Negotiating smuggling: tribes, debt, and the informal economy in Turkish Kurdistan

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ABSTRACT This article draws from ethnographic and oral history research to explore the intersection of cigarette smuggling and tribal relationships in Cizre, a Kurdish city located near Turkey's border with Syria and Iraq. Cigarette smuggling serves as a primary source of income for the city’s tribal communities, operating beyond the state's oversight and outside the ‘secure’ networks of the regulated market. This informal economy necessitates active collaboration amongst participants to effectively avoid state surveillance, and establish partnerships and substitute networks for coordinating the transfer of cigarettes, as well as for securing credit – all rooted in their tribal affiliations. I suggest that due to its significant reliance on tribal networks, the cigarette smuggling industry has allowed the Kurdish tribes to preserve their influence within an urban setting, even after their detachment from their pastoral economy and fragmentation as a result of enforced migration. I argue that the prominent role played by tribes in orchestrating the cigarette smuggling economy is indicative of the redistributive function that these institutions have increasingly assumed for their constituents.