“I Miss My Village!”: Forced Kurdish Migrants in İstanbul and Their Representation in Associations

Abstract

Metropolises in Turkey like İstanbul, Ankara, and İzmir along with the cities in Eastern and Southeastern Anatolia received a significant number of internally displaced Kurds (hereinafter referred to as Kurdish IDPs) in the late 1980s to the 1990s. One of the impacts of this displacement in the urban areas has been the alteration in the ways in which some hometown associations functioned, and the formation of some new Kurdish associations. Changes in the nature of migration from voluntary to forced migration have largely contributed to the way some hometown associations began to restructure their agendas and their depiction of the needs of their members, in addition to the extension of their service areas to reach out to these forced migrants. However, as argued below, the way many hometown associations dealt with the problems of the Kurdish IDPs and their identity issues were limited and non-political as compared to the newly formed Kurdish associations of the 1990s, which extended their service functions to include the expression of the needs and identities specific to the “Kurdish group,” and in the case of Kurdish women's associations to “Kurdish women.”