Ali Yalçın Göymen

Ali holds a PhD in Political Theory from Istanbul University. His research focuses on the intersections of the production of political subjectivities, anti-capitalist theories of the commons, neoliberalism and authoritarianism. He continued his research as a post-doctoral fellow at the Department of Political Science at NYU under the supervision of Bertell Ollman and later received the Academic Freedom Fellowship at the Centre for Social Critique at the Humboldt University in Berlin. He has been part of the trade union movement in Turkey and a member of collectives defending the commons. He has co-edited special issues on commons, social reproduction and authoritarianism and resistance for the Turkish journal Praksis. He has also edited a book on the multi-disintegrative role of neoliberalism during the pandemic period and participated in the organising committee of the Historical Materialism Istanbul Conferences. His current research investigates the Turkish regime's strategies for appropriating the commons and constructing false alternatives. It examines how authoritarian neoliberal regimes manage crises through contradictory measures while producing subjectivities suited to a new model of accumulation: commons-based accumulation. This model, which integrates institutional and subjugating mechanisms, appropriates nature, labour and knowledge as pillars of economic and ideological control. In this way, it sustains the valorisation of capital while suppressing dissent through authoritarian measures. The study uses an interdisciplinary framework that combines critical political economy and political theory to analyse the historical construction of authoritarian neoliberalism in Turkey, its enforcement of social subjectivities and its political agency. By examining the regime's strategies for appropriating the commons and constructing false alternatives, the research highlights the structural dependence of commons-based accumulation on authoritarianism. Through historical analysis, activist qualitative fieldwork and qualitative content analysis, the study aims to provide nuanced insights into the dynamics of authoritarian neoliberalism in the Global South, emphasising the interplay between institutional, ideological and subjective dimensions.