This special issue explores the contested terrain of youth in twenty-first-century Turkey across education, family, gender, public space, and everyday life. Drawing on recent ethnographic research, the articles examine how youth navigate authoritarianism, neoliberalism, and social conservatism under the AKP regime. Beyond state-centered analyses, this volume highlights everyday negotiations that shape subjectivity, resistance, and belonging. Featuring diverse perspectives – Kurdish youth, young women, religious and secular
students, and Syrian migrants – it reveals how young people’s desires create alternative strategies. As Turkey enters a new political moment, this collection offers a crucial lens to understand the shifting, contested dynamics of youth politics today. The special issue ‘Contested Terrains: Youth in twenty-first Century Turkey at the Intersection of Education, Family, Gender and Public Space’ presents recent and original fieldwork on the contested domain of youth as it materializes in the everyday politics of education, family, gender, public space, regional development, religion, and lifestyle. The majority of the researchers contributing to this collection participated in the ‘Workshop on the Politics of Family and Youth in Contemporary Turkey’ held on June 17-18, 2022, in Istanbul. At this workshop, presentations and discussions based on extensive empirical work offered novel insights into youth at the intersections of family, gender, and public space in the Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi, AKP) era. Building on these exchanges, the aim of this special issue is to contribute to the still limited and fragmented scholarship on youth politics and its social repercussions in contemporary Turkey. While taking into account political discourse, state policies, and their immediate effects, our collection highlights everyday life contexts as the place where politics acquires meaning.