Not Only Helpless but also Hopeless: Changing Dynamics of Urban Poverty in Turkey, the Case of Sultanbeyli, Istanbul

Abstract

This paper is an attempt to understand the changing characteristics of urban poverty in Turkey since 1980. First, it analyses how the urban poor in Turkey had adopted aggressive survival strategies by strengthening their solidarity networks on religious, ethnic and cultural bases until the 2000s. Then it sheds light on how those networks have dissolved later on thanks to a set of internal and external factors and concludes that Turkey now faces deepening poverty levels and engendering new forms and dynamics of poverty. This paper is based on the Sultanbeyli district of Istanbul, a district almost entirely composed of unauthorized houses whose population grew at an unprecedented rate after 1980; and it is a perfect case for the study of issues relating to migration, urbanization and poverty in Turkish cities.

Acknowledgements

The authors would like express their sincere gratitude to Michael Edwards of University College London for his comments on an earlier version of the manuscript.

Notes

Based on a book called Nöbetleşe Yoksulluk: Gecekondulaşma ve Kent Yoksulları, Sultanbeyli Örneği [Poverty in turn: Squatter Housing and Urban Poor, the Example of Sultanbeyli] in Turkish, penned down by the authors (Işık & Pınarcıoğlu, 2005a) published in 2001 with five editions later on. Several authors have translated “nöbetleşe yoksuluk” into English as “poverty in turn” (Keyder, 2005; İçduygu, 2004), “rotating poverty” (Secor, 2005) and “cycles of poverty” (Şenyapılı, 2004). We, in this article, prefer to use it as “poverty in turn”.

It is of course not only the urban poor to blame for the institutionalization of such a system of politics; almost all the groups in the society made use of this in varying degrees, by way of exploiting the loopholes in the law in Turkey (Erder, 1997; Işık & Pınarcıoğlu, 2005a)

The urban sociology literature in Turkey in the pre-1980 period clearly reflected such sympathy. In many studies, the informal sector was generally defined as a marginal and temporary appendix to the formal sector, with a set of survival activities carried out by some destitute people, a sector which would eventually melt down in the secular trend of the modernization process. For good examples of such studies, see Kıray (1973), Tekeli et al. (1976).

For studies on the ethnic and religious networking relations in Turkish cities, see Erder (1996), Tuğal (2006), Karpat (1976), Kurtoğlu (2001) and Secor (2004).

Two Islamist Parties in 2004 municipal elections, for instance, won 64% of the votes in Sultanbeyli. Justice and Development Party (AKP in Turkish acronym)—market friendly and moderate Islamist Party, founded by the reformist young generation—received 47.5%, while Felicity Party—founded by the old leadership of Turkish Islamist movement—took 18.5% of votes.

This statement was made by Ali Nabi Koçak, the mayor of Sultanbeyli from 1989 to 1999, during our interview in 1998. He was, perhaps, the most important figure for the establishment of Sultanbeyli and torch bearer of radical Islamists there. However, he became one of the most despised Islamist politicians in the 1980s and 1990s for the secular part of the society. For the analysis of his role in Sultanbeyli, see Işık and Pınarcıoğlu (2005b).

In our interview with Recep Tayip Erdoğan, the then expelled Istanbul Mayor, now the prime minister of the country, he also described the Sultanbeyli migrants in the same way as “seasoned migrants accustomed to many tricks in Istanbul”.

In the cluster analysis, as a multivariate classification procedure, we clustered families on variables such as income and ownership of houses, land, shops, some durable goods, education, number of years living in Sultanbeyli and Istanbul, the source of origin, house comfort, quality of life, etc. in parallel with general three-tiered clusters of doers, accommodators and losers (cf. Morçöl & Gitmez, 1995; Gutkind, 1986).

This armed conflict highly intensified the migration especially due to the forced migration applications of the Turkish Military Forces during the second half of the 1990s. The estimates for such internally displaced people span from 400,000 in official figures to two million (Secor, 2004).

Only 7.5% of female between 12 and 65 years old declared as employed in any job in the last week of activity while 34% of those unemployed stated that they got home working orders from the factories in and around Sultanbeyli.

Considering the population between 12 and 65 years in Sultanbeyli, there were 37% of people as employed, 46% as housewives, 14% as student, 2% as retired according to last week of activity in 1998. There were only 2% of people declared as unemployed in our research.

The interviews with the municipality officers reveal that there have been such trade relations since 2002 between some Sultanbeyli landlords on the one hand and business and allegedly mafia-like groupings, very active in land acquisitions and construction industry in Istanbul, on the other hand. The results of those relations can now be visible in Sultanbeyli streets through the emergence of encircled big plots of land with solid fences. However, the actual figures of the unregistered land trade cannot be explicitly proved since there has yet to be legal title deeds in the business transactions.

For the detailed analysis of the crisis 2001, plunging the economy into the unprecedented recession after the International Monetary Fund (IMF) stabilization programme failed, see Akyüz and Boratav (2003).

The speech given by Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, the Prime Minister and the head of AKP on 9 April 2006 exemplifies this new period: “Building a squatter house is not a right of citizenship. But it is just the violation of citizenship rights (…) they are not the people who deserve pity. They are in fact invaders. Now what we do is to construct housing for the poor and we sell our flats with 200 YTL [approximately 125 USD] monthly instalments. They should go and buy one from those flats” (inaugural speech on the General Assembly of Housing organized by Social Housing Administration, Hurriyet 10 April 2006) It is quite an interesting speech delivered by a person who use to live in an unauthorized house in Istanbul when he was the mayor of Istanbul and allegedly owned an unauthorized house in Sultanbeyli.

The Social Solidarity Fund, an organization founded by the central state 20 years ago to combat poverty supports several programmes important for the poor. These programmes both in cash and in kind include fuel, food, education support, entrepreneurial support, some of which have been implemented with the World Bank. However, the general support system will not be that generous as it is now; for instance some programmes including “Conditional Cash Transfer” will be terminated in the near future. Thus the future does not seem bright for the poor in Sultanbeyli.