Paper short abstract

In the aftermath of 2023 Turkey-Syria earthquakes, exceptional rule is shaped through an infrastructural administration crystallized in the temporary container settlements and the sweeping state-led reconstruction.

Paper long abstract

Three years after the devastating 2023 Turkey–Syria earthquakes, the affected provinces of Turkey remain locked in profound spatial and social unsettlement. This paper argues that the exceptional political rule that emerged following the earthquakes takes place through a distinct infrastructural spatio-temporality. Initially characterized by a blurred boundary between state and society in the immediate aftermath, a new emergency-governance model soon crystallized, becoming most visible in the state-led reconstruction apparatus and in the temporary container settlements housing the displaced. For residents and much of the public bureaucracy, this condition produces a suspended everyday life marked by pervasive temporariness and ambiguity.

We demonstrate how, in the worst‑affected province of Hatay, an urban rent‑focused administration, centralized around the Ministry of Environment and Urbanization, has overridden other public‑sector priorities. This proceeds in tandem with accumulation by dispossession and triggers a Bourdieusian conflict within the state, marginalizing civil servants in health, education, and local governance. The resulting earthquake infrastructure perpetuates a state of provisionality, wherein displaced residents live under indefinite temporary conditions that reproduce relations of dependence. Drawing on three months of fieldwork and semi‑structured interviews with officials, aid workers, and displaced residents, the paper ultimately contends that emergency infrastructure itself materializes the exceptional rule forged in the disaster's wake.