Routinized Insurgent Space: A Comparative Analysis of the Spatial Characteristics of Constituency Establishment and Maintenance in the PKK and the M-19

This cross-regional comparative analysis between the PKK (Turkey) and the M-19 (Colombia) expands on the heretofore, lesser studied area of how armed groups interact with their supportive communities or constituencies (Malthaner, 2011). In the absence of a strong constituency, insurgent groups are vulnerable to counter-insurgency efforts, political marginalisation and popular de-legitimisation. The selected cases would ostensibly serve as most different cases; the PKK as a rural insurgency and the M-19 as an urban one. The proposed project argues that armed group-constituency relationships vary diachronically between overlapping phases of constituency establishment and maintenance. It further analyses how these relationships become reconfigured across different spatial contexts from isolated rural areas to peripheral urban ones. It also emphasises the reciprocally formative nature of the relationship, albeit characterised by certain power disparities, between armed groups and their constituencies. They can be disaggregated into sets of social ties ranging from pre-existing kin connections to ties generated endogenously to the armed struggle. This project argues that many of these ties are derived from deliberate insurgent efforts to develop its constituency through the forging of routinized insurgent space, such as ‘people’s courts’ and ritualised funerals. Within such routinized insurgent spaces, armed group-constituency relationships are concretely consolidated and symbolically bolstered. The focus on the manner in which insurgents develop and maintain their constituency is a key explanatory factor in the longevity of certain armed campaigns and the specific patterns of violence within them.