The Civilizations Choir of Antakya: The Politics of Religious Tolerance and Minority Representation at the National Margins of Turkey
Bibliographic record
Abstract
This article examines the politics of minority representation focusing on the Civilizations Choir of Antakya, a multireligious ensemble formed in the mid-2000s against the backdrop of Turkey’s democratization process and involvement in globally funded programs of intercultural dialogue. Based on ethnographic fieldwork in the choir’s hometown, Antakya, near Turkey’s border with Syria, I compare the experiences of Arabic-speaking religious groups who simultaneously represent and are represented in the choir. These experiences, I argue, manifest different historical positions and political tensions that defy the choir’s categorization of minority religions as equally representable constituents of a tolerant nation. Together, they expose the uncertainties of ethno-religiously defined citizenship and the representational work such uncertainties demand for constructing nationhood. By analyzing this process, the article foregrounds representational politics as one key site for the anthropological study of religious diversity, and for addressing broader problems of minority recognition inherent in liberal regimes of tolerance. Özet Bu makale, 2000’li yılların ortalarında Türkiye’nin demokratikleşme süreci ve küresel olarak finanse edilen kültürlerarası diyalog programlarına katılımı zemininde kurulmuş çok dinli bir topluluk olan Antakya Medeniyetler Korosu özelinde azınlık temsili politikalarını incelemektedir. Koronun kurulduğu, Türkiye’nin Suriye sınırı yakınında bulunan Antakya şehrinde yapılan etnografik saha çalışmasından yola çıkarak hem koroyu temsil eden hem de koroca temsil edilen Arap kökenli dini grupların deneyimleri karşılaştırıyorum. Savım, bu deneyimlerin, koronun azınlık dinlerini hoşgörülü bir ulusun eşit temsil edilebilir bileşenleri olarak sınıflandırmasına ters düşen farklı tarihi konumları ve siyasi gerilimleri ortaya koyduğu. Bu konum ve gerilimler, etnik ve dini köken temelinde tanımlanan vatandaşlık kavramının belirsizliklerini ve bu tür belirsizliklerin milliyet inşası için gerektirdiği temsili çabayı gözler önüne sermektedir. Makale, temsil politikalarını kilit bir çalışma alanı olarak ön plana almak suretiyle, hem dini çeşitliliğin antropolojik olarak incelendiği klasik çalışmalara, hem de liberal hoşgörü rejimlerinde esas olan azınlıkların tanınmasına dair daha geniş çaplı sorunların analizine katkı sağlamaktadır. ملخص يبحث هذا المقال سياسات تمثيل الأقليات من خلال التركيز على جوقة الحضارات في أنطاكيا. تشكلت الجوقة المتعددة الأديان في أواسط سنوات ال 2000 في سياق مسيرة التحوّل الديمقراطي في تركيا واللإنخراط في برامج دولية داعمة ومموّلة للحوارات بين الثقافات. وإعتماداً على بحثي الميداني والإثنوغرافي في مدينة أنطاكيا؛ مسقط راأس الجوقة، أقدم مقارنة لتجارب المجموعات الدينية الناطقة باللغة العربية التي تُمثّل و تَتَمثّل في آن واحد في الجوقة. وأناقش أن هذه التجارب تُعبّر عن مواقف تاريخية مختلفة وتوترات سياسية تتحدى تصنيف الجوقة للأقليات الدينية وتماشيها مع فكرة الوطن كمتسامح. وتكشف هذه التوترات والمواقف مجموعة من الشكوك المتعلّقة بالمواطنة العِرقية والدينية وبالتالي العمل التمثيلي الذي توظفه هذه الشكوك في صنع الوطن. وعن طريق دراسة هذه السيرورة، يناقش المقال السياسات التمثيلية كحيّز جوهري لدراسة أنثروبولوجية التنوع الديني، وكركن أساسي لتناول إشكاليات أوسع متعلقة بإعتراف الأنظمة الليبرالية للأقليات. [الكلمات الرئيسية: تسامح، تنوع ديني، تمثيل، أقليات، وطن، تركيا]
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.005 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".