Bulldozer Neo-liberalism in Istanbul: The State-led Construction of Property Markets, and the Displacement of the Urban Poor

Abstract

Istanbul is undergoing a radical and dramatic restructuring as the authorities seek to bring about a ‘Neoliberal Modernisation’ of the city. This centres on the promotion of market-oriented rationality, and private property. Current plans envisage restructuring huge swathes of the city to bring about functioning land and property markets. The resulting threat to residents and communities has provoked widespread but sporadic resistance. This paper sets the pressure for the social ‘purging’ of Istanbul in the context of the global spread of Authoritarian NeoLiberalism. After describing the main features of the Turkish variant, and noting the parallels to autocratic rule in late Ottoman Istanbul, it traces the impact on local communities. Three cases studies of responses to regeneration plans, drawn from both the European and Asian sides of the city, reveal the diversity of local responses.

Notes

It is conventionally claimed that Turkey is a secular republic. This is not secularism as most Europeans would recognize it so much as state-religion. Since the 1930s the state has funded religious training (Imam Hatip) colleges and paid the salaries of Imams. From the 1980s the resources allocated by the State to organized religion expanded enormously, subsidizing hundreds of new mosques and millions of Korans, and boosting output from Imam Hatip schools. Non-state religious Muslim organizations, especially various Sufi tarikats, and the enormously rich and influential US-based Gulen movement that runs television channels, schools, and hostels, also have a huge influence on access to education and job opportunities.

Critics such as Harvey (2008) argue that the implementation of ‘property titling’ in the Favelas of South America will mean that settlements with attractive views and good locations will pass into the hands of the affluent middle class, their present occupants using the money to move elsewhere and built new squats in less visible and marketable parts of the city. This tendency is emerging in Istanbul (see the case studies).

In both Chile and Turkey the extent to which the United States influenced the coup is hotly debated. Turkey was from 1947 a US frontline against the Soviet Union, becoming in the 1960s a base for US nuclear weapons targeted on Russia and Ukraine. After the Shah of Iran was overthrown in 1979, Turkey's strategic importance to the United States was renewed. Cold War intelligence services and covert operations linked the United States and the Turkish Army, although much mythologizing has exaggerated and simplified this relationship. Turks are famous for their love of conspiracy theories (Mango, 2005), but not without reason.

How much these upheavals really did ‘work’ is a matter of interpretation. The post-Pinochet economic development of Chile was unremarkable compared with most countries where no military coup had occurred except for a brief boom period in the 1980s. The longer term saw labour market contraction, urban segregation, widening inequalities and environmental losses (Winn, 2004).

The rise of the AKP has been accompanied by and bound up with a fashion amongst the ‘Muslim middle class’ for neo-Ottoman styles in dress, house design, hotels, fabrics, music, and so forth. Tayyip Erdogan embodies the Ottoman tradition of strong personal leadership. And his ambition to modernize Istanbul echoes all the nineteenth-century Sultans. But as Tugal notes, the neo-Ottomans are very different from their predecessors in some crucial respects: ‘rather than preserve the historical fabric of the city, the current AKP metropolitan municipality seems set on pulling down the original Ottoman buildings and reconstructing ersatz versions. It is secularists, rather than Islamists, who are now resisting such redevelopments, accusing the municipality of wanting to re-create the historic centre of Istanbul in glossy tourist fashion’ (Tugal, 2008:76).

Translates as ‘built overnight’. A similar pattern characterized the industrial revolution in Britain, as migrants pitched temporary accommodation to get a foothold near the new coal and slate industries, and later turned these into permanent dwellings and enduring settlements.

Erdogan Bayraktar in 2007 to the Urban Regeneration and Real Estate Investment Conference, organized by the Urban Land Institute. See Zaman Newspaper, 13 November 2007; Sabah Newspaper, 13 November 2007.

Interviews with Ayazma residents in 2008 by Hade Turkmen.

Amnesties have given some Gecekondu residents title deeds. These have two meanings: first, having the right to use the land (tapu tahsis); and second, having a deed to the land (Bartu & Kolluglu, 2002:21). But these rights are effectively cancelled out if the local municipality does not register the house or the owner, and this is common.

The pattern whereby migrants from a particular locality contact fellow villagers, often via family or religious networks, who help them settle nearby in the city.

The entre province is under the responsibility of IMM. IMM is the authority for planning at the 1/5000 to 1/25,000 scale. Plans at the 1/1000 scale are prepared by the 39 district municipalities. In addition, TOKİ has recently become in effect the main urban planning authority (see Turkun in the present issue).

The Alevis are a distinct social group in Turkey, generally characterized by secularism and broadly left-liberal political leanings. Regarded by some (but not all) as deriving from a variant of Islam close to Shi'ism, they have often been discriminated against by orthodox Sunnis. Alevi Kurds have suffered particularly at the hands of Turkish nationalists (see Shankland, 2003).

Kentsel Dönüşüm Projesi Gecekondu Lobisine Takıldı, 28. November 2007, Zaman Gazetesi.

While negotiations and court actions were in process, construction work went on nearly 24 hours a day. The workers dried the concrete with flames from LPG tanks. After six months the six apartment blocks were at full height.

Technically therefore they are illegal buildings – like the Gecekondu.