Shaping Diyarbakır through words. Representations and narrations of the city in Kurdish and Turkish literature during the twentieth and twenty-first century.

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.