The space of encounter and the making of difference: The entangled lives of Alevi and Sunni neighbours in Turkey

The concept of encounter has long been central to a cosmopolitan ethos in which coming together urban public space is expected yield tolerance and pluralism. More recently scholars have reworked this account for not only what potentially transformative encounters but also how are conditioned by productive relations power inequality. Our study contributes reworking, feminist critiques politics, centring the spatiality entanglement neighbours. Drawing on our focus group research (2013–2016) with Alevis Sunnis Istanbul Malatya, we argue that difficult questions difference, responsibility, come fore neighbour relations. While underlines Sunni supremacism Alevi precarity constituted everyday lives neighbours, find there transformational potential these fully (re)absorbed into structures Alevi–Sunni difference. We that, across blurry boundaries home neighbourhood spaces, unbidden intimacies living proximity (the drift smells sounds, lines sight connect balconies windows, presence neighbours at thresholds spaces each other's homes) mean between both fuel trouble marking out shared separate, tolerable crosses line. thereby advances an understanding encounter, making political ethical significance entanglement.