The regressive planning practice of private sector planners under the pressure of political and market forces in Turkey

ABSTRACT

Private-sector planners in Turkey have been operating in a planning system that has been restructured within the framework of neoliberal urban policies for the last forty years. Especially after 2000, while the model of growth over construction was adopted as a basic economic policy, the planning practices that implemented these policies were seen as a means of capital accumulation by wider social groups. In this economic political environment, private-sector planners have entered into new relationships with politics, markets, and bureaucracy, and have settled in the centre of criticism with professional practices that fall behind the basic principles of the profession, such as land speculation and serving certain pressure groups instead of the public interest. This article focuses on the conditions in which private-sector planners realize their planning practices and the problems they encounter in their plan-making processes. According to private-sector planners, the most important problem is the increase in the determination of rent-oriented interest relations between public institutions and local market actors instead of public benefit in the planning process. Private-sector planners believe that at every stage of the planning process, politicians and market actors exert pressure on planners, and that these forces have caused Turkey's planning practices to decline.

KEYWORDS:

• Market forces
• neoliberal planning
• planning practice
• private sector planners
• Turkey

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 The Chamber of Architects of Turkey and the Chamber of City Planners are constitutional, professional organizations entrusted with not only the formulation of rules and regulations pertaining to their professional practice but also the review and approval of development projects.

2 An investigation was launched against him for his alleged membership of the organization after the coup attempt.

3 Social scientists have conceptualized and defined political clientelism and patronage as a particular form of relationship in which selective goods and services are distributed by individuals or parties in exchange for political support (Sayarı 2014).

4 In Turkey, urban plans were produced and approved by the Ministry of Development and Housing until 1985.

5 Planning offices that want to do business in the planning market have to take a ration card from the Ministry of Environment and Urbanization.