4.Unfolding the Space of In-betweenness

As the first part of my methodology, I met with the participants separately and discussed together the space of in-betweenness. In order to explore how in-betweenness is related to spaces, we prepared conceptual maps together based on their spatial experiences.

23 Sasha Costanza-Chock, Design Justice: Community-Led Practices to Build the Worlds We Need, (The MIT Press,2020), pp 17-18

Participant A is a 23-year-old queer Muslim man. He studies at university in Den Haag and lives with his family in Rotterdam. He was born and raised in Rotterdam which is one of the largest towns in Netherlands. His relatives also live in the same neighborhood. That's why he has been exposed to Turkish culture and traditions since he was child. The narrative of his family house is based on traditional Turkish gender roles. For instance, the living room mostly belongs to dad and kitchen is a space that mother dominated in that area. Participant A cannot integrate himself in this traditional narrative of the house and it causes him to make his room the most private space in the house. He uses his room to isolate himself from normativity of the house. Although he calls his room a calming and comfortable space, it is still influenced by other spaces at home. It doesn’t feel him completely free. The fact that this isolated space is still affected by other forces in the house makes the space not completely safe. This is a space where participant must limit his queer identity there. For instance, his room is not a safe place to come with his partner.

Hospitality plays an important role in Turkish culture like dinner or tea events, cooking events etc. All these cultural events gather all families, relatives or friends together. Gatherings at house temporarily change structure of the house and participant related this temporary change with intimacy. The organization of space is temporarily transformed, identity of space gets blurred, and normativity gets lost. When he imagines his future house, he wants an enclosed, non-door space where he can express himself and hosting his friend at that house is an important part to feel intimacy at house.

He also considers that some flexible spaces that do not guide some users as intimate spaces like some night clubs. These are the spaces that are activated by only bodies. He especially prefers to go to pubs specifically for the marginalized community because queer pubs are places where he can more clearly express their sexual identity and interact with other people. At this point, he compares queer pubs where he went in Rotterdam and Istanbul, even he finds both are intimate spaces, he feels more belong to space in Istanbul. Because queer pub in Istanbul is also place where he can integrate his cultural identity to the space unlike Rotterdam. The semi-open spaces connected to the main space make him relax because these spaces give him chance to choose his comfort zone. This relationship is similar to the relationship of the participant's own room with the other places in the house.

The characteristics of the public space, where the participant will feel safe with their partner, are either a very isolated space where only the two of them can be, or a space so crowded that it cannot be noticed. On that point, green public areas like parks come to the forefront. Because these spaces are timeless because certain hours, forces in city center don’t influence these flexible spaces.

His own room, which is the most private place in the house, is also his spiritual space because he prefers to perform his religious rituals in an isolated space. Religious rituals, both in the public and private, are an activity he wants to hide because since he cannot relate himself to the religion imposed at home and also, he studied catholic school where he had to hide his Muslim identity when he was child.

Participant B is 26-year-old queer Muslim women. She was born and raised in Rotterdam. She is currently working and living in Rotterdam. She moved from her parents' house as soon as she became 18. The most important reason to make this decision is that she limits herself in space and doesn’t feel free and safe. That’s why since she was child, living away from parents is one of her plans and this caused her to feel no belonging to the family house. She especially mentions about the difference between two different houses when he lived with his family. She associates the house where neighbours are relative with coziness because of the gathering at house. She underlines hospitality at that point and it is one of the concepts that she brings this with her to the house where she lived on her own. Dinner events or tea in her own house is an important activity for her because this is a way to interact with people. The fact that the participant prefers the kitchen as a shared space also comes from her cultural background because cooking together is an important interactive activity in Turkish culture. In her current house, she is sharing her kitchen with someone, and she has personal room and doesn’t have a living room. He finds her kitchen as intimate space where she can have dinner together with her roommate. The absence of a participant's living room affects the organization of her room because she creates intimate spaces while putting huge couches in quite small space. Intimacy and hospitality are significant elements in her private space. In this way she can temporarily transform her private room to gathering, intimate space and at the end this temporal space is placed at intersect with her sexuality and cultural identity. Furthermore, there is also some object that she reflects her identity in the house like Turkish and pride flag, tea maker, Turkish football team plates etc.

The biggest difference between the participant's family house and her current house is that the house she lives in now is a space where she can make her own decisions, express herself and control the around. These all differences make her current house safer than parents' house. On the other hand, public space is not always a space where she feels safe with its sexual identity. Feeling of safety depends on time hours in public space. For Turkish queer women, public spaces make them feel under the gaze of cis-gender man. She especially mentioned about one of the coffee places where she can feel cozy and comfortable. This place is a very welcoming cafe with queer staff and symbols. This place is a safe space in public where she can go with her partner, and she integrate this place with intimacy.

Pride is quite important to visibility and at that time the public spaces temporarily transform and occupied by marginalized community. She feels more powerful and visible in public space. However, this gathering in public also brings unsafety feeling. Being more visible makes her feel more threatened by homophobia.

Green open areas are separated itself from normative public spaces and give her chance to express her identity and feel freer. She describes these spaces fluid and become by intimate circles. This space can be considered as a safe space where she can interact with her partner freely because there is no specific function in the space makes it flexible and open to user expression.

Participant C is a 29-year-old queer Turkish man. He is an actor. He was born in Winterswijk which is one of the small towns in the Netherlands. His interaction with the outside in this city was quite limited. In his cosy memories of the city, the markets or shopping places he went with his mother stand out. Generally, in the Turkish family structure, the father, that is, the man, is the dominant character of the house. However, after the divorce of his parents, the participant was forced into a situation where he had to take control of the house as the eldest male member of the home. This situation reduces his communication with the house as his taking this role forcibly causes his to feel the normative structure in the house more.

He defines his room in the family house as the space where he is isolated and spends the most of his time at home. Limited interaction with the outside, normativity inside the house pushed him to discover a new interaction space which is digital world. This digital space is a way to escape from the identity that he has to show at home. In this digital field, the participant finds a space where he can express himself freely and without norms by creating different personas and different places every day. Due to this digital space, the person discovers that there can be fluid identities and spaces apart from the fixed identity and use of space coming from the family. Although he does not feel a sense of belonging to a physical space, a sense of belonging appears to the spaces and personas he creates and constantly changes in the digital space. That’s why he doesn’t feel himself completely belongs to any physical space and he describe himself as a nomadic person. As soon as the participant turns 18, first he moved to Utrecht, then lived in Arnhem for a while and currently is living in Amsterdam. Obviously, he does not like to live in a same place for a long time.

After moving from a small city to a big city, he had the opportunity to discover himself more, and to express his queer identity especially as his interaction with people increased. The participant often spends his time in performance spaces such as the stage, as the theatre enters his life. Because the stage is a place that accepts every persona played by the person, so it can be considered that this is a non-normative space. The stage is also a space where he can freely express his intersectionality. For instance, the stage is the first place where he came out about his queer identity to his family. The participant also both writes script and plays at theatre, and he especially prefers to highlight his queer identity in the play. The fluidity in both spatial and persona is dominant in the plays but at the same time, the Turkish identity of the person generally takes a part in the plays. For instance, in the last play, we are seeing him variable personas and one of them is a female character who dances while singing a Turkish song. His use of stage is the temporal expression of his intersectional identities.

The participant specifies two places in Amsterdam while talking about the night use of public spaces; Leidseplein, which is the square, and Reguliersdwarsstraat, which is the street. When he compares between two, he describes Leidseplein as a place where he doesn't feel comfortable as he exposes it to dualities and sees it as an aggressive public space. On the other hand, in Reguliersdwarsstraat, a place welcoming to queer identities, he states that he feels safer than in other parts. At the same time, in recent years he prefers places such as open spaces and festivals to queer clubs to have fun because he thinks it is a more comfortable and free space. As an indoor space, he finds the home environment more intimate and comfortable with friends whom he feels comfortable and can freely express himself. In particular, he considers that dinner or tea activities is a way to create this atmosphere and interaction in which he can feel comfortable and safe.

As the second part of the methodology, we organized a workshop with the participants, where we could discuss the space of betweenness while using different materials. The purpose of our work with different materials is to better explore the spatial character of the space of in-betweenness. Participants decided the rules, materials and space of the workshop themselves. During the workshop, we were inspired by the conceptual maps we prepared together with the participants about the space of in- betweenness based on their spatial experiences. In this workshop, which we imagined as a place-making collage using different materials, we had the opportunity to think about this in-between space in more 3D way and with different layers.

At the beginning of the workshop, when we talked about the maps we prepared before, we decided that interaction is the main key word. Our discussions started on this concept. We focused on the question that how space influences interaction or how interaction influences space. Interaction is sometimes produced within the boundaries of space, and sometimes it affects existing spaces on its own. The interaction produced by the influence of physical boundaries forces the space to interact, which changes the fixed identity of the space temporarily and gives fluidity to the space. In some cases, these boundaries also cause forced interaction and make space where one cannot feel free and express themselves clearly. Especially in the experiences of each participant in the family house, we can see that the interaction limits the person as a spatially. At this point, the concept of isolation emerges. One's own room can be given as an example of an isolated space, but the relationship of this isolation with interaction is gradual. That’s why in the collage isolation consists of layers that go from transparency to opacity. Even isolated spaces within these borders are still under the influence of forced interaction.

A completely safe space is seen as a utopian concept by the participants. The materials used for the safe space, being natural, fragrant and soft, associate this place with the concepts of intimacy, coziness and comfort. Safe space has a relationship with the concept of interaction in many ways. First, the sticks that come out of the interaction penetrate the safe space and influence it in a bad way.

Secondly, a relationship is established in a smooth way through an intimate circle formed by interaction. The intimate circle we created on the concept of interaction is inspired by the concept of gathering on maps. Especially the cultural gathering events that take place in the house affect and transform the space through interaction, bringing a different relationship to the concept of interaction with the safe space.

Another relationship is the interaction that relates to the boundaries of the safe space. While the participants were thinking about some places located on the edge of the safe zone, they considered it as space of exploration. At this point, the queer pub they went to in Turkey pushes them to create this composition in collage. Although the interior of this place gives people the opportunity to be there with their sexual and cultural identities, the outside of the place also makes them feel so insecure. Visibility inside the space reveals the sense of belonging to the space, but outside the space, this visibility makes the public space dangerous.

In the public spaces of the city, the places where you can feel peaceful with intersectional identity are limited. However, although some spaces are under the influence of public streets, squares and public spaces where heteronormative power is felt, there are intimate spaces that have established a non-normative structure within themselves. In this collage, these spaces where people can express their sexual and cultural identity can be associated with parks, festivals and queer welcoming cafes. The reflective material at the intersection of the tires represents this visibility. Participants also highlight their universities in public space. They see this educational space as a structure that filters the user in the public sphere. The fact that a space accessible to everyone has a specific function and that this function is based on education limits the users of the space in the public space without the need for a physical boundary. It allows people to freely express their identities in space. Performative spaces likewise promote visibility and allow for fluidity in space and person. That's why this space also represented reflective material in the collage.

When we discussed about spiritual spaces in the workshop, we realized that it actually has a very complex and layered structure. Religious rituals that take place in the mosque, which is a spiritual space, is actually a non- normative activity. In other words, we considered that the mosque was a place where you left your identity and who you are behind and only went there to find peace. In fact, it is the place where you should be able to express yourself most clearly, but the spatial forces and binary organization of the space force you to choose, that's why it makes this spiritual space into a normative space.

At the same time, we use the spiritual space in the part that represents the most isolated place of the collage, because the religious forces that have been applied to us since childhood cause us to be unable to relate to the ituals performed collectively, and we establish a different relationship with the itual in the private

First of all, when we look at both the conceptual maps and the collage, it would be a correct approach to consider the space of inbetweenness from two different perspectives, one that emerges in private spaces and the other one that emerges in public spaces.

In private spaces, there is a tense relationship between Turkish family homes and homosexuality in the Netherlands. This tension brings both a sense of belonging to home and alienation for Turkish queer individuals. The home is not a safe place for them because, according to the participants, the safe space is where you can freely express your intersectional identity. The concept that the participants highlighted most about their experience in the family house is hospitality. The concept of hospitality in Turkish culture is a value that is in the traditions of Turkish society, that is, shared by the community. That’s why hospitality takes its place in this society within the framework determined by this tradition and culture. In Turkish culture, the guest is very important, the they are a part of their daily life. Moreover, one of the first features that come to mind among the known characteristics of the Turks is their hospitable nature. Especially Turkish immigrants in the Netherlands attach great importance to gatherings at home, which is a part of hospitality, because they are a minority where they live. That's why gathering is very important for them to create a sense of belonging there and not feel alone. All the participants point out this issue while preparing concept maps together, because this is a common culture that they all experience while living in the family home. With this gathering, the normative spatial order in the house changes temporarily, and the forces exerted by the gendered spaces in the house on the person softens. The change of the spatial order enables the person to interact with the house and the participants associate this with the concept of intimacy. This characteristic feature in the family house most influenced the organization of the current queer domestic spaces of the participants. Most of the participants left their family homes as soon as they turned 18, but they brought the hospitality of Turkish culture with them to their new private spaces. In fact, this intersection is one of their ways of experiencing the space of in-betweenness.

In fact, food and tea events, which are a part of hospitality have an important role in Turkish culture. Especially cooking, which is a part of this event, is an activity that socializes people. Turkish food requires effort and time. Therefore, Women, in particularly, come together for this activity to both chat and cook. In fact, the culture of cooking and eating, which comes from the Turkish culture, is another way for the participants to interact with the space. In their family houses, the kitchen is the place where they spend the most time after the rooms, thus, they prefer the kitchen as a shared space in their current private spaces, or they prefer a spatial organization that kitchen interacts with the living room, because cooking is a social activity where people come together.

Another in-betweenness we perceived in private spaces is that in some cases, the limits that alienate the participants from the family home have led to fluidity in the space. As we can observe in Participant C, he spends time in his room, which he calls the most isolated place at home, since he cannot express himself either in the house or in the public space of the city and has difficulty interacting with outside of his room. However, the isolated space caused by the limits of the house pushes the person to discover a completely new place, and in this place, one is free. In this digital space, the person changes the composition of the existing static space and gives the space a new identity by creating new personas, different identities, and variable spaces.

Another feature of the most private room, which is seen as an isolated place in the house by the participants, is that it is a place where one performs spiritual rituals related to one's religion. The Muslim understanding of the Turkish immigrant community living in the Netherlands is generally not open to heterosexuality, that's why, religious rituals are not performed collectively for this community. Participants prefer their room for these rituals, which is the most isolated place. According to participants, the spiritual space should be a place where the person can express himself clearly in all aspects, since the identity of the person is not important there. Unfortunately, public religious spaces such as mosques do not allow expression because of their normative spatial organization, gendered spaces, and being a space under male control.

Even though the restrictions of Turkish immigrant family houses on the expression of queer Turks' identities push these people into public or semi-public spaces, people do not feel completely comfortable and safe in these spaces. The streets and squares in the city center do not allow this community to feel safe with their partners because these places are under the influence of a dominant heteronormative power. But some places separate themselves from this heteronormativity in the public and create safe and intimate spaces, such as coffee place in Rotterdam or Reguliersdwarsstraat in Amsterdam. These cafes and streets are attractive and social spaces to meet with other queer people, spend time with them and be accepted. What makes them attractive is that they use symbols of queer identity such as the rainbow flag, have queer employees and organize queer artistic and cultural events. Moreover, these places are still placed in public spaces and interact with the public.

Another place where we observe in-betweenness is performative spaces such as the stage. The stage in the theater allows fluid, temporal spaces and personas and it temporarily plays with the perception of time we experience daily. Thus, performative spaces that are seen as static and permanent transform into fluid, unstable and flexible boundaries by interacting with people's bodies and even their intersectional identities. It can be said that these places are nonnormative and where people can express themselves clearly. For example, Participant C who is an actor, came out to his family on stage in his own play, because stage is a space where he is at peace with himself and freely expresses his identities.

The universities of the participants are located at the city center and although there is no physical border to the public, the educational function of the place creates invisible boundaries in the public space. The users who experience the space consist of a community open to multiple identities, without prejudice. This helps the participants to be more secure and visible in space. Because the academic environment at the university, the communities, allows these individuals to engage in activism for their intersectional identities. The university which is the part of the public space becomes a place where this marginalized community can express themselves freely.

It can be said that the streets and squares in the city center are affected by the time limit because they are directly influenced by the opening and closing hours of the other places, but the parks are timeless spaces in the public space. The fact that the parks are reproduced with different actions every day, with the users changing every day, and the temporality of the spaces customized by the individuals can also be defined as a queer way of resistance. Parks could be controlled if they were designed and used for a particular user, for a specific action, to be used at a specific time. However, parks provide support to queering in general as a place that is open to all users, provides space for various actions and can be used at any time. All these activities hosted by the park are done by different people at random points of the park, in a random time period; The park has a very dynamic organization. That’s why, the act of sitting on the grass, with the contribution of the topography, allows various body positions. On the other hand, while these comfortable positions allow people to socialize more easily, it also provides more potential for physical intimacy between individuals compared to people sitting on opposite chairs in a cafe. It can be seen these potentials as a means of getting out of norms.

Although I thought the participant research method was the most appropriate and ethical method for such a sensitive subject, the biggest limitation of this research was the dependence on the participants. I started to find my subjects with my search for organizations that brought together the queer Muslim Turkish community in the Netherlands, but while searching, I observed that these organizations were very limited and not active enough. At the same time, they couldn't response to my request about collaborative research. I tried to personally reach the subjects that I saw potential through social media. I couldn't get any response from some of them, although some people reacted in a positive way while finding my research topic important and interesting, they said that they don't have enough time to work together. If my research method had been based on an interview with the subjects, I could have had more participants because co-creation and co-research required time, effort, and labor. That’s why I could not find enough interest and motivation from the subjects. At that point, maybe if I had a budget to pay them off for their labor and effort to research together, I could reach more participants.

Even though I have a Turkish identity, I came across with limitations when I contacted potential subjects because I was perceived as a heterosexual, cisgender woman, outsider who had just moved to the Netherlands. The subjects who agreed to research together are between the ages of 23-30. If I had the opportunity to work with more diverse age groups, maybe we could have come up with different findings, because especially young Turkish immigrants living in the Netherlands had difficulty in relating the space of inbetweenness with their immigrant background, since they did not feel a sense of belonging to Turkey. However, this situation could have changed if I had worked with an older group, and it could have brought different spatial findings to the research. Finally, it was very difficult to agree with the participants on a common time slot for both co-creative mapping and co-creative collage, and it was a challenging situation that limited the research process. 6.Conclusion

This research aimed to unfold spatial characteristics of inbetween spaces influenced by Turkish queer immigrants’ experience on intersectionality in Netherlands. Multiple identities and belongings of Turkish queer immigrants marginalize the community. That’s why, the discussion about spatial experience of in-betweenness by this community is a crucial point for this research paper. Space of inbetweenness which is experienced by this community with their intersectionality is one of the issues that should be considered in the design in order to get away from some prejudices, norms and limitations. Because it allows fluidity, expression, heterogeneity which reproduces interactions, relations, temporality to not feeling alienated in space.

Paper revealed that how Turkish queer immigrants configurated their in-between spaces which are caused by presence of public and private pressure on this community. Space of inbetweenness has no representation with a fixed space. This space can only be read through the experiences influenced by intersectionality of this marginal community through existing spaces. On that point, research led by marginalized community was essential in this paper to social equity. Turkish queer immigrants in Netherlands are a community that are not physically represented in formal architecture. However, my enthusiasm about this topic requires ethical enforcements because of not being in this community but doing research on this community. At that point, design justice inspired me to reconsider the research process. That's why I believe that collaborative and creative research are the most outstanding methods to approach the challenges this community faces in public and private spaces. In this research, each of the participants is in the position of a researcher by participating in the process with their own experiences and the voices of those who are directly affected by the research outcomes stand at the center. Working with community is crucial to reveal spatial organizations that are not physically represented in formal architecture and emerge by intersectionality of these people and provide social equity in research. Moreover, this also leads to inclusive design.

In the research, instead of creating a new space, it is aimed to find out which features in existing spaces help us understand the inbetweenness within the framework of this community by looking at the current spatial organizations. Community of Turkish queer immigrant are carriers of intersectional knowledge and experience and space of in-betweenness is a zone that they resist to exclusionary and oppressive practices that affect them. In order to understand this space, it is necessary to discover the relationship between this inbetweenness and the boundaries that create it. Although the concept maps we prepared based on the spatial experience of the participants in the first step of the methodology emerged the in-betweenness experienced by each user differently, it revealed the spatial organizations affected by common concepts such as timelessness, intimacy, hospitality, isolation. Because although each user's definition and experiences of in-between space is different, the identities of the limit they are stuck in are the same.

In co-creative collage, which is the second step of the methodology, using different materials with the participants supported the layered exploration of the in- between space which represents an abstract concept. It can be said that space of in- betweenness is a threshold which has vital features. It has the feature of separating the different sides from each other, it also carries the possibilities of bringing, merging and hybridizing them together. In this field, the separate identities reunite, and the differences become distinguishable. In this way, it blurs the boundaries and fuses the features of the sides it separates from each other.

This study made me reconsider my position as a designer. In spite of limitations of design justice that I face in the process, I perceived that community marginalized by design must be one of the co-creators of the both design and research process to social justice. As I questioned power and hierarchy in this academic research, I will continue to negotiate these relations in my future career.

Ahmed, Sara (2006) Queer Phenomenology: Orientations, Objects, Others, Durham: Duke University Press.

Akpinar, A. (2003). ‘The honour/shame complex revisited: Violence against women in the migration context’, Women’s Studies International Forum, vol. 26, n. 5, pp. 425 - 442.

Avar, A. A., (2009) “Lefebvre’in Uclu -Algılanan, Tasarlanan, Yasanan Mekan- Diyalektigi”, Dosya 17, TMMOB Mimarlar Odası Ankara Subesi.

Bergson, H. (1986). ‘’Matiere et memoire’’; Traslation: Erguden, I., (2005). Madde ve Bellek, Dost Kitabevi, Ankara.

Bergson, H., (1901). ‘’L'Evolution creatrice’’; Translation: Andison. M. L., (1946). Creative Mind, New York: Philosophical Library; Ceviren: Tunc, S.M., (1947). Yaratıcı Tekamul, Dergah Yayınları, Istanbul.

Butler,J. (1999). Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity,New York: Routledge.

Costanza-Chock, S. (2020), Design Justice: Community-Led Practices to Build the Worlds We Need, The MIT Press.

El-Tayeb, F. (2012). ‘Gays who cannot properly be gay’: Queer Muslims in the neoliberal European city. European Journal of Women's Studies, 19(1)

Fortin, S. (2002). Social ties and settlement processes: French and North African migrants in Montreal.Canadian Ethnic Studies,34 (3), 76-97.

Grosz, E., (2001). Architecture From Outside, Massachusetts Institte of Technology, USA.

Jivraj, S., & De Jong, A. (2011). The Dutch homo-emancipation policy and its silencing effects on queer Muslims. Feminist Legal Studies, 19(2), 143.

Keuzenkamp S (ed.) (2010) Steeds gewoner, nooit gewoon. Den Haag: SCP – Sociaal en Cultureel Planbureau.

Lefebvre, H., (1974), The Production of Space, Blackwell Publishing, USA, UK, Australia.

Lykke, N. (2003). Intersektionalitet - ett anvandbart begrepp for genusforskningen. Kvinnovetenskaplig tidskrift. Vol. 24 (1), pp. 47-56

Mepschen, P., Duyvendak, J. W., & Tonkens, E. H. (2010). Sexual politics, orientalism and multicultural citizenship in the Netherlands. Sociology, 44(5), 962-979.

Retter,Y., Bouthillette A., Ingram, G.B., (1997) Queers in Space: Communities, Public Places, Sites of Resistance Paperback, Bay Press; First Edition.

Yucesoy, E. (2006), Everyday urban public space: Turkish Immigrant Women’s Perspective

Yorukoglu,I.(2014), Acts of Belonging: Perceptions of Citizenship Among Queer Turkish Women in Germany