.