Rebordering through tourism: a securization of the Middle Eastern Borderlands

This article analyses the political dimensions of borderlands in the Middle East by examining how they are enacted through ordinary practices linked to mountaineering tourism. It investigates tourism and securization dynamics in two inhabited Kurdish borderlands in Turkey and the Kurdistan Region of Iraq, focusing on the two highest summits in each country. The article argues that tourism can be understood as a rebordering strategy for authorities. Although it emerges from bottom-up initiatives, the state regulates mobilities through access devices such as permits and checkpoints, contributing to broader processes of securization in these borderlands. This produces a “securization of tourism” operating spatially, through the creation of “tourist corridors,” and temporally, through recurrent cycles of opening and closure, as well as seasonal mobility regimes. By comparing distinct political contexts, the article highlights how these dynamics are embedded in differentiated and uneven power relations between state authorities and local populations, ultimately leading to the precarization of tourism as a livelihood resource.