The limbo of post-war Sur: A strategy of counterinsurgent urban governance

In August 2015, following the collapse of the tentative Peace Process in Turkey, several pro-Kurdish-run municipalities declared self-governance in the Kurdish region of Turkey. In many cities, armed conflicts erupted between the Turkish armed forces and the PKK. Drawing on the case of post-war Sur, Diyarbakır, which became one of the urban fronts of the war, this article examines how liminality can be harnessed as a strategy of counterinsurgent urban governance. In exploring and analyzing the execution and not-yet execution of the urgent expropriation in post-war Sur, characterized as an informal settlement, I conceptualize the limbo of Sur as an experience and space created under specific configurations of law, ambiguity, and uncertainty. The case study exhibits that limbo—and uncertainty in general—are tools of counterinsurgency as a strategy of governance aimed at displacing, dispossessing, depopulating, dispersing, and demobilizing the low-income Kurdish population in order to prevent insurgencies.