Dr Dilan Okcuoglu

University of Sussex

Bio

She is a UKRI Horizon (Marie-Curie) Postdoctoral Fellow in IR at the University of Sussex, where she is affiliated with the Center for Global Insecurities Research. Her first book is under contract with Syracuse University Press, and she recently signed a second book contract with the Palgrave Pivot series. Her research was published in Global Studies Quarterly, Middle East Policy, Critical Military Studies, Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power, and Critical Studies on Terrorism.

Governance Through Uncertainty: Informal Control and State Power in Turkey’s Kurdish Borderlands

Abstract

How do states govern in the face of uncertainty, and with what effects on everyday life in contested borderlands? Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in Turkey's Kurdish borderlands during the 2013–2015 peace process, this article theorises informal control as a mode of governance. The article shows how certain legal-administrative structures become instruments of control. This mode of rule remains incomplete and contested as it generates resistance alongside compliance, contributing to debates in security and broder studies.