Making the indebted citizen: an inquiry into state benevolence in Turkey

Abstract

This article concerns the making of the indebted citizen in Turkey through state benevolence. It focuses on the materialization of a debt relationship between state and citizen in everyday workings of state-sponsored welfare programs in the Kurdish region, in the shadow of a protracted armed conflict between the Turkish military forces and the Partiya Karkeren Kurdistan (Kurdistan Workers' Party). in Turkey, As in many other places, welfare benefits are promoted as a state benevolence rather than a citizenship right, and many officials seek to ensure that beneficiaries are credible enough to honor their debts to the state in the form of loyalty and obedience. Examining bureaucratic processes of beneficiary selection, I demonstrate how a dialectic of generous giving and forceful taking congeals in welfare distribution, compelling compliant behavior among the beneficiaries through the power of debt. I argue that what seems to be a free provision by the Turkish state-social assistance-often operates as a mechanism of debt production in practice-another form of political and economic dispossession for the Kurds in Turkey.