Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-j824f Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-05T12:03:58.114Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

The Conflictual (Trans)formation of the Public Sphere in Urban Space: The Case of Diyarbakır

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 July 2015

Zeynep Gambetti*
Affiliation:
Department of Political Science and International Relations, Boğaziçi University

Extract

“In the East, understanding is a surreptitious shroud.”

Kemal Varol

Men come into existence through their struggles

This study aims to contribute to efforts to understand how redress occurs in local contexts impaired by armed conflict. Its particular focus is on events, dynamics and forms of relationality that (re)create public spheres on a local level. It takes the city of Diyarbakır, the largest in Southeastern Turkey, as the vantage point from which to explore the transformation of a site of violent conflict into a space for the expression of differences that were either nonexistent or suppressed. Since the beginning of the armed uprising of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) in 1984, the majority of political actors in Diyarbakır have in effect been polarized into two antagonistic camps (the Turkish state vs. the PKK). With the end of armed conflict five years ago, Diyarbakır has been astoundingly transformed into a paradise for civil society activists. The dynamics through which new urban spaces of existence and of expression have been created have not ceased being conflictual. In exploring the formative function of micro and macro struggles on publicness, the theoretical intent of this study is to argue against the Habermasian conceptualization of the public sphere.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © New Perspectives on Turkey 2005

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Anderson, Benedict. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. London: Verso, 1991.Google Scholar
Arendt, Hannah. The Human Condition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958.Google Scholar
Barkey, Henri J.“The People's Democracy Party (HADEP): The Travails of a Legal Kurdish Party.Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs 18, no. 1 (1998): 129-38.Google Scholar
Berberoğlu, Enis. “Diyarbakır Kazandı.” Hürriyet, March 21, 1999.Google Scholar
Bozarslan, Hamit. “Kürd Milliyetçiliği ve Kürd Hareketi (1898-2000).” In Modern Türkiye'de Siyasi Düşünce IV: Milliyetçilik, edited by Bora, Tanıl, 841-70. İstanbul: İletişim, 2002.Google Scholar
Bozarslan, Hamit“Some Remarks on Kurdish Historiographical Discourse in Turkey (1919–1980).” In Essays on the Origins of Kurdish Nationalism, edited by Vali, Abbas, 14-39. Costa Mesa, California: Mazda Publishers, 2003.Google Scholar
Brumessen, Martin Van. “Shifting National and Ethnic Identities: The Kurds in Turkey and in the European Diaspora.Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs 18, no. 1 (1998): 3952.Google Scholar
Bulletins de l'Institut Kurde de Paris. “Le Newroz, Fête Du Nouvel an Kurde Celebrée Dans Un Calm Relatif.” Institut Kurde de Paris, March 2000.Google Scholar
Butler, Judith. The Psychic Life of Power. Theories in Subjection. Standord, Calif.: Standford University Press, 1997.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Calhoun, Craig. “Imagining Solidarity: Cosmopolitanism, Constitutional Patriotism and the Public Sphere.Public Culture 14, no. 1 (2002): 147-71.Google Scholar
Calhoun, Craig“Populist Politics, Communications Media and Large Scale Societal Integration.Sociological Theory 6, no. 2 (1988): 219-41.Google Scholar
Chatterjee, Pratap. “Uncertain Spring Dawns for Kurdish Culture.Global Information Network, 24 January 2003.Google Scholar
Diken, Şeyhmus. Güneydoğu'da Sivil Hayat, İstanbul: Metis, 2001.Google Scholar
Düzel, Neşe. “Basın General Emri Dinlememeli.” Radikal, May 26, 2003.Google Scholar
Eley, Geoff. “Nations, Publics, and Political Cultures: Placing Habermas in the Nineteenth Century.” In Habermas and the Public Sphere, edited by Calhoun, Craig, 289-339. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 1992.Google Scholar
Ergil, Doşu. “The Kurdish Question in Turkey.Journal of Democracy 11, no. 3 (2000): 122-35.Google Scholar
Flyvbjerg, Bent. “Habermas and Foucault: Thinkers for Civil Society?British Journal of Sociology 49, no. 2 (1998): 210-33.Google Scholar
Foucault, Michel. “Governmentality.” In The Foucault Effect, Studies in Governmentality, edited by Burchell, G., Gordon, C. and Miller, P., 87-104. Chicago: Chicago UP, 1991.Google Scholar
Fraser, Nancy. “Rethinking the Public Sphere: A Contribution to the Critique of Actually Existing Democracy.” In Habermas and the Public Sphere, edited by Calhoun, Craig, 109-42. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1992.Google Scholar
Gambetti, Zeynep. “Decolonizing Diyarbakır: Culture, Identity and the Struggle to Appropriate Urban Space.” In Spaces of Urbanism: Comparative Cityscapes in the Middle East and South Asia, edited by Rieker, Martina and Ali, Kamran Asdar, forthcoming.Google Scholar
Göle, Nilüfer. “Islam in Public: New Visibilities and New Imaginaries.Public Culture 14, no. 1 (2002): 173-90.Google Scholar
Gürbey, Gülistan. “The Kurdish Nationalist Movement in Turkey since the 1980s.” In The Kurdish Nationalist Movement in the 1990's: Its Impact on Turkey and the Middle East, edited by Olson, Robert, 9-37. Kentucky: University of Kentucky Press, 1996.Google Scholar
Habermas, Jürgen. Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1989.Google Scholar
Hardt, Michael, and Negri, Antonio. Empire. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2000.Google Scholar
Hürriyet, March 21, 2001.Google Scholar
Hürriyet, March 5, 2002.Google Scholar
Kirişçi, Kemal, and Winrow, Gareth. Kürt Sorunu: Kökeni ve Gelişimi, İstanbul: Tarih Vakfı Yurt Yayınları, 1997.Google Scholar
KONGRA-GEL. “Declaration of the Foundation Conference of the People's Congress of Kurdistan.” 19 November 2003.Google Scholar
Laclau, Ernesto, and Mouffe, Chantal. Hegemony and Socialist Strategy: Towards a Radical Democratic Politics. London: Verso, 1985.Google Scholar
Maksudyan, Nazan. Türklüğü Ölçmek; Bilimkurgusal Antropoloji ve Türk Milliyetçiliğinin Irkçı Cephesi: 1925-1939. İstanbul: Metis, 2005.Google Scholar
Mouffe, Chantal. “Deliberative Democracy or Agonistic Pluralism?Social Research 66, no. 3 (Fall 1999): 745-58.Google Scholar
Navaro-Yashin, Yael. Faces of the State: Secularism and Public Life in Turkey. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Oran, Baskın. Atatürk Milliyetçiliği: Resmi ideoloji Dışı Bir inceleme. Ankara: Bilgi Yayinevi, 1996.Google Scholar
Politika, Özgür, February 25, 2004.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Özkok, Ertuğrul. “Sezen Aksu'nun Bana Sorduğu Soru.Hürriyet, September 4, 2002.Google Scholar
Parla, Taha. Türkiye' de Siyasal Kültürün Resmi Kaynakları Cilt 3: Kemalist Tek-Parti İdeolojisi ve CHP'nin Altı Ok'u. İstanbul: İletişim, 1995.Google Scholar
Radikal, , March 23, 2005.Google Scholar
Ryan, Mary. “Gender and Public Access: Women's Politics in Nineteenth Century America.” In Habermas and the Public Sphere, edited by Calhoun, Craig, 259-89. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1992.Google Scholar
State Statistics Institute.Population Growth Rate, 1990-2000.Google Scholar
T.C. Diyarbakır Büyükşehir Belediyesi 2002 Yılı Calışma ve Tanıtım Raporu. Diyarbakır: Metropolitan Municipality Publications, 2002.Google Scholar
Turner, Victor. Dramas, Fields and Metaphors: Symbolic Action in Human Society. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1974.Google Scholar
Turner, VictorFrom Ritual to Theater. The Human Seriousness of Play. New York: PAJ Publications, 1982.Google Scholar
Gündem, Ülkede Özgur, June 10, 2004.Google Scholar
Warner, Michael. “Publics and Counterpublics.Public Culture 14, no. 1 (2002): 190.Google Scholar
White, Paul J. “Economic Marginalization of Turkey's Kurds: Failed Promise of Modernization and Reform.Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs 18, no. 1 (1998):139-58.Google Scholar
Yeğen, Mesut. “Türk Milliyetçiliği ve Kürt Sorunu.” In Modem Türkiye'de Siyasi Düşünce IV: Milliyetçilik, edited by Bora, Tanıl, 880-92. İstanbul: İletişim, 2002.Google Scholar