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Shaping Diyarbakır through words. Representations and narrations of the city in Kurdish and Turkish literature during the twentieth and twenty-first century. Submitted by Francesco Marilungo to the University of Exeter as a thesis for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Kurdish Studies In April 2018 This thesis is available for Library use on the understanding that it is copyright material and that no quotation from the thesis may be published without proper acknowledgement. I certify that all material in this thesis which is not my own work has been identified and that no material has previously been submitted and approved for the award of a degree by this or any other University. Signature: ………………………………………………………….. Table of Contents Francesco Marilungo Abstract The aim of this dissertation is to discuss the image of the city of Diyarbakır as emerging from Kurdish and Turkish literature throughout the twentieth century. Diyarbakır city represents a highly contentious place in socio-political and cultural terms for the Kurdish vis-à-vis the Turkish imagined community. The first chapter is dedicated to the image of the city previous to the foundation of the Turkish Republic in 1923 as emerging from accounts of travellers from different ages and different languages. Then, in four different chapters, four different corpuses of Turkish and Kurdish literature are taken under the focus of the analysis. Each corpus allows the discussion of certain aspects and themes related to the city. Overall, each chapter and each corpus constitute a piece of the deconstructed literary image of the city, which is at the centre of this research. Since Diyarbakır is a contested city, its representations are deeply involved in processes of appropriation and symbolization of place. Therefore, in the shaping of literary Diyarbakır throughout the twentieth century, the conflicting political dynamics between the Turkish State and local Kurdish actors play a crucial role. 2 Table of Contents Francesco Marilungo Table of Contents 1. Introduction 1.2. Diyarbakir’s real-and-imagined space 1.3. Methodology and geocritical approach 1.4. The issue of language and the literary field 2. The gaze from outside and the step inside: An entrance to Diyarbakır: 2.1. The walled city and its cosmos 2.2. Inner and outer world. A scenery for siege 2.3. Watermelons, artisanship and local traditions 2.4. Black are the walls and black are the hearts of black Amid”: a landscape of bleakness 2.5. Conclusion 3. Modernity besieges the city. Perceptions of Diyarbakır in the Turkish nationalist perspective: 3.1. Ziya Gökalp, Diyarbakır and the Turkish nation 3.2. Halide Edib Adıvar: the “Orient” within us. Exotic views on Diyarbakır 3.2.1. Kalp Ağrısı: sexualizing, possessing and impregnating the colony 3.2.2. Zeyno’nun oğlu: before and after the dusty storm 3.3. Yakup Kadri Karaosmanoğlu: Panorama of a missed revolution 3.4. Conclusion 4. Memory is a City. Placing the past in urban memoirs: 4.1. 'Presenting' the Past. Memory, Trauma and Space in the Urban environment 4.2. Mehdi Zana and the new political identity of Diyarbakır… 4.3. The self and the city: a farewell to Diyarbakır by Yılmaz Odabaşı 4.4. Renovating the (multicultural) past or the history of the “Infidel District” 4.5. “The city has got a memory and a voice”: Şeyhmus Diken 4.6. “In old-time Diyarbekir” ...with Birsen İnal 4.7. A new dynamic look at Diyarbakır's space: Mehmet Atlı 4.8. Of loss, trauma and exile: conclusions 5. Drawing the City ‘lines’. Emotional and political discourse in poetry: 5.1. “The crown of the East” 3 Table of Contents Francesco Marilungo 5.2. Castle without a voice”. Ahmed Arif 5.3. “Neither you nor Diyarbakır understood me.” Yılmaz Odabaşı 5.4. The stones are witnesses. Şeyhmus Diken 5.5. “The Door to the East”. Bejan Matur 5.6. From the periphery to the centre: Diyarbakir/Amed in Kurdish poetry… 5.7. Conclusion 6. Diyarbakir post 1980. Romance and Reality: 6.1. Diyarbakır prison N°5 and its reflections in literature 6.2. Diyarbakır post-1980 in Turkish language literature: Uyurkulak, Karabulut, Samancı 6.2.1. Suzan Samancı 6.2.2. Murat Uyurkulak 6.2.3. Özcan Karabulut 6.3. “Our biggest city”: three examples of post-1980 Amed in Kurdish literature: Uzun, Cewerî, Husên 6.3.1. Mehmed Uzun’s Tu. 6.3.2. Firat Cewerî’s Ez ê yekî bikujim and Lehî. 6.3.3. Fawaz Husên, Heftiyeke dirêj li Amedê 6.4. Conclusion 7. Conclusion 8. Bibliography 4 1. Introduction. Francesco Marilungo 1. Introduction This research engages with the literary image of the city of Diyarbakır, Turkey’s largest Kurdish city. After an introduction on the historical image of the city, the research focuses on the period beginning in 1923, the year of the foundation of the Republic of Turkey. The state founded in that year undertook a multi-faceted endeavour to modernize the territory it governed and its people’s mentality. This meant a significant reorganization of the urban configuration of the country and of the structure of each city. For Diyarbakır, this process signified an unprecedented historical development that brought to light, on the urban level, the deep incongruity between the newly founded Turkish State and its non- Turkish, and particularly Kurdish, population. Almost a century later, Diyarbakır has gone a long way to becoming the emblematic city for the Kurds in Turkey, the principal urban face of their conflict with the State. Diyarbakır is a city shaped by a clash between the State and the city’s population. However, in this research, rather than focusing on this clash per se, I analyse the literary reflections of such discord. After an overview of the appearances of this ancient city in the written records, I look at the portraits of it offered by Turkish and Kurdish writers. I look at the ways these selected writers lived in, perceived and represented the city to others, through the medium of literature. With their words, writers contribute to the definition, or rather to the continuous re-definition of the identity of this city. The particular perspective of each writer offers a reflection of the many Diyarbakırs that are present simultaneously in the same place. This operation I believe, allows the reader to elaborate a complex, surely not complete, image of this city which is crucial to the understanding of the history of the Kurdish issue in Turkey, of its spatial dynamics, of its cultural implications, and of its social actuality. Past and recent events are just there to remind us how difficult is for the Turkish State and the local Kurdish population to find ways of peaceful and communal cohabitation in this city. In 1925, the first Kurdish rebellion against the Republic of Turkey saw Diyarbakır as one of its main theatres. Ninety years later, in 2015, 5 1. Introduction. Francesco Marilungo extremely violent clashes between the Turkish military and armed Kurdish youth activists of the PKK1, brought destruction to vast areas of the historical town. One year later the Turkish Government expropriated almost 80% of the historical town (known as Sur) and appointed a trustee to administer the municiapality of the city instead of the elected Kurdish mayor Gültan Kışanak, who was arrested and jailed on charges of being a member of the PKK. These recent events took place while I was striving to reach the final section of this research. While they significantly hindered my ability to concentrate on merely literary representations of the city, they strongly reaffirmed the relevance and the modernity of the spatial struggle in Diyarbakır. However, and this brings me closer to the very argument of this thesis, the space in Diyarbakır (perhaps in any other place too) is not only physical but also representational. Therefore, the clash is not merely physical but also representational. Whilst the Kurdish youth claimed to defend with weapons a political autonomy in their own city, the Turkish nationalists widely circulated images and video-clips of Turkish soldiers ‘violating’ or ‘liberating’ (according to one’s perspective) that space, tracing nationalist and Turkish-supremacist slogans on Diyarbakır’s walls or on the blackboards of destroyed schools in the historical neighbourhood of Sur. They hung huge Turkish flags on Diyarbakır’s ancient city wall. Both actors were advancing claims on the same city and the representations of the space they gave were crucial to justify their actions. Hence, this thesis looks at the various claims over the ‘ownership’, the ‘identity’, the true ‘personality’ of Diyarbakır by various actors in different historical periods though their writings. The clash over the space of the city is in fact represented in literature, but also played through literature. 1 Partiya Karkerên Kurdistanê – Kurdistan Workers’ Party, is an organization founded in 1978. Since 1984 the PKK is running a guerrilla warfare against the Turkish State. Its recognized leader is Abdullah Öcalan, jailed in 1999. It is considered a terrorist organization in Turkey, the U.S. and EU. Its political ideology is based on Marxism- Leninism and in a first phase Kurdish nationalism; its first aim was to establish an independent Kurdish State through an anti-colonial struggle. From the mid-1990s its ideology became distanced from outright nationalism and developed towards concepts of federalism and democratic autonomy. 6 1. Introduction. Francesco Marilungo Before moving into the detail of each chapter, a brief discussion of the history of Diyarbakır, especially after the foundation of the Turkish Republic, is due, along with a discussion of the theoretical debate that informs and lays the ground for the conception and writing of this doctoral dissertation. 2. Diyarbakir’s real-and-imagined space In the wake of the so called Spatial Turn and of the work of authors such as Lefebvre, Harvey, Soja, Bermann and Massey (among others), who have shed light upon the importance of the spatial embodiment of power relationships, scholars have tried to highlight better the relevance of the space axis in shaping and reflecting social dynamics.

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