Bureaucratic Intimacies

"To render Turkey a more palatable candidate for membership, the European Union imposed human rights training programs on its state workers, most notably its police. It is this disconcerting enterprise of democratic pedagogy ironically carried out as the government was harshly repressing its opposition that Elif Babül critically examines through a scrupulous and insightful ethnography."—Didier Fassin, author of Enforcing Order: An Ethnography of Urban Policing

"It is rare for a book with such theoretical breadth and consideration of high-level political and institutional transformation to also offer such amazing, unexpected on-the-ground detail. Bureaucratic Intimacies makes a totally fresh contribution into how European Union harmonization and human rights education seminars actually function."—Esra Özyürek, The London School of Economics and Political Science

"Human rights advocates constantly grapple with how to persuade countries to adopt human rights. Bureaucratic Intimacies tackles this important question and depicts the tensions between Turkish bureaucrats and international human rights elites. Elif Babül provides wonderful insight into the workings of bureaucracy confronted by international expertise, a very important issue that has, until now, received far too little attention."—Sally Engle Merry, New York University

"Babül (Mount Holyoke College) describes how Turkish government workers resisted EU demands in the fields of human, women's, children's, and health rights....Recommended."—R.W. Olson, CHOICE