‘Risky Areas’ of Diyarbakır: The Formation of Risk and (De)Securitization

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 systematic subjugation of the low-income Kurdish population has not remained limited to the areas of self-governance declarations or clashes, either. Recently, inner Bağlar, the poorest and densest urban section of Diyarbakır, has become the target of urban redevelopment by the Turkish state. In both cases, through Law No:6306, Code for Transforming Areas Under (Natural) Disasters Risk, the top-down imposed “risky” characteristic of the districts has been utilized to facilitate expropriation, eviction, and destruction.

Based on ethnographic research in Diyarbakır, this paper explores how creating a “risk” area is related to urban restructuring and counterinsurgency. It conceptualizes urban restructuring processes as a part of governance (governing the city, dissent, conflict, and counterinsurgency). The additional article to Law No:6306, “Areas where public order or security is disrupted in such a way as to stop or interrupt normal life [...], can be determined as risky areas by the President...”, implemented in Kaynartepe neighborhood of Bağlar in 2020 based on “terrorist activities,” has not only opened the legal way of urban redevelopment but also led to the justification of policing. Yet, despite the constant existence of police forces in the neighborhood, the area has become even more “dangerous” with increasing activities of drugs since. I argue that following the formation of the “risk” area, a (de)securitized and ambiguous space has been formed, securitizing political mobilization and insurgency while allowing and using “the drug problem” to marginalize and instabilize the area.