Speaker: Esra Bakkalbaşioğlu, Ph.D. Candidate, Interdisciplinary Program in Near and Middle Eastern Studies, University of Washington, Seattle.

Along with providing public safety, there is nothing more central to what states do than providing essential infrastructure to their citizens—from water to electricity. In many countries, including the ones I research, Turkey and Israel, the state distributes such infrastructure in an unequal way that discipline certain communities’ political actions and lifestyle. Yet these discriminatory distribution policies often backfire. I compare the determinants and outcomes of Kurdish and Bedouin minorities’ negotiations with their majority state–Turkey and Israel, respectively–over their access to denied water and electricity infrastructures.

Esra Bakkalbaşioğlu is a seventh-year Ph.D. student in the Interdisciplinary Program in Near and Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Washington, Seattle. She took her BA and MA degrees at Political Science and International Relations Department at the Bogazici University, Istanbul. Esra's dissertation work focuses specifically on democratic governance and minorities’ access to infrastructure in the Middle East. Her main areas of research interest are politics of infrastructure, social movements, and state-society relations in the Middle East.