SCB State-building and Control in Borderlands
Lead Research Organisation:
Aberystwyth University
Department Name: International Politics
Abstract
My research project, "State-building and Control in Borderlands (SCB)," is the first that aims to understand and explain formal and
informal control mechanisms through an examination of people's territorial experiences in the Kurdish borderlands of Turkey. In this
innovative and interdisciplinary research, I use the case of Turkey's borderlands with Iraq, Iran, and Syria to explore everyday practices
of state-making at the local level in war-torn borders and borderlands. The question of state control through networks around
territoriality addresses the complex imperatives of political, economic, cultural, demographic, and judicial practices of state-building
over the property regime of land. It does this through examining state practices such as land registration and cadastral procedures on
the promotion of settlement policies, border policies, displacement, new village creation, and landscape nationalization. The
question, therefore, is: How are the Turkish state's authority and legitimacy in its borderlands shaped by the complex relationships
between territorial control measures, competing claims over authority by different groups, and people's everyday experiences? Using
mixed methods, including process-tracing, multi-sited ethnography, and qualitative interviews with villagers, internally displaced
people, activists, lawyers, and state officials in Turkey's Kurdish borderlands, the SCB unpacks people's territorial experiences by
unpacking the narratives of, and emotions about, land and property. In particular, the gendered dynamics of the relationship
between the state, people, and land will be mapped, filling an important gap in the existing literature. This innovative topic adds vital
scholarship to political science and diaspora studies, both in its methods and its subject. Such an empirically rich study will be
important for policymakers, scholars, and practitioners committed to peace and conflict studies.
informal control mechanisms through an examination of people's territorial experiences in the Kurdish borderlands of Turkey. In this
innovative and interdisciplinary research, I use the case of Turkey's borderlands with Iraq, Iran, and Syria to explore everyday practices
of state-making at the local level in war-torn borders and borderlands. The question of state control through networks around
territoriality addresses the complex imperatives of political, economic, cultural, demographic, and judicial practices of state-building
over the property regime of land. It does this through examining state practices such as land registration and cadastral procedures on
the promotion of settlement policies, border policies, displacement, new village creation, and landscape nationalization. The
question, therefore, is: How are the Turkish state's authority and legitimacy in its borderlands shaped by the complex relationships
between territorial control measures, competing claims over authority by different groups, and people's everyday experiences? Using
mixed methods, including process-tracing, multi-sited ethnography, and qualitative interviews with villagers, internally displaced
people, activists, lawyers, and state officials in Turkey's Kurdish borderlands, the SCB unpacks people's territorial experiences by
unpacking the narratives of, and emotions about, land and property. In particular, the gendered dynamics of the relationship
between the state, people, and land will be mapped, filling an important gap in the existing literature. This innovative topic adds vital
scholarship to political science and diaspora studies, both in its methods and its subject. Such an empirically rich study will be
important for policymakers, scholars, and practitioners committed to peace and conflict studies.
