Leviathan’s Architect: Urbicide, Urban Renewal, and the Right to the City in Turkish Kurdistan

Abstract

Urban warfare exacts a grim toll on city life as combatants target civilians and civilian infrastructure, appropriate space, and try to erase culture and memory. Often, however, it is the post-conflict razing and reconstruction that caps this violent re-ordering of urban life. This article explores securitized development of cities in Southeastern Turkey in the wake of recent armed strife between Kurdish fighters and Turkish security forces. Case studies of Sur/Diyarbakır and Nusaybin show an overlord state leveraging post-war blight to remake society from the ground up. Targeting the physical as well as social contours of cities, Ankara has displaced residents, redirected access and flow, and intensified surveillance and control. The upheaval has been disorienting for residents, but in other ways it has sharpened Kurdish identity and agency. Historical preservation and memory projects, cultural commemorations, and new models of post-war urbanism underscore the right to a city that reflects civil society rather than one that tries to reengineer it in the image of the state.