The Politics of Gravelessness and Necropolitical Violence in Turkey: “The souls of deceased searching for a grave”

Abstract

After the collapse of the peace process between the PKK (Kurdistan Workers’ Party) and the AKP (Justice and Development Party) government in July 2015, Turkey rapidly returned to armed violence with the intensified deployment of military troops and heavy artillery in the urban centers. The curfews then declared by the Turkish authorities entrenched various forms of necropolitical violence. As a result, the right to mourn became a dominant demand in civil society’s justice agenda, alongside legal accountability, truth-seeking, and exhumation. This paper argues that to better understand the struggle of families and civil society actors and their demands for justice, it is essential to discuss the recent “politics of gravelessness” and necropolitical violence in Turkey. It examines the systematic erasure and dehumanization of Kurds through the destruction of bodies, graves, and cemeteries and restrictions to the public mourning process. The article highlights the Turkish state’s role in perpetuating a hierarchy of grief and discusses the erasure of selected stories from public mourning.