Le Ray 433An over-regulated public life
Long-term warfare between the Turkish army and the PKK has basically
turned the province into an overregulated space of surveillance: multi-
ple checkpoints, arbitrary identity controls and a strict curfew hindering
daily circulation. Access to mountains and pastures was prevented. Police
stations multiplied and military fortresses were built wherever the need
was felt to regulate entry and circulation within the province: overhang-
ing main cities but also punctuating roads between the different provin-
cial districts as well as in the mountains. On the pretext of cutting off
the guerrilla forces from local suppliers and backing, the 1993–94 mili-
tary campaign of forced evictions emptied out and destroyed most of the
villages of the province. An extraordinarily strict embargo on food was
imposed in 1994 while forests were also massively burnt. Tunceli was,
like much of the Kurdish region, isolated from the rest of the country.
Information remained under strict control. No one (not even journal-
ists, deputies, or NGO delegations) could enter the zone without military
authorization. The sole local reporter was under strong pressure to “ade-
quately” select information worth echoing while the two locally edited
newspapers confined themselves to reproducing news extracted from
major national dailies. Being in possession of a subversive newspaper or
magazine, or even a satellite TV aerial, was heavily sanctioned.^21 In fact,
to secure its hegemony, the Turkish state not only needed to physically
lock up the province but also to take control over any means of meaning-
making. Consequently, in addition to the material reorganization of space
through urban planning and specific security devices, any form of resis-
tance through daily spatial practices—walking, naming or narrating the
place—had to be crushed.^22
ppadurai has emphasized the necessity for nation-states to con-A
tinuously engage in a process of “social and spatial standardization” in
order to “incubate and reproduce compliant national citizens.”^23 But cri-
ses and wars add a whole other dimension to this process. By prevent-
ing inhabitants of Tunceli from walking along their streets, meeting on
the front steps of their houses to recall memories or sitting in teahouses
to discuss the news (all this possibly in Kurdish language); by keeping
them from leading their flocks to the pastures or gathering on their sacred