A comunidade turca na cidade de São Paulo no século XXI: formação e enfrentamentos

Abstract

This work aimed to analyze the process of formation of the Turkish community in the city of São Paulo, its consolidation, the creation of migratory networks through cultural instruments and the impact experienced by the political events that took place in Turkey after the year 2016. The research was based on a period spanning twenty years of Turkish immigration in São Paulo, from 2000 to 2020, and used qualitative methods. A digital questionnaire was created in order to collect updated data on the community, answered by 24 people, and interviews were also conducted with seven of these members. The results allowed us to identify a panorama of three distinct moments of the community: its formation from the arrival of the first Turks by invitation of the Islamic movement Hizmet, its consolidation through migratory networks and cultural instruments ideologically linked to the Movement, and its split or fragmentation resulting from the political persecutions of the Turkish regime. The relatively recent presence of Turks in the city of São Paulo was evidenced, in opposition to the common sense that tends to consider them as Arabs or Syrians, and how important their cultural institutions were for the consolidation of their migratory network. It also revealed the ways in which the community has adapted to recent political persecutions, as well as the harmful effects that a totalitarian government is capable of inflicting on its population, even those that are already outside its borders