A new episode of displacement :|the protracted exile of Syrian Kurds in Istanbul’s Demirkapı neighbourhood

Abstract

Although this is not the first time Kurds are being displaced from the lands they live in, the recent mass displacement since the beginning of the Syrian civil war is unprecedented in scale, considering the resultant mass cross-border mobility. Dealing with the issue of displacement that has such a broader historical background, the present study is the result of an ethnographic field research with the Syrian Kurdish migrants living in Demirkapi neighbourhood of Bağcılar district in Istanbul. Demirkapı happens to be a neighbourhood densely populated by the Kurds displaced internally in the early 1990s. With a combination of observations from the neighbourhood, semi-structured in-depth interviews and narrative interviews carried out mostly with Syrian Kurdish neighbours -but also with a lesser number of ‘local’ Kurdish residents, this research mainly aims to scrutinize the complexity of the individual and collective experiences of forced displacement and exile across the nation state borders. The study also aims to develop a critique of humanitarian reductionism of refugee management and studies by focusing on everyday dynamics at a neighbourhood setting. Migratory trajectories of the migrants that have ended up in this specific urban space and everyday encounters are central in the scope of this study. The individual experiences under the “refugee” regime of Turkey as well as under the cheap and informal labour regime are also worked on throughout the study to give an account of the lives of Syrian Kurdish migrants in Istanbul.