Transformation of the tribal system-new tribal forms gained in cities: Batman case

This study, "Transformation of the Tribal System- The new tribal forms gained in cities- Batman Case", is a qualitative field research and carried out in order to understand how had lived the tribesmen residing in Batman city centre, in the south-east of Turkey, a transition regarding to tribal patterns/structures during the process of modernisation and urbanisation. To understand this transition, at first an "ideal type" of the tribal system within the framework of the tribal terminology of this region had been created and it was used to understand how tribes can be felt/seen in recent city life. On the process of the creation of ideal type it also had been looked to the concept of tribe corresponded to "what" in the past. Thus it had been focused on sociological importance of the effect of tribe on the direction of the social events and re-positioning of tribes to changing conditions. Within the same framework, it had been shortly evaluated in what way the tribal structure effected from the centralisation/modernisation process and this reading made over the land regulations during the Ottoman and Republican periods and administrative/political centralisation policies started with Tanzimat. Besides, in the theoretical part of research, the literature dominated by the regard that the modern formations of city and process of urbanisation which emerged along with the industrialisation surpassed all other formations of life and is giving an end to other formations, had been challenged and the traces of the idea that just one formation can't represent urbanisation and some other forms also does exist in city life pursued. The data collected from the field had been evaluated and the social, political, economical and religious forms of transformation of tribe had been subjected to an analyze especially the dimensions reflected in daily life. According to classic/promodernisation social science understanding, tribe is a social formation that belongs to traditional times and there is no place for it in modern times. In this research it had been confirmed/found that tribes could not keep/maintain their classical, traditional organisational structure independent of/in despite of social and global changes but it X had also been seen that traditional values and relations did not left their places to modern values and relations. The value and relations belonging "two worlds" coexist together, sometimes clashing sometimes in harmony. People, on the one hand can associate themselves with modern ideologies; a modern type of belonging and on the other hand they can preserve a traditional belonging formation, namely tribal formation/connection. As a conclusion/Certainly, in addition to variables such as education, age, gender, length of residence, accepted modern ideologies can also determine the feeling of to "belong to a tribe". Keywords: Tribe, Tribal Structure, Urbanization, Modernization, Tradition, Custom, Everyday Life.