Paper short abstract:

This paper discusses the socio-spatial dimensions of urban warfare and urbicide in Diyarbakır (Amed), the unofficial capital of Kurdish regions in Turkey. I demonstrate how political violence is imprinted in the material and immaterial aspects of the urban space through an ethnographic study.

Paper long abstract:

The tentative peace process aimed at resolving the decades-long armed conflict between the Turkish state and the Kurdish Liberation Movement collapsed in 2015. Several Kurdish municipalities declared a demand for political autonomy followed by the state of exceptions, round-the-clock curfews, and military operations in numerous Kurdish cities and towns in Turkey. As one of these sites, the ancient inner-city town of Diyarbakır, Sur was encamped and sieged as a real enclave and lost most of its infrastructures and populations during months of armed conflicts and state atrocities. In the aftermath, the state compelled the historical inner center of the city to systematic demolishment and urban transformation. These transformation projects are immersed as spatial tools of counter-insurgency, displacing and dispossessing subaltern architecture and neighborhoods. The state facilitated urban destruction and transformation as revanchist and racialized mechanisms of socio-spatial intervention in Kurdish cities. Based on my ethnographic study in the Sur district of Diyarbakır from 2016 and 2023, including in-depth interviews with residents, state officials, subcontracting constructors, and civil society activists, I demonstrate how the political violence is integrated and engraved in the built environment. I discuss the Sur district as a spatial archive of past and present violence during decades-long racial oppression, social resistance, and resiliency.