Transformation of conservative politics, urban space and taste in contemporary Turkey

Abstract

This article examines the simultaneous transformation in conservative politics, urban space, and taste following the foundation of the Justice and Development Party (AKP) in Turkey. The AKP represents a new conservative position by softening the Islamist triadic opposition to the capitalist market system, secular state, and material and cultural domination of the modern West. The changing conservative position and representation paved the way for the transformation of conservative middlebrow taste. Based on ethnographic research in a conservative upper-middle class neighborhood in Ankara, this article examines of the opening up of the closed world of the Islamist opposition to the infinite universe of commodities. Deploying Pierre Bourdieu’s conceptual tools, it explicates the observed changes in conservative lifestyles as an outcome of the transformations in the political field, leading to the reconfiguration of conservative urban space and future expectations.