This article by Kamuran Akin for the special issue Rural Protest and Contentious Politics edited by Francis O’Connor and Joost Jongerden analyzes the governance of northern Kurdistan through the framework of colonial governmentality. It argues that, for over a century, the Turkish state has administered the region through exceptional legal regimes, coercive policies, and military interventions. Drawing on historical practices such as the General Inspectorates, the 1925 Reform Plan for the East, the Law on the Maintenance of Order, and the 1934 Settlement Law, the article highlights how dispossession, forced displacement, and violence have constituted enduring mechanisms of rule. While acknowledging competing scholarly perspectives that interpret the Kurdish issue through lenses such as nation-state formation, minority politics, and underdevelopment, the article contends that a colonial perspective remains analytically valuable. Building on Foucault’s concept of governmentality, it proposes “colonial governmentality” as a flexible framework that captures the evolving, heterogeneous, and adaptive nature of state power. Focusing on fortified outposts (kalekol) and checkpoints, the article argues that these are modern extension of earlier colonial-style governance tools. They function as spatial instruments of control, similar in purpose to earlier institutions like General Inspectorates or emergency rule zones and embody a permanent security presence, reinforcing surveillance and rapid intervention capacity in rural Kurdish areas.

read more here: https://doi.org/10.1111/sena.70049