Speaker
Description
The late Ottoman-era Hejaz Railway project, connecting Damascus to Medina, stands as a testament to the power of collective financing with its extensive mobilization fuelled by individual donations. The current work aims to explore this phenomenon and open a historical window into discussions on social/solidarity economy by addressing the challenges of scaling up such efforts. To do so, the work draws upon travel writing as a rich source for historical sociological research and examines diaries and memoirs of the Hejaz railway and the pilgrimage to Mecca. These firsthand accounts of the era will be interpreted in dialogue with Turkish scholar Hikmet Kıvılcım’s “Thesis of history", using the author’s exploration of the role of material and human productive forces and collective action to assist in the contextual interpretation of the travel records. Although the pan-Islamist vision of Sultan Abdulhamid II and the revered pilgrimage journey are key motivations behind the extensive support for the Hejaz Railway, this analysis seeks to explore the additional intricate mechanisms that enabled its collective financing. This effort aims to open the door towards the imagining of new and alternative pathways towards financing railway and other large-scale transport projects.
Biography
I am an urban studies researcher who hold a PhD from Ankara University. I focus on mobility issues including mobility justice, mobility as capital, and mobility as commons, looking at them from a foundation in critical urban theory and critical realist philosophy of science. During 2025 and 2026, I will be a researcher on the RAILIMAGE project..
