The Settlement Issue in Turkey and the Kurds

Turkey's Position on IDP Properties: Lessons (Not) Learned

“…Scholars of forced migration in Turkey differ in their views on the reasons for internal displacement of the Kurds. While scholars like Jongerden () and Ayata () claimed that the Turkish state had a systematic plan to displace Kurds and used the armed conflict in 1980s and 1990s as an opportunity to realize this aim, others like Kirişci () and Çelik () argue that it was the villagers’ security concerns and the pressures of the Kurdish insurgents and the state to take sides in the conflict that caused their displacement (Çelik, , emphasis added). In any case, around a million Kurds were internally displaced in Turkey (HÜNEE, ), and almost three thousand villages were emptied in the Southeast of the country in order to prevent them from being used as logistic support by either party to the conflict.…”

Forced Migration over the Longue Durée: Land, Displacement, and Restitution in Eastern Anatolia, 1858-2015

“…As Kalyvas (1999, p. 266) has demonstrated using the Algerian example, the raising of militias to fight insurgency creates a dangerous new dynamic in civil wars, noting that "militias almost always cause an escalation in violence" due to their embeddedness in local society, their superior information about the allegiance of civilians, and their penchant for expropriating the wealth and properties of other locals through the new opportunities opened up by the conflict. The second technique was the demographic reshaping of the insurgent region, which has led to the expulsion of hundreds of thousands of villagers from their homes and lands (Jongerden, 2007). Most of these refugees became IDPs within Turkey, while many were also able to emigrate or find asylum abroad.…”

Migration as Movement and Multiplace Life: Some Recent Developments in Rural Living Structures in Turkey

“…Second, there is the seasonal migration of agricultural labourers for weeding and harvesting work, when extended families and even whole communities travel together, from the (majority Kurdish) southeast especially to the northeastern (Black Sea) coast for the tea and hazelnut harvests or to the citrus-and cotton-growing southern (Mediterranean) coast. This longestablished practice has taken on a significant urban-to-rural dimension with recent processes of urbanisationpartially forced, with over 3000 villages emptied and part-destroyed by the Turkish military during 1990-2000 in response to the Kurdish insurgency in the southeast (Jongerden, 2007) thus recalling the particular importance of armed conflict to migration-related issues outside the relatively settled conditions of rich countries (see Sirkeci, 2009). These two categories of returnee and seasonal work movement are not productive of place as such.…”