Transformation of a Turkish Backpacker Tourism Enclave Assemblages of "Kabak Bay"

Abstract

This thesis examines the transformation of Kabak Bay, a small coastal area in Turkey, as a site of youth tourism and alternative lifestyles. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork, including participant observation and eleven semi-structured interviews with residents, lifestyle migrants, stakeholders, and volunteers, it investigates how actors narrate and negotiate the Bay’s shifting identity in the context of global backpacker cultures and local social change. The study is guided by two complementary theoretical-frameworks. First, Cohen’s (2018) four-stage model of backpacker enclave transformation (inception, enclavisation, conventionalisation, and medialisation) provides a narrative structure for situating Kabak Bay historically. Second, assemblage theory (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987; DeLanda, 2006) offers an additional ontological and epistemological lens, conceptualizing Kabak as a heterogeneous and dynamic assemblage of human and non-human actors, material infrastructures, discourses, and global networks. Findings show that Kabak Bay cannot be understood as a bounded enclave developing linearly. Instead, elements of all four stages still coexist, the communal ethos of inception, the physical consolidation of enclavisation, the commodification by conventionalisation, and digitalization with the medialisation. These overlapping layers produce contested narratives of authenticity, as all host members mobilize competing visions of what Kabak "was", “is”, and “should be.” Conflicts emerge around land use, commercialization, ecological responsibility, and cultural ownership, demonstrating that authenticity is not a stable quality but a relational and political claim.