Our Three Sides are the Common Sea Which is Enclosed all Around

Abstract

With the impulsion of mass tourism, the "beaches", which legally belongs to the public, whets the neoliberal capital’s appetite and are being under capital pressure. As a result of this pressure, the practices of capital to take over the beaches, in other words, “enclosure practices”, come to light day by day. This study seeks to make an original contribution to the critical tourism research literature and deals with how the beaches under capital pressure are enclosed. It aims to explore the struggles and possible practices of commonization in the framework of the common concept, which is the twin concept of enclosure. Muğla province has the longest coastline in Turkey where study was conducted and, in the study, critical analysis of documents based on secondary sources was carried out. The theoretical conceptualization of the commons concept in terms of "capitalist commons", "capitalism and commons" and "anti-capitalist commons" is one of the original contributions of the study. The activities of NGOs such as MUÇEP (Muğla Environment Platform) operating in Muğla, the stance of the local people against the enclosure and their cooperation in this stance, the enclosure in the context of the beaches are the agenda in the local and national press are promising struggles for the commonization of the beaches.