Reproducing authoritarian neoliberalism in Turkey: urban governance and state restructuring in the shadow of executive centralization

ABSTRACT

The implosion of popular struggles against the erosion of economic and democratic rights in the Middle East has thrown into sharp relief the co-constitutive character of neoliberal reforms and authoritarian state practices. This article zooms in on this relationship, and traces the consolidation of a core component of authoritarian statisms by examining how the ruling AKP government in Turkey has facilitated executive centralization. This process refers to a form of state restructuring whereby key decision-making powers are increasingly concentrated in the hands of the central government while democratic avenues to contest government policies are curtailed through legal and administrative reforms, and the marginalization of dissident social forces. I unpack the mechanisms of executive centralization in Turkey by exploring the transformation of urban governance under AKP rule, which has promoted a spectacular degree of state-led commodification of land and housing while simultaneously recentralizing key decision-making powers. The investigation demonstrates that executive centralization in urban governance has paved the way for the swift implementation of contested urban transformation projects marked by a non-participatory approach to urban ‘renewal’, the reconfiguration of the state’s redistributive function vis-à-vis low-income households, and a tendency to exacerbate existing patterns of inequalities in the housing market.

KEYWORDS:

• AKP
• executive centralization
• housing policy
• neoliberalism
• urban governance
• Turkey

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Ian Bruff, Roberto Roccu and the two reviewers for comments on an earlier draft.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

ORCID

Cemal Burak Tansel http://orcid.org/0000-0001-7586-459X

Notes

1. Gecekondu, the literal translation of which is ‘built overnight’, denotes irregular and illegal housing often built on public land.

2. Law No. 2985, Official Gazette, 17 March 1984.

3. Law No. 4966, Official Gazette, 7 August 2003.

4. Law No. 5018, Official Gazette, 24 December 2003. See also Marschall et al. (2016, p. 205).

5. Official Gazette, 16 January 2004.

6. Law No. 5162, Official Gazette, 12 May 2004.

7. Law No. 5273, Official Gazette, 15 December 2004. The amount of public land controlled by TOKİ would increase to 110 million m² by 2011 (Atasoy, 2016, p. 671).

8. Law No. 5609, Official Gazette, 28 March 2007.

9. Law No. 5366, Official Gazette, 5 July 2005.

10. Law No. 5216, Official Gazette, 23 July 2004; Law No. 5393, Official Gazette, 13 July 2005.

11. Law No. 5793, Official Gazette, 6 August 2008.

12. Law No. 6292, Official Gazette, 26 April 2012.

13. Law No. 6306, Official Gazette, 31 May 2012.

14. Law No. 5237, Official Gazette, 12 October 2004.

15. ‘Between 2004 and 2008, 11,543 [gecekondu] units in Istanbul were demolished, a record high for any period’ (Kuyucu & Ünsal, 2010, p. 1484).

16. The figure includes housing projects constructed for the urban poor, low- and middle-income groups, disaster housing as well as urban renewal projects (i.e. gecekondu transformation projects) and agricultural villages (TOKİ, 2016, p. 16).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Cemal Burak Tansel

Notes on contributor

Cemal Burak Tansel is Lecturer in International Politics at the University of Sheffield, UK. His research focuses on the historical sociology of state formation and capitalist development in the Middle East and the political economy of development. He is the editor of States of discipline: Authoritarian neoliberalism and the contested reproduction of capitalist order (Rowman & Littlefield International, 2017) plus the author of numerous journal articles and book chapters.