Limbos of Diyarbakır: Ambiguous Urban Redevelopment Processes and Counterinsurgency

In August 2015, after the declarations of self-governance in the Kurdish region of Turkey, Sur (the old town of Diyarbakır) turned into an urban front in the armed conflicts between the Turkish armed forces and the PKK (Kurdistan Workers’ Party). During and after the clashes, through bulldozering, urgent expropriation, and urban redevelopment, more than 22,000 low-income Kurdish inhabitants were forcefully displaced and dispossessed. The counterinsurgent urban redevelopment project in Sur has not been finished and seems paused. The systematic subjugation of the low-income Kurdish population has not remained limited to the areas of self-governance declarations or clashes, either. Recently, in 2020, inner Bağlar, the poorest and densest urban section of Diyarbakır, has become the target of urban redevelopment by the Turkish state. Like Sur, the urban redevelopment project of Bağlar proceeds unnervingly slow, even though a neighborhood of Bağlar has been selected for the start of the project and a pilot area has been declared “risky” on paper.

Based on ethnographic research in Diyarbakır, this paper explores the relationship between lengthy urban redevelopment processes and counterinsurgency strategies with a particular focus on dispossession and displacement. It conceptualizes urban regeneration processes as a part of governance (governing the city, dissent, conflict, and counterinsurgency). I argue that a redevelopment project does not need to be finished for displacement and dispossession to take place. On the contrary, the lengthy, non-transparent, and ambiguous urban redevelopment processes characterized by messy and constantly shifting bureaucratic and administrative structures form a threatening space, a limbo, aiming to disseminate the clustered, political, and mobilized low-income Kurdish families. In addition, the constant threat of displacement, facing empty lots and dilapidated surroundings, and police points set up at corners all lead to (de)securitization and depopulation in both Sur and inner Bağlar, creating a space that prevents political mobilization and insurgency.