Internal displacement has replaced the flows of border-crossing refugees as the major form of forced migration across the world in the past two decades. International organizations seek to have a central role in providing assistance to internally displaced persons (IDPs) although this phenomenon comes under the traditional realm of state sovereignty, in contrast to the refugee regime, which is part of international law. The evolving international IDP regime has triggered policy and scholarly debates about various aspects of state responsibility and international assistance. On one hand, when states fail to provide protection to the displaced, the decision to take international action is often selective and depends to a large extent on the balance of geopolitical interests of powerful donor states. On the other hand, extant international humanitarian assistance practices also face criticism for having created new modes of power over displaced groups.

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.

The main goal of this article is to highlight the importance and implications of a debate that is ongoing in Turkey over the meaning, social-political role, and regulation of Turkey's ethnic-cultural diversity, especially that of its Kurdish component. By itself, this debate can neither bring about any significant change in the political realm nor have a major influence on the “mainstream” Turkish social-political discourse. Despite significant changes during the last decade or so, this discourse continues to predominantly reflect the diversity-phobic, dominant beliefs and values of Turkish nationalism.

This paper examines the “social development” practices carried out within the framework of the Southeast Anatolia Project (Güneydoğu Anadolu Projesi or GAP) in Turkey in the 1990s. In its initial phase, GAP was a state-run regional development project in southeast Anatolia which consisted of massive infrastructural investments. But beginning in the late 1980s, and especially in the 1990s, the scope of GAP expanded to include a set of social projects. The emergence and transformation of the notion of social development within GAP constitute the major focus of this study.

According to official data, urban poverty has been rising in Turkey since the 1990s. Macro-level causes include repetitive economic crises, the implementation of neoliberal policies recommended by international financial organizations, the failure to create employment and the increasing inequality in income distribution. The intensity of poverty in different provinces is related to the specific conditions of a particular region. In the 1990s, there was an influx of internally displaced people (IDPs) into the cities of Southeast Anatolia. The lack of employment opportunities, the state's reluctance to address the problems of IDPs and the IDPs' loss of kinship/community networks contributed to the deterioration of their condition in the new urban setting.

Metropolises in Turkey like İstanbul, Ankara, and İzmir along with the cities in Eastern and Southeastern Anatolia received a significant number of internally displaced Kurds (hereinafter referred to as Kurdish IDPs) in the late 1980s to the 1990s. One of the impacts of this displacement in the urban areas has been the alteration in the ways in which some hometown associations functioned, and the formation of some new Kurdish associations. Changes in the nature of migration from voluntary to forced migration have largely contributed to the way some hometown associations began to restructure their agendas and their depiction of the needs of their members, in addition to the extension of their service areas to reach out to these forced migrants. However, as argued below, the way many hometown associations dealt with the problems of the Kurdish IDPs and their identity issues were limited and non-political as compared to the newly formed Kurdish associations of the 1990s, which extended their service functions to include the expression of the needs and identities specific to the “Kurdish group,” and in the case of Kurdish women's associations to “Kurdish women.”

A village in the province of Diyarbakır in Southeastern Turkey has recently appeared in many national newspapers and on TV with headlines such as “Rebellion against the landlord continues,” “Tractor chain against the landlord,” and “Peasants united against the landlord.” For many, this was rather amusing news – reminding them of a popular comedy film based on a fictional representation of peasants rebelling against their landlord in the 1970s. In reality, however, the actions were a serious appeal by peasants voicing their plight about extreme inequality in rural Southeastern Anatolia.