Multi-Scalar Politics and Civil War: The New Geography of Turkey’s Kurdish Conflict

This paper illustrates the importance of incorporating notions of scale into the study of civil war by examining the use of scalar politics by actors in Turkey’s Kurdish conflict. I focus on how insurgent organizations such as the PKK operate at various scales beyond the national – including local, regional, and transnational. The paper will discuss the local manifestations of the conflict in Turkey, Syria and Europe, illustrating how disparate sites such as Diyarbakir, Marseilles, London and Kobane become tied together within a single “conflict assemblage.” The paper suggests the need for a “spatial turn” in the study of civil war – one in which the spaces of conflict become an object of investigation and study, rather than being treated as a starting assumption. Space and the struggle around different spaces are shown to be as significant to understanding violent conflict as other factors such as material resources, external support and organizational structures.