Smuggling Law: Unsettled Sovereignties in Turkey’s Kurdish Borderlands
A Crown Seminar with Fırat Bozçalı, in conversation with Elif Babül
Wednesday, March 4
11 AM-12:15 PM
Online (Register for virtual attendance)
Smuggling is usually imagined as operating outside the law. Along the border between Turkey and Iran, however, smugglers often turn to the law itself. In this Crown Seminar, Fırat Bozçalı shows how Turkey’s expanded anti-smuggling laws have turned criminal courts into unexpected arenas where Kurdish smugglers and their lawyers contest state authority. In conversation with Elif Babül, Bozçalı explores how these legal struggles open up new ways of thinking about sovereignty, law, and political power in border regions, with insights that extend beyond the Kurdish case.
Fırat Bozçalı is an Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of Toronto.
Elif Babül is professor of Anthropology at Mount Holyoke University.