In Turkey, thousands of Kurdish trans (transsexual and transvestite) women have migrated from Diyarbakir and other southeastern Kurdish regions to Istanbul, Europe and North America in pursuit of financial resources, ‘freedom’ and safety since the 1990s. Original ethnographic fieldwork in Diyarbakir in 2012, including structured interviews and participant observation with over 20 trans, gay, lesbian, bisexual, and heterosexual trans-desiring individuals, shows the cause of violence targeting gender non-conforming people is produced on the level of the state, the family, and within the trans sex-worker network’s competition for control of access to high paying clientele. As a result civil war between armed Kurdish militia members and the Turkish state in the 90s, many Kurdish families were forced to leave their villages and take refuge in Diyarbakir. It is no coincidence that many trans sex-workers there come from families uprooted by the conflict of the 1990s. Contrary to popular belief in Turkey, a large number of Kurdish trans sex-workers pursue illegal sex work as a means of securing income and survival rather than as a means of expressing gender non-conforming identity. Further, this study finds that in Diyarbakir a sense of belonging centered around Kurdishness is a foremost aspect of self-hood and community within the Kurdish trans sex-worker milieu. Narratives of migration by Kurdish trans sex-workers in Diyarbakir demonstrate the complexity of social hierarchies which are navigated on a daily basis by trans sex-workers in Turkey—woman and man, biological son and queer family daughter, sex worker/activist and student, Kurd and Turk. Temporary migration for sex work purposes occurs regularly between Diyarbakir and Western Turkey, as many young Kurdish trans women lead double lives as male providers for their families. Oftentimes Kurdish trans sex-workers are three-steps removed from accessing legal social and economic resources due to exemption by military conscription laws. Many trans women in Diyarbakir resist state and local violence through migration, by pursuing survival through the navigation of hierarchies within their own sex-worker milieu, by becoming activists for LGBT rights, or by obtaining a sex change and marrying legally. All Kurdish trans sex-workers interviewed supported the notion of Kurdish resistance in Turkey, whether by voting for the BDP, or by joining public rallies. As an exceptional lens through which to examine the working of power under the Turkish state, the narratives of Kurdish trans sex-workers paint a complex picture of displacement, belonging, and resistance with regard to Othering and Kurds.