The 2026/3 issue of Études Balkaniques has been published under the theme “Living Together in Fragmented Societies: Negotiating Coexistence in the Balkans / Le Vivre-Ensemble dans les sociétés fragmentées : Négocier la coexistence dans les Balkans.”

The special issue was guest-edited by Julie Alev Dilmaç and Cem Özatalay, faculty members in the Department of Sociology at Galatasaray University, together with Velislava Petrova of Sofia University. It brings together studies addressing social and political divisions, polarization, collective memory, gender, and the challenges of living together in the Balkans and Turkey.

Three articles in the issue include contributions from faculty members, a researcher, and doctoral students affiliated with the Department of Sociology at Galatasaray University.

In their article “Echoes of the Dead: Antagonistic Memory Regimes in Divided Cyprus,” Julie Alev Dilmaç and Özker Kocadal examine the competing memory regimes that structure the two communities in divided Cyprus. Drawing on monuments, museums, commemorative ceremonies, martyrs’ cemeteries, and other mnemonic devices embedded in public space, the article discusses how the remembrance of past violence and loss can contribute to the reproduction of social division.

The article “Transgressing the Cultural-War Regime: Transcultures and Youth Revolutionary Subjectivation in Turkey,” co-authored by Cem Özatalay and Galatasaray University Sociology doctoral students İpek Boldağ, Ceren Tunay, Ozan Bal, Elif Bilgin, Gizem Kosova, and Mücahit Karaca, focuses on the processes through which young people from conservative family backgrounds develop oppositional and revolutionary political subjectivities in the context of the March 2025 student mobilizations. Drawing on twenty sociological biographies, the study introduces the concept of “transcultures” to analyze these crossings of cultural boundaries and to explore how polarization can be transgressed from within through everyday life.

Finally, Ahmet Kerem Yılmaz, PhD and Research Assistant in the Department of Sociology at Galatasaray University, contributes the article “« Avançons à rebours, les amis! » : ce que la masculinité égalitaire propose pour le vivre ensemble en Turquie.” The article examines how egalitarian masculinity practices take shape in relation to hegemonic forms of masculinity in Turkey and considers their implications for transforming gender relations and rethinking forms of living together.

The special issue represents one of the outcomes of the international academic cooperation developed between Galatasaray University and Sofia University between 2021 and 2026 around the theme of “living together.”

Access the special issue: https://etudesbalk.org/issue-2026-n-3/