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Sev­er­al towns in South­east­ern Turkey (North­ern Kur­dis­tan), Sur and Silopi among oth­ers, were ram­sacked by secu­ri­ty forces over long peri­ods of cur­few, and thou­sands of per­sons were forced to leave their homes.

Dur­ing the “mop­ping up oper­a­tions” as the AKP gov­ern­ment likes to call destruc­tions and mas­sacres, we were not the only ones rais­ing ques­tions about Sur’s future, for exam­ple. Know­ing that the BTP, “urban recy­cling”, is an impor­tant sec­tor in the Turk­ish econ­o­my, and a flour­ish­ing source of cor­rup­tion, we could eas­i­ly imag­ine the bar­gain shap­ing up. For behind each project no mat­ter how big or small, one can see the ten­ta­cles of poli­cies of “progress” based on “prof­it”, even if this means destroy­ing nature, his­tor­i­cal and pro­tect­ed ones or, quite sim­ply, liv­ing spaces and all the local life sur­round­ing them. Under each stone lift­ed for a con­struc­tion site, we find the same busi­ness­es close to the gov­ern­ment oper­at­ing as sub-con­trac­tors or, through the inter­me­di­ary of pub­lic bod­ies, ben­e­fit­ing from finan­cial arrange­ments designed to max­i­mize prof­its. Com­bin­ing “eth­nic cleans­ing” with prof­itable heavy con­struc­tion work in the East is also a favorite gov­ern­men­tal ploy.

Already bit every­where in Turkey, under cov­er of “urban recy­cling”, entire neigh­bor­hoods, notably in Istan­bul, are emp­tied of their inhab­i­tants, razed, recon­struct­ed, then turned over to gen­tri­fi­ca­tion… Through a process called “urban renew­al” the social exclu­sion of the pop­u­lar class­es and of eth­nic minori­ties is tak­ing shape in Istan­bul. Sulukule, the his­tor­i­cal neigh­bor­hood of the Roms is a trag­ic exam­ple of the ver­i­ta­ble demo­li­tion enter­prise com­bined with a pol­i­cy of accul­tur­a­tion and of “smooth­ing out” the urban landscape.

And this, despite the strug­gles of the inhab­i­tants, of non-gov­ern­men­tal orga­ni­za­tions, despite warn­ings from archi­tects’ and urban­ists’ cor­po­ra­tions, despite their many pro­pos­als for oth­er “reha­bil­i­ta­tion” solu­tions that would safe­guard the archi­tec­ture, the exist­ing social life, the tra­di­tion­al inhab­i­tants and the soul of these neighborhoods.

Now, it’s the turn of destroyed Kur­dish towns in the South­east. The ploy is as big as a house!

The final phase in the operation, after destruction comes pillaging : expropriation

sur doc signatures decision

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Fol­low­ing a request by the Min­istry of the Envi­ron­ment and Urban­ism on March 16 2016, an urgent deci­sion to expro­pri­ate was tak­en by the Cab­i­net on March 21 and pub­lished in the Offi­cial Gazette on March 25 2016 .

The neigh­bor­hood bears the name of “SUR”” (Wall) for this his­tor­i­cal site is locat­ed intra muros.

A his­tor­i­cal birth­place, part of UNESCO’s World Cul­tur­al Her­itage, it con­tains many loca­tions that must be pro­tect­ed. Deng­bêj Evi (the house of the deng­bêj, a tra­di­tion­al Kur­dish singer), Cemil­paşa Kon­ağı, (the hotel of Cemil­paşa), Hasan­paşa Hanı (Hasan­paşa Inn) are but a few of the his­tor­i­cal sites. The Dicle Fırat Cul­tur­al Cen­ter, Sur City Hall, along with sev­er­al oth­er pub­lic and civil­ian spaces are among those touched by the pil­lag­ing underway.

We note that end of Decem­ber, while Sur was a bat­tle­ground and its build­ings were being dam­aged, the Bar Asso­ci­a­tion of Diyarbakır, and the MHD (Asso­ci­a­tion of Jurists of Mesopotamia) had called upon UNESCO. “The pro­tec­tion of the walls (sur) in Diyarbakır and of the build­ings intra­muros are under humanity’s respon­si­bil­i­ty. We urgent­ly call on you to take pre­cau­tion­ary mea­sures for the safe­guard­ing of Sur, list­ed on the World Her­itage Site, of its build­ings, its his­to­ry, its pop­u­la­tion, before the sit­u­a­tion reach­es a point of no return.”

UNESCO did not respond…

Expropriation of 82% of the neighborhood

In Sur, fol­low­ing the deci­sion , 6.300 parcels of land out of 7.714, or 82% of the neigh­bor­hood marked in red on the map, will be expro­pri­at­ed. This involves 10.846 homes, church­es, build­ings, hotels, com­mer­cial premis­es… As for the sec­tion marked in blue, it cov­ers those parcels of land already expro­pri­at­ed. Goal : 100% !

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Fol­low­ing the expro­pri­a­tion deci­sion, archi­tects, urban­ists, and pro­gres­sive his­to­ri­ans sound­ed the alarm :
“This is noth­ing oth­er than a cul­tur­al and social genocide !”

Şerefhan Aydın, Pres­i­dent of the Diyarbakir Cham­ber of Archi­tects announced an excep­tion­al meet­ing, the deci­sion of which was brought before the courts.

Right now, all the dynam­ic actors of the town are in shock. We attempt­ed to obtain details on the deci­sion ? Is this any way to behave ? Most of the parcels of land involve cul­tur­al, reli­gious, and social venues, an Art Cen­ter, City Hall. A deci­sion tak­en on high is being car­ried out with no con­sul­ta­tion what­so­ev­er. Despite the pres­ence of urban forces, cor­po­ra­tions, civil­ian orga­ni­za­tions, none of the work is being done with them. We will open a legal case on this issue.

Şerefhan Aydın adds :

When we spoke about “prof­it”, we were told how can you know that. Well now, it has come to light. The expro­pri­a­tion deci­sion also cov­ers pri­vate prop­er­ties and they will be offered to allies [of the AKP]. We con­sid­er this to be an ini­tia­tive of destruc­tion of an exist­ing liv­ing space and cul­ture. It is a social and cul­tur­al geno­cide. With their pro­mot­ers, they will destroy the cul­tur­al and social fab­ric and install another.

Let us recall that, while Sur was emp­ty­ing of its inhab­i­tants, while its streets and homes were wrecked and blood­ied, Prime Min­is­ter Ahmet Davu­toğlu, announced the government’s inten­tions with the words : “We will rebuild Sur in such a way that it will be like Toledo.”

Şerefhan Aydın also spec­i­fies that, despite the declared aims of the “oper­a­tions”, the bans continue.

Entrances and exits are denied, con­trolled by con­crete walls [installed in the begin­ning of March]. Inside, pub­lic works engines are deployed. We don’t know what they are doing, only the admin­is­tra­tions attached to the Pre­fec­torate are in the know. If mil­i­tary oper­a­tions are end­ed, why can we still not go back?

murs entrees quartier sur diyarbakir

Mid-March, a con­crete wall is set up block­ing off circulation

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Destruc­tion of homes still standing

expropriation sur

The land parcels are cleared in order to leave open spaces available

Dur­ing the sieges, the emer­gency cen­tered on the vic­tims, of course. Pri­or­i­ty was giv­en to alert­ing on the ongo­ing mas­sacres, and denounc­ing their geno­ci­dal “ori­en­ta­tion”. But even then voic­es were raised to uncov­er the “plans” for these neigh­bor­hoods. What could be more effi­cient than to com­bine the dis­per­sal of pop­u­la­tions, the destruc­tion of their liv­ing spaces with an eth­ni­cal­ly inspired gen­tri­fi­ca­tion, in order to “col­o­nize” ter­ri­to­ries one can­not keep under mil­i­tary con­trol for decades still ? What could be more effi­cient than com­bin­ing that with cement mix­ers, mass tourism in the “new Turkey”, and invest­ments for « mod­ern con­sump­tion ». We don’t doubt there will be a “new mosque”  in the mix. No doubt the regime will seduce cer­tain parts of the Kur­dish bour­geoisie that already vot­ed for it… The orig­i­nal resisters can go scat­ter elsewhere.

All this is rem­i­nis­cent of an old pol­i­cy well known in the Mid­dle East. This pol­i­cy can only rein­force the opin­ion, among the Kur­dish pop­u­la­tion, that it is a pol­i­cy of “col­o­niza­tion”. We are far from a fed­er­al­ist project of shared liv­ing spaces.


Translation by Renée Lucie Bourges
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