Social ruination and alternative materialities in a dissonant landscape of modernity: The case of GAP in Halfeti, Turkey

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I examine in this article state-led infrastructural projects as embodiments of modernity and the way their divergent material transformations “play out on the ground.” I argue that such projects, through the way they transform material surroundings, provide a commentary on these modernization processes and surpass the intention of their creators. I focus on Halfeti, a town impacted by the southeast Anatolian project (GAP), a state-led damming project in southeast Turkey. GAP drastically transformed the social and material fabric of the town with the aim of developing the region by becoming modern. GAP involved forced relocation, the construction of uninhabitable zones, the redistribution of habitable territory, and the imposition of living standards on individuals, and can thus be held accountable for ruination. I focus on the way GAP has reused and strategically appropriated ruins for political purposes, simultaneously I take the processual part of ruination, into account. Meaning an outcome of a situation in which one is left behind with material leftovers after destruction, including personal feelings and emotions that continue to play a role in the aftermath of a such a violent event. I explain how renovated houses in Old-Halfeti, as well as newly built structures in New-Halfeti evoke social ruination. Subsequently, through alternative materialities, as expression givers to complex stratifications of histories which are ignored in dominant state-led infrastructure projects, the impact and importance of neglected and submerged infrastructures are understood. Alternative materialities give way to the agency of the material, and the way it brings about affect, shapes longing or nostalgia and expresses different histories. By considering the intertwined dynamics of social ruination, political appropriation of spaces, and the unveiling of alternative materialities, a more nuanced understanding of this landscape emerges and demonstrates the dissonance of modernity.