Tolerance as Social Practice in Antakya, Türkiye: Navigating Coexistence and Power

ABSTRACT In recent years , the study of intergroup relations has renewed its focus on tolerance as a lens for understanding diversity and difference. This study examines tolerance as a social practice in Antakya, a historically diverse Eastern Mediterranean city in Türkiye, situating the analysis within the legacies of the Ottoman millet system and Turkish nationhood. Drawing on social representations theory, it explores how tolerance is dialogically constructed and negotiated through everyday practices, symbolic boundaries, and political asymmetries. Semi‐structured interviews with seven members of the Choir of Civilizations—a local musical group that symbolizes Antakya's intercommunal harmony—reveal how participants navigate coexistence and power in making sense of local diversity. The analysis identifies two interrelated themes. The first, “doing tolerance,” examines how local communities represent tolerance as an essentialized everyday practice and a celebrated mode of coexistence that regulates intercommunal relations within national and historical frames. The second, “beyond tolerance,” highlights tensions between political strategies of depoliticization—integrating local diversity into the national frame—and repoliticization, which critiques tolerance as a hierarchical and paternalistic framework in response to structural silences and representational constraints. The findings show how tolerance operates both as a celebrated practice of coexistence and as a representation that manages difference within existing power relations. This study offers a culturally and geopolitically grounded account of intergroup relations and demonstrates how social psychology can more fully engage with the complexities of difference in post‐Ottoman contexts.