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Plant Matters: Land, Power, and Turks of African Descent
Abstract
Traditional sites of Turkish national memory carry little to no trace of the historic relationship between Turkey and the continent of Africa. The lack of statues, holidays and textbooks indicating the profound part Africa played in the emergence of a contemporary Turkey mirrors the collective unfamiliarity with idioms of ‘Africanity’ in the Turkish national landscape. This paper reads the relationship between land, power, and history within the context of Turkey to expose the Africa embedded within a Turkish national landscape. While land accumulation has been a primary concern for all nation-states throughout history, Turkey’s relationship to its physical geography is unique. Land acquisition and redistribution were fundamental parts, for example, of the Armenian Genocide and continue to remain relevant in Turkey’s investment in its “Kurdish Question”. African-descended Turkish people’s absence from the Turkish national memory is intimately tied to their history as landless peoples. Land-ful peoples, or peoples with historical claims to the lands that now constitute Turkey had to be accounted for in order to be regulated while land-less peoples did not need to be accounted for in order to be regulated. Still, Turks of African descent’s relationships to land are numerous. Many Turks of African descent along the Aegean coast come from generations of rural, land-laboring families. Land plays an integral part in their understandings of themselves as Turkish, African-descended peoples. This paper analyzes the plant medicines and plant practices that have been developed by Turks of African descent in communities outside of Izmir. From single plants, like vitex and shepard’s purse to whole mixes this paper takes the materiality of the land seriously to expose how the Turkish physical landscape maps historical ties to Africa. The research in this paper is based off 30 interviews with rural and mountain inhabiting Turks of African descent living in towns outside of Izmir, Turkey and has been done as a collaborative project with the Afrikal?lar Kültür, Dayan??ma ve Yard?mla?ma Derne?i (African Culture Solidarity and Aid Organization).
Discipline
Anthropology
Geographic Area
Turkey
Sub Area
None