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Authors: Diren Tas
Keywords: displacement, dispossession, political geography, neoliberalism, urban transformation
Abstract: This paper focuses on the socio-spatial dynamics of Diyarbakir since 2016 when the city’s landscape was largely destroyed by the conflict between state security forces and the PKK militia. Many critical scholars, focusing on metropolitan areas, have studied the urban transformation projects in relation to neoliberal policies, and analyzed the economic reasoning of these projects to explain the new regimes of capital accumulation in Turkey. During the last few years, some new projects come to our attention with their distinct qualities from the usual path of urban transformation in the metropoles of Turkey. These new projects target urban transformation in numerous towns, cities, and neighborhoods located in the southeastern regions of the country. This paper investigates one of these areas, the old-town of Diyarbakır, Suriçi, as a case study of one of the different paths of urban transformation in Turkey. This paper argues that although the phenomenon of urban transformation is predominantly determined by the neoliberal regimes, it cannot be reduced to an economic reasoning. The main question of this study is that if the transformation of space in late-capitalism is directly linked with the rescaled position of the state in urban governance, how can we include the primary features of politics in our inquiry of the phenomenon? Based on this question, this paper analyzes the urban transformation project in Suriçi with its different aspects, implementations, and impacts in order to frame how the transformation of space is becoming a focal point for the state, which should be considered both an economic and a political subject in the era of neoliberalism. As my aim is to develop multiple perspectives on the issue, following the complexity of the phenomenon, I prefer to use the critical approaches in the urban literature to have a comprehensive analysis of the specificities of transformation projects in Diyarbakir. To do this, I include various questions posed by the literature in order to open up different perspectives along with the aim of the paper. The case of urban transformation in Suriçi in this paper is analyzed through quantitative and qualitative data extracted from an ethnographic field research that I conducted in Suriçi which includes visual materials, participant observations as well as in-depth and semi-structured interviews with various subjects on the urban transformation process. During the field research of the study, the main themes addressed by the three subfields of groups, which are residents, civil society representatives, and administrative implementors, enabled me to better understand the complexity of the process in its details. Focusing on the peculiar case of the urban transformation project in Suriçi, this paper aims to demonstrate how the historically specific conjuncture of contentious politics regarding the Kurdish Question in Turkey is essential in understanding the various aspects of the phenomena. I suggest that the Suriçi case provides us a fruitful window to examine how the neoliberal process of urban transformation is interlocked with the political and ideological premises as key features.