Properties of War: The Militarization of Housing Policy and Urban Planning in Contemporary Azerbaijan

Abstract

War has defined Azerbaijan for more than three decades. The unresolved conflict over the territory of Nagorno-Karabakh has not only structured the sociopolitical climate of the nation but also everyday relations and the very manner in which both the private home and the homeland is imagined. Increasingly, the line has blurred between housing policy and military strategy, with desires for greater securitization and armament seeping into proprietary arrangements, construction plans, and mainstream narratives surrounding the domestic. I examine three sites where inhabitation has seemingly become inextricable from the military apparatus — a state-sponsored apartment block for the families of martyrs (şəhid ailəsi) and those disabled by war (müharibə əlillərinə), a newly built housing complex for servicemen (yüksək rütbəli hərbçilər), and, finally, a makeshift settlement for internally displaced people (məcburi köçkünlər). In these spaces, both temporal and material qualities of war seep into the quotidian, informing the ways in which individuals negotiate the intimate aftermaths of violence, injury, and severed relation. Whilst the article begins by examining state-sponsored settlement forged along lines of allegiance, masculinized duty, and capacity, it concludes by attending to moments that upend oppressive forms of homemaking.