Welfare Provision as Weapon: Social Housing and the Containment of Kurdish Conflict in Turkey

How do welfare provisions function as instruments of state control within the context of ethnic conflict? While existing scholarship predominantly emphasizes the "carrot" function of welfare policies—namely, their role in building state legitimacy and fostering societal loyalty—it frequently neglects their potential utility as a "stick" for control and coercion. In reality, welfare provision can simultaneously serve both purposes, particularly in conflict-ridden settings where its dual functions become especially pronounced. This study investigates the weaponization of welfare provision, with a specific focus on social housing, as a strategic instrument for managing and containing the Kurdish conflict in Turkey. We contend that under the AKP government, social housing projects transcend their ostensible role as welfare policies and are instead deployed as political tools to consolidate state control and regulate societal dynamics. The mechanisms underpinning this weaponization include: (1) Spatial Displacement, whereby large-scale housing projects disrupt traditional Kurdish social structures and community networks; (2) Forced Clientelism, wherein access to housing is made contingent upon political loyalty, thereby reinforcing dependence on the ruling party; and (3) Narrative Framing, through which state-led housing initiatives are discursively constructed as acts of benevolence, obscuring their coercive and exclusionary dimensions. Employing a mixed-methods approach, this research integrates empirical fieldwork conducted in Kurdish-majority regions with critical discourse analysis of state narratives surrounding housing policy. By offering a theoretical and empirical examination of welfare weaponization as a mechanism of political control in conflict-affected regions, this study contributes to the broader literature on welfare politics and ethnic conflict. Furthermore, it advances dialogue with scholarship on political violence by demonstrating how ostensibly benign welfare policies can be repurposed as instruments of coercion and governance.