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ABSTRACT
Planning in Turkey is dominated by powerful market interests and authoritarian state regulation, resulting in a conflictual socio-political environment. Caught in the crossfire between interventionist urban policies and a planning education system that is oriented towards the public good, planners have come to feel alienated from their work. This paper considers how young planners respond to these challenges, drawing upon questionnaires and semi-structured in-depth interviews with planners with fewer than 10 years of experience. Their confrontation with entrepreneurial and authoritarian state interventions in urban development alienates them from their ideals, leading them to explore new ways of dealing with increasing political authority and economic neoliberalism. The participants of the study came up with a number of diverse responses related to this process. Disappointed with the practice of their profession ‘lost planners' begin searching for alternative pathways outside their practice towards a more meaningful society. In contrast, ‘profiteer planners' focus on getting more business and play a conformist and opportunistic role in the existing planning practice; while ‘struggling planners' develop alternative ways to pursue the public good by participating in urban movements. In short, they cope with alienation through politicization, solidarity and the identification of new means of engaging with society.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Interviewee list
| No. 1 | = | Working at an urban project development company; three years’ experience |
| No. 2 | = | Working at İller Bankası A.Ş. (a development and investment bank with the status of special-budget joint-stock company); four years’ experience |
| No. 3 | = | Working at the Ministry of Environment and Urbanism; four years’ experience |
| No. 4 | = | Working at Kadıköy Municipality, previously worked at a planning company; ten years’ experience |
| No. 5 | = | Working in a public university as a research assistant, board member of the Ankara Branch of the Chamber of City Planners; six years’ experience |
| No. 6 | = | Unemployed, master student, worked previously for a real estate valuation company; two years’ experience |
| No. 7 | = | Working as a manager in a real estate valuation company; six years’ experience |
| No. 8 | = | Working at the Ankara Branch of the Chamber of City Planners; two years’ experience |
| No. 9 | = | Unemployed, master student, worked previously as an instructor; four years’ experience |
| No. 10 | = | Working at the Privatization Administration; four years’ experience |
| No. 11 | = | Unemployed, worked previously at a construction company; one year's experience |
| No. 12 | = | Working at Izmir Greater Municipality; three years’ experience |
| No. 13 | = | Planning company owner, worked previously for planning companies; four years’ experience |
| No. 14 | = | Working at Ministry of Culture and Tourism; four years’ experience |
| No. 15 | = | Working at Ministry of Food, Agriculture and Livestock; six years’ experience |
| No. 16 | = | Head of a Planning Department at Istanbul Greater Municipality; ten years’ experience |
| No. 17 | = | Working at the Cultural and Natural Heritage Preservation Board; nine years’ experience |
| No. 18 | = | Working at the Cultural and Natural Heritage Preservation Board; seven years’ experience |
| No. 19 | = | Urban design company owner, worked previously for a planning company; five years’ experience |
| No. 20 | = | Working at a public university as a research assistant, board member of the Ankara Branch of the Chamber of City Planners, worked previously at a planning company; five years’ experience |
Acknowledgements
The research was funded by TÜBİTAK (Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey) within the International Postdoctoral Research Fellowship Programme (2219). The publication of this article was also financially supported by TUDelft, Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment, Department OTB for the Built Environment where both authors were affiliated during this study. The authors are grateful for both organizations for supporting this research. Any opinions expressed in this paper are, of course, solely the author’s own.
Notes
1. People feel ‘powerless' when they believe that most of what happens to them is a result of things over which they have no control. As their powerlessness increases, they start to lose contact with their own labour (Erikson, Citation1986). This leads to ‘meaninglessness', as people become unsure about what they ought to believe. People who suffer from meaninglessness may also relinquish commonly held standards and norms, leading to ‘normlessness', which is a widespread problem in modern capitalist societies. Their attitudes become individualistic, instrumental and manipulative (Gorz, Citation1989). People live in an isolated manner and feel lonely in this increasingly individualistic and competitive system. ‘Isolation' embraces such socio-political problems as weak solidarity and the loss of belief in collectivization-organization. ‘Self-estranged' people depend on rewards that lie outside the activity itself: a doctor working merely for his salary or a clerk working only for a stable income. It is only outside work that such people can find meaning and social belonging (Harvey, Citation2015).
2. The total number of planners who started working and registered to Turkish Chamber of City Planners is 5.503, and 43% of those falls into our young category meaning that they graduated after 2004 (ŞPO, Citation2015).
3. Third Bridge and Third Airport, under construction in the north of Istanbul, attracted serious criticism and controversy due to the presence of ecologically sensitive forests and water reservoirs in the northern part of the city (ŞPO, Citation2010). Experts point out that since the projects started, they have led to the felling of 245,000 trees, and that their destructive effects will continue into drinking water resources, forests and endemic plants (Tümerdem, Citation2014).
4. Constructed as the new seat of the President of Republic of Turkey, despite the presence of an existing historical and perfectly functional presidential palace. This is the most controversial project, covering approximately 30 hectares of land in the Atatürk Forest Farm (AOÇ), which was a protected green zone that was opened to development with an exception to existing legal regulations. A government decision is taken on the use of AOÇ land, and this exceptional law paved the way for the project (Candan, Citation2015).
5. The study group comprised 37% public sector planners, 25% private sector planners, 16% working outside the planning sector, 14% working in academia and 8% unemployed.
6. Of the total, 36% of private sector planners, 31% of people working outside the planning sector and 14% of the academicians indicated dissatisfaction.
7. All of the interviewees were in the ‘young category' (graduated after 2004), and the majority had work experience in the public or private sectors (eight public sector planners, six private sector planners, three unemployed, two academicians and one working in Chamber of City Planners).