CONSCIENTIOUS OBJECTION OR OBJECTING TO THE CONSCIENCE? Notes Toward an Anthropology of the Conscience

In certain domains of contemporary life, political action connected to people's conscience is of central significance. But what is the conscience, and how may it be studied? Much of the anthropological study of conscientious objection has occurred in places where freedom of conscience is codified as a legal possibility. By contrast, this article investigates the social life of the conscience in Turkey, where discourse on freedom of conscience has been crucial to its system of laicism but which does not recognize the right of conscientious objection to conscription. Drawing upon the testimonies of refusers, it examines the qualities of conscience they reveal, showing their shared characteristics with the ethical subjectivity of objectors in ostensibly more liberal contexts. I adapt the term "forensic conscience" to describe these common characteristics, stressing their universal dimensions.