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The influence of infrastructure on Turkish-Kurdish ethnic conflict
Sat, October 9, 5:00 to 6:30pm EDT (5:00 to 6:30pm EDT), 4S 2021 Virtual, 22Abstract
In 2015, Kurdish guerrillas in southeast Turkey dug ditches across roads and streets to disconnect their land from the Republic of Turkey due to its perceived rejection of Kurdish identity. During the resistance, the guerillas claimed rights over the land. In the emergence and transformation of the “Ditch Resistance”, non-humans had decisive impacts. The ditches, combined with the architectural characteristics (too depth and width trenches for army vehicles and narrow maze-like streets) and infrastructural features of the Southeast cities caused the death of hundreds of Turkish soldiers and therefore brought about the shift of the governmental technologies and military strategies of Turkish state. Infrastructural features (such as communication, water, and electricity networks) played founding and transforming roles in this resistance. They became actors causing ‘new concepts and technologies’ and transforming ‘institutions’; in addition to providing communication among the guerillas, the Internet and telephone networks, thanks to their uncontrollability and speed, spread the resistance’s information and photographs, such as photos of soldiers’ corpses, which made them some of the main actors within the resistance. Thereupon, the Turkish government had to follow new strategies and gave new status to domestic institutions to shut down communication networks temporarily in order to restrain communication in the region. With regard to the water and electricity networks, Turkish forces felt compelled cut off water and electricity in areas where they could not have full control. Through examining the resistance process by conducting archival research through an analysis of NGO reports, newspapers, and local publications of the period, I am investigating the novel governmentalities and technologies that arose along with the resistance process in this paper.