Abstract
‹stanbul has undergone a neoliberal restructuring over the past two decades.
In this paper, we focus on two urban spaces that we argue to have emerged
as part of this process—namely Göktürk, a gated town, and Bezirganbahçe, a
public housing project. We examine these spaces as showcases of new forms
of urban wealth and poverty in ‹stanbul, demonstrating the workings of the
neoliberalization process and the forms of urbanity that emerge within this
context. These are the two margins of the city whose relationship with the
center is becoming increasingly tenuous in qualitatively different yet parallel
forms. In Göktürk’s segregated compounds, where urban governance is
increasingly privatized, non-relationality with the city, seclusion into the
domestic sphere and the family, urban fear and the need for security, and
social and spatial isolation become the markers of a new urbanity. In
Bezirganbahçe, involuntary isolation and insulation, and non-relationality
with the city imposed through the reproduction of poverty create a new
form of urban marginality marked by social exclusion and ethnic tensions.
The new forms of wealth and poverty displayed in these two urban spaces,
accompanied by the social and spatial segregation of these social groups,
compel us to think about future forms of urbanity and politics in ‹stanbul.
N E W P E R S P E C T I V E S O N T U R K E Y
5
Emerging spaces of
neoliberalism: A gated town
and a public housing project
in ‹stanbul
Ayfer Bartu Candan
Biray Kolluo¤lu
Ayfer Bartu Candan, Sociology Department, Bo¤aziçi University, ‹stanbul,
ayfer.bartu@boun.edu.tr.
Biray Kolluo¤lu, Sociology Department, Bo¤aziçi University, ‹stanbul,
biray@boun.edu.tr.
Authors’ Note: The research for this study was funded through TÜB‹TAK research grant no. 106K336, and
Bo¤aziçi University Research Fund no. 04B801 and 06B801. We would like to thank Zafer Yenal and
Deniz Yükseker for their careful reading which significantly improved many of the points made in the
paper. We are also indebted to Tuna Kuyucu who contributed to this paper by providing critical
insights and information. Different versions of this paper were presented at seminars at Koç and
Sabanc› Universities, and we are grateful for the comments of the participants at these seminars. We
owe our deepest gratitude to Funda Dönmez and Cem Bico whose research assistance at different
stages of this project has been invaluable.
New Perspectives on Turkey, no. 39 (2008): 5-46.
6 Ayfer Bartu Candan and Biray Kolluo¤lu
Keywords: Urban transformation, neoliberal urbanism, public housing, gated
communities, social and spatial segregation, new forms of wealth and poverty
Introduction
We are witnessing with awe, horror or indifferent familiarity an ‹stanbul
changing rapidly in terms of its spaces, the relations it comprises and its
imaginary, as the city has undergone a neoliberal restructuring over the
past two decades. Its skies are pierced by ever-taller and multiplying bank,
office, and residence towers, as well as colossal luxury hotels. Its
urbanscape is crowded by shopping malls, restaurants, cafes and night
clubs whose numbers are rapidly increasing. Its arts calendar is getting
busier every year, with evermore music and film festivals, exhibitions and
activities in the newly opened museums, as well as the ‹stanbul Biennale.
Alongside all these changes, a new residential spatial arrangement is
recasting ‹stanbul’s urban space. Gated residential compounds are
proliferating mainly, but not exclusively, in the peripheral areas of the city.
These compounds housing the new groups of wealth began to emerge in
the mid-1980s. Their numbers skyrocketed only in the late 1990s.
According to one estimate, as of 2005 there were more than 650 of these
compounds, with a housing stock in excess of 40,000.1 The growth in the
number of gated residential compounds has intensified since 2005.2 Put
differently, ‹stanbul’s urbanscape continues to be littered by new
residential compounds trapped behind gates or walls, as well as
consumption, leisure and production spaces that are kept under constant
surveillance through strict security measures. Hence, what we have at hand
is an ongoing gating of the city at large, enclosing new forms of wealth and
new forms of relations and non-relations that take shape in between the
gates. In these spaces, new forms of living, governance, and social and
political relations and non-relations are emerging and taking root.
Simultaneously and parallel to this process, gecekondu (squatter)
housing that has absorbed and housed the successive waves of massive
1 As Pérouse and Dan›fl, who have generated the above figures acknowledge, it is very difficult to
compile an exact figure of gated residential compounds, since the ‹stanbul Greater Municipality does
not keep any statistics of this kind; due to the vagueness of the definition of gated communities it is
nearly impossible to get any information at the district municipality level. The only means to generate
exact figures would be to count these compounds in situ, which is an impossible task for individual
researchers on a city-wide scale. See, Asl› Didem Dan›fl and Jean-François Pérouse, “Zenginli¤in
Mekânda Yeni Yans›malar›: ‹stanbul’da Güvenlikli Siteler,” Toplum ve Bilim, no. 104 (2005).
2 Our count in Göktürk, one of the gated towns of ‹stanbul to which we will turn in detail below, shows
that the number of segregated residential compounds has doubled since 2005. Taking into account
the fact that Göktürk is no exception to the general pattern in ‹stanbul, Göktürk’s growth may form
a basis to approximate a parallel rate of growth applicable to the entire city.
N E W P E R S P E C T I V E S O N T U R K E Y
rural-to-urban migration much needed to feed the labor needs of national
developmentalism since the 1950s, has been renamed varofl,3 partaking in
the creation of the “new stigmatizing topographic lexicon” that renders
these neighborhoods vulnerable to all interventions, including destruction.4
The gecekonduwas considered and treated as a transitionary category which
was expected to melt away as the processes of modernization and
urbanization deepened.5 However, after the 1990s new waves of
migrants—this time mainly Kurdish migrants from Southeastern Anatolia
pouring into an ‹stanbul whose economy had undergone a major
transformation—found themselves in places marked as varofl, denoting a
permanent marginality and trapping them in new forms of poverty.6 The
gecekondu was not yet urban and modern, but already marked for
modernization. Varofl names the time-space of that which has fallen off or
been pushed out of the present and future of the modern and urban.
The new “stigmatizing topographic lexicon” and other technologies of
neoliberal urbanism which we will discuss below work together to enable
and justify ongoing and planned “urban transformation,” “urban renewal,”
or “urban rehabilitation” projects that result in the displacing and replacing
of new forms of poverty. In other words, in the shadow of the new
skyline of ‹stanbul new spaces of poverty and wealth are emerging in a
decidedly and progressively segregated manner.7
3 See, Sencer Ayata, “Varofllar, Çat›flma ve fiiddet,” Görüfl, no. 18 (1981), Oya Baydar, “Öteki’ne Yenik
Düflen ‹stanbul,” ‹stanbul, no. 23 (1996), Serpil Bozkulak, “”Gecekondu”dan “Varofl”a: Gülsuyu
Mahallesi,” in ‹stanbul’da Kentsel Ayr›flma: Mekansal Dönüflümde Farkl› Boyutlar, ed. Hatice Kurtulufl
(‹stanbul: Ba¤lam, 2005), Tahire Erman, “The Politics of Squatter (Gecekondu) Studies in Turkey:
The Changing Representations of Rural Migrants in the Academic Discourse,” Urban Studies 38, no.
7 (2001), Deniz Yonucu, “A Story of a Squatter Neighborhood: From the Place of the ‘Dangerous
Classes’ to the ‘Place of Danger’,” The Berkeley Journal of Sociology 52 (forthcoming).
4 See, Loïc Wacquant, “Territorial Stigmatization in the Age of Advanced Marginality,” Thesis Eleven 91,
no. 1 (2007): for a discussion of the power of this topographic lexicon.
5 See, Charles William Merton Hart, Zeytinburnu Gecekondu Bölgesi (‹stanbul: ‹stanbul Ticaret Odas›,
1969), Kemal H. Karpat, The Gecekondu: Rural Migration and Urbanization (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1976), Ça¤lar Keyder, State and Class in Turkey: A Study in Capitalist Development
(London: Verso, 1987), Tans› fienyap›l›, Gecekondu: ‘Çevre’ ‹flçilerin Mekan› (Ankara: Orta Do¤u
Teknik Üniversitesi Mimarl›k Fakültesi, 1981).
6 See, O¤uz Ifl›k and M. Melih P›narc›o¤lu, Nöbetlefle Yoksulluk: Sultanbeyli Örne¤i (‹stanbul: ‹letiflim,
2001), for a discussion of the changing nature of poverty in ‹stanbul’s periphery. For ethnographic
accounts of new forms of poverty see, Necmi Erdo¤an, ed., Yoksulluk Halleri: Türkiye’de Kent
Yoksullu¤unun Toplumsal Görünümleri (‹stanbul: Demokrasi Kitapl›¤›, 2002). For the relationship of
the changing nature of the state and new forms of poverty see, Ayfle Bu¤ra and Ça¤lar Keyder, “New
Poverty and the Changing Welfare Regime of Turkey,” (Ankara: United Nations Development
Programme, 2003).
7 Ifl›k and P›narc›o¤lu discuss this as a transition from a “softly segregated city” to a “tense and
exclusionary urbanism.” Ifl›k and P›narc›o¤lu, Nöbetlefle Yoksulluk. See also Sema Erder’s research
which takes into account the specific and local dimensions of new forms of urban tension in Pendik,
Sema Erder, Kentsel Gerilim (Ankara: U¤ur Mumcu Araflt›rmac› Gazetecilik Vakf›, 1997). Murat
N E W P E R S P E C T I V E S O N T U R K E Y
7
8 Ayfer Bartu Candan and Biray Kolluo¤lu
‹stanbul is far from being an exception in exhibiting the new pattern
of social and spatial segregation that has become one of the most salient
and dominant features of urban life globally.8 This urban social
architecture rests on an intertwined set of economic and political
processes of a decreasing contribution of the industrial sector to the
overall economy, and the movement of industrial production to smallscale
specialized units. Hence, we witness a significant decrease in the
size of organized labor, increasing rates of unemployment, part-time,
seasonal, sporadic, and informal labor, and new forms of poverty that
these changes have produced. Accompanied by the retrenching of the
state from various areas of social provision, the socio-economic
vulnerabilities of the new poor, concentrated in urban areas, vastly
increase. The other side of the same process is the new forms of wealth
that have come into being with the rising number of professionals
employed in the service and finance sectors tagged to the increasing
contribution of the latter in the economy. Since the 1980s, this
macroeconomic, political and social restructuring has been discussed
under various conceptualizations, albeit with varying emphases, such as
disorganized capitalism, post-Fordism, flexible accumulation, or
globalization.9 In this article, we will employ the concept of
neoliberalism to refer to this macroeconomic re-structuring that
Güvenç and O¤uz Ifl›k offer a study of the increasing residential segregation in ‹stanbul of different
status groups which they mainly define through occupation. See, Murat Güvenç and O¤uz Ifl›k,
“‹stanbul’u Okumak: Statü-Konut Mülkiyeti Farkl›laflmas›na ‹liflkin Bir Çözümleme Denemesi,”
Toplum ve Bilim, no. 71 (1996).
8 New forms of social and spatial segregation in contemporary cities globally have become one of the
most central themes of urban studies. Among the growing literature on the retrenchment of the new
groups of wealth into their protected compounds see, Edward J. Blakely and Mary Gail Synder,
Fortress America: Gated Communities in the United States (Washington: Brookings Institution Press,
1997), Philippe Bourgois, In Search of Respect: Selling Crack in El Barrio (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1996), P. R. Teresa Caldeira, City of Walls: Crime, Segregation, and Citizenship in Sao
Paulo (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000), Mike Davis, City of Quartz: Excavating the
Future in Los Angeles (New York: Verso, 1990), Nan Ellin, “Shelter from the Storm or Form Follows
Fear and Vice Versa,” in Architecture of Fear, ed. Nan Ellin (New York: Princeton Architectural Press,
1997), Setha M. Low, Behind the Gates: Life, Security and the Pursuit of Happiness in Fortress America
(London: Routledge, 2004), Sharon Zukin, The Cultures of Cities (Cambridge: Blackwell, 1995). The
processes of excluding the urban poor and marginals from the present and the future of the city have
been discussed widely by Zygmunt Bauman, Wasted Lives: Modernity and Its Outcasts (Malden:
Blackwell, 2004).
9 David Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity: An Inquiry into the Origins of Cultural Change
(Cambridge: Blackwell, 1989), Scott Lash and John Urry, The End of Organized Capitalism (Madison:
University of Wisconsin Press, 1987), Alain Lipietz and Malcolm Slater, Towards A New Economic
Order: Postfordism, Ecology and Democracy (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1992), Claus Offe and others,
Disorganized Capitalism: Contemporary Transformations of Work and Politics (Cambridge: Polity Press,
1985), Roland Robertson, “Mapping the Global Condition: Globalization as the Central Concept,”
Theory, Culture & Society 7, no. 2-3 (1990).
N E W P E R S P E C T I V E S O N T U R K E Y
mobilizes “a range of policies intended to extend market discipline,
competition, and commodification throughout all sectors of society.”10
Cities have emerged as the privileged sites of the valorization of
neoliberal policies, implementations and strategies. Socio-economic and
political processes of neoliberalism have paved the way for the social and
spatial segregation of the emerging groups of poverty and wealth in urban
spaces, or the emergence of the so-called “spaces of decay,” “distressed
areas,” and privileged spaces. These dominant patterns have been analyzed
in the emerging literature on neoliberal urbanism.11 Interestingly,
contemporary urban studies focus either on new forms and spaces of
wealth, or on new forms and spaces of poverty. Yet, in contemporary cities
new groups and forms of wealth and poverty grow and reproduce in an
interdependent manner and feed into one another. The same socio-political
and economic processes create new groups of concentrated wealth and
resources, concentrated forms of economic vulnerability and poverty, and
new urban spaces catering to and harboring these groups, all of which then
reproduce this social architecture. More importantly, contemporary cities
are increasingly defined through these social groups and spatial forms on
either margin of contemporary urbanism. Hence, we argue that, in order to
render the workings of neoliberalism in a particular urban context visible
and legible, these groups should be studied together.
In this paper we will focus on two very different and indeed contrasting
spaces that have been produced by processes of neoliberalization. Not their
diametrically opposed built forms, social fabric and urban situatedness, but
the parallels to which we will point, give us clues as to how neoliberalism
writ large carves its way through ‹stanbul and how these new forms of
wealth and poverty inform future forms of urbanity. By discussing these
spaces that form the margins of ‹stanbul, albeit qualitatively different ones,
we hope to show simultaneously their interdependence and emphasize
that examining only one of them would remain a partial exercise. The
spaces we will focus on are Göktürk and Bezirganbahçe (see map).
10 Neil Brenner and Nik Theodore, “Cities and the Geographies of Actually Existing Neoliberalism,”
Antipode 34, no. 3 (2002). See also Jean Comaroff and John L. Comaroff, eds., Millenial Capitalism
and the Culture of Neoliberalism (Durham: Duke University Press, 2001), David Harvey, A Brief History
of Neoliberalism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005).
11 For a discussion of cities as privileged sites of post-1980s macroeconomic and socio-political
restructuring see, Saskia Sassen, The Global City: New York, London, Tokyo (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1991), Saskia Sassen, Cities in a World Economy (Thousand Oaks: Sage Press,
1994). For neoliberal urbanism see, Neil Brenner and Nik Theodore, Spaces of Neoliberalism: Urban
Restructuring in Western Europe and North America (Oxford; Boston: Blackwell, 2002), Mike Davis,
Planet of Slums (London: Verso, 2006), Jason Hackworth, The Neoliberal City: Governance, Ideology,
and Development in American Urbanism (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2007).
N E W P E R S P E C T I V E S O N T U R K E Y
9
10 Ayfer Bartu Candan and Biray Kolluo¤lu
Göktürk is what we call a gated town. It showcases new forms of wealth
emerging within processes of social and spatial segregation; privatization of
urban governance; willing retrenchment from the city; and a turn towards
the family. Göktürk is not an exceptional space in ‹stanbul. There are
numerous other similar gated towns, such as Zekeriyaköy, Çekmeköy,
Kurtköy, or Akf›rat. We chose to focus on Göktürk because it includes not
only the ur-gated residential compound in ‹stanbul, but also because it is
the ur-gated town of ‹stanbul.
Bezirganbahçe is what we call a captive urban geography, created by an
urban transformation project and forced and semi-forced re-settlements.
Wrapped around in forced isolation, Bezirganbahçe showcases new forms
of poverty, a process of expropriation, social exclusion, endangerment of
the already precarious practices of subsistence and survival, and new forms
of ethnic tensions and violence.
These two urban sites, we argue, emerge as spaces of neoliberalism
where we see the simultaneous workings of the neoliberalization process
and the forms of urbanity that emerge within this context. What we
witness is the emergence of seemingly contradictory processes: in
Göktürk’s segregated compounds, voluntary non-relationality with the
city, closing into the domestic sphere and the family, hype about urban
crime and dangers, the heightened sense of a need for security and
protection, and concomitant social and spatial isolation and insulation
N E W P E R S P E C T I V E S O N T U R K E Y
Map of ‹stanbul that marks the major sites mentioned in this paper. Map: Ahmet Suvar Aslan.
become the markers of a new urbanity. In Bezirganbahçe, involuntary
isolation and insulation as well as non-relationality with the city, imposed
through the reproduction of poverty, create a new form of urban
marginality. These are two margins of the city whose relationship with the
center is becoming increasingly tenuous in qualitatively different yet
parallel forms. In Göktürk, the local municipality and the services provided
by it become irrelevant for the residents of the segregated residential
compounds, which are run and protected by private management and
security firms. In other words, one can observe the privatization and
withdrawal of urban governance. In the Bezirganbahçe public housing
project, however, we see the over-presence of urban governance through
its monitoring of everyday activities and the regulation of the relationship
between the local municipality and the residents.
The discussions and arguments in this paper derive from our ongoing
fieldwork that we have been carrying out in two strands. One strand
explores the urban transformation projects in the city and the processes of
neoliberalization in ‹stanbul in general. The other has taken place since
2007 in the segregated residential compounds of Göktürk and in the public
housing project in Bezirganbahçe. We have conducted in-depth interviews
with the residents of these settlements, local and central government
officials, real-estate agents and developers; we have collected residential
histories from the residents of these communities; and we have carried out
participant observation in the surrounding neighborhoods and shopping
areas in order to provide additional contextual data.12 The interviews were
all conducted in the homes of the residents. We also collected local
planning documents and material from the advertising campaigns of these
settlements. The exclusive and isolated lives of the residents of Göktürk
posed difficulties in terms of accessing this group for interviews, rendering
it a particularly difficult group for ethnographic research.13We tried to talk
to the residents of the different segregated residential compounds in order
to observe the dynamics, patterns of living, and urban practices of the town
in general. In doing so, we had to rely on snowball sampling and
meticulously pre-arranged meetings. Despite our efforts, we largely failed
to arrange interviews with men; as a result, almost all our respondents,
except for two, were women.
12 Unless noted otherwise, all quotations from interviews in this paper are taken from the in-depth
interviews we conducted with officials and residents in Göktürk and Bezirganbahçe.
13 For a discussion of the challenges of studying powerful groups, “studying up,” and the ethical issues
involved in this process see, Low, Behind the Gates, Laura Nader, “Up the Anthropologist-
Perspectives Gained From Studying Up,” in Reinventing Anthropology, ed. Dell H. Hymes (New York:
Pantheon Books, 1972).
N E W P E R S P E C T I V E S O N T U R K E Y
11
12 Ayfer Bartu Candan and Biray Kolluo¤lu
The article is divided into two sections. In the first section, we will
provide the larger context of neoliberal urbanism within which both gated
towns like Göktürk and captive urban geographies like Bezirganbahçe can
come into being and share an existence in a new urban context. In the
second section, we will turn to a more detailed discussion of the workings
of the neoliberalizing process and the emerging forms of urbanity in
Göktürk and Bezirganbahçe.
Neoliberalizing ‹stanbul
‹stanbul has gone through major urban restructuring since the mid-1980s,
as a result of a series of transformations in local governance, which have
been enabled and legitimized through a set of legal changes wrapped in
neoliberal language; implementation and planning of mega-projects; major
changes in real-estate investments; and a new visibility and domination of
the finance and service sectors in the city’s economy and urbanscape. These
processes, which can also be observed in other cities around the world,
have been conceptualized as neoliberal urbanism.14 In this section, we will
discuss the context-specific forms that neoliberal urbanism has taken in
post-1980s ‹stanbul, with a special emphasis on the 2000s as a period
during which the neoliberalization of ‹stanbul not only has become more
visible, but also deepened and more entrenched.
The liberalization of ‹stanbul’s economy and urban management began
with radical financial and administrative changes in ‹stanbul’s metropolitan
governance, starting with the municipality law of 1984. The 1984 law
brought a two-tier system, consisting of the greater municipality and the
district municipalities. It introduced new financial resources for the local
governments and changes in the organizational structure, such as bringing
agencies formerly attached to central ministries in Ankara (for instance, the
Master Plan Bureau, and the Water Supply and Sewerage Authority) under
the direct control and jurisdiction of the metropolitan mayor. All this
rendered the mayor’s office more powerful with its enhanced
administrative and financial resources. These changes led to the emergence
of an entrepreneurial local government acting as a market facilitator, and the
privatization of various municipal services such as transportation, housing,
and provision of natural gas. The implementation of these changes also
enabled the then metropolitan mayor Bedrettin Dalan, who belonged to the
center-right Motherland Party (Anavatan Partisi, ANAP), in the late 1980s
to engage in a series of urban renewal projects in ‹stanbul. These projects
14 See, Brenner and Theodore, “Cities and the Geographies of Actually Existing Neoliberalism,”
Comaroff and Comaroff, Millenial Capitalism, and Harvey, A Brief History of Neoliberalism.
N E W P E R S P E C T I V E S O N T U R K E Y
majestically initiated dramatic transformations in the urban landscape of
the city, through mega-projects, Hausmannian in nature—such as the
opening of the Tarlabafl› boulevard, a major axis of the city connecting the
Taksim Square to the Golden Horn; the demolition of industrial complexes
along the shore of the Golden Horn, which recast the entire urbanscape of
this former industrial and working-class district; and the relocation of
various industries from within the city to its periphery.15
Although there is a continuity in the project of transforming ‹stanbul
into an “aesthetized commodity”—that is, making it attractive to foreign
capital and marketable to a global audience16—the 2000s, a time when the
self-defined conservative-democratic Justice and Development Party
(Adalet ve Kalk›nma Partisi, AKP) took over the greater municipality and
many of the district municipalities in ‹stanbul, mark a turning point in the
liberalization process. Municipality laws introduced in 2004 and 2005,
currently in effect, made the already influential office of the mayor even
more powerful. These new powers include: (1) broadening the physical
space under the control and jurisdiction of the greater municipality; (2)
increasing its power and authority in development (imar), control and
coordination of district municipalities; (3) making it easier for greater
municipalities to establish, and/or create partnerships and collaborate with
private companies; (4) defining new responsibilities of the municipality in
dealing with “natural disasters”; and (5) outlining the first legal framework
for “urban transformation,” by giving municipalities the authority to
designate, plan and implement “urban transformation” areas and projects.17
Along with these administrative changes, another set of laws has been
introduced, the constellation of which have enabled and legitimized the
ongoing urban restructuring in the city. These laws include Law no. 5366
(Law for the Protection of Dilapidated Historical and Cultural Real Estate
Through Protection by Renewal) passed in 2005, the 2010 European
Cultural Capital Law approved in 2007,18 and the pending law on Urban
15 See, Ça¤lar Keyder and Ayfle Öncü, Istanbul and the Concept of the World Cities (‹stanbul: Friedrich
Ebert Foundation, 1993), for a detailed analysis of the administrative, financial, and spatial changes
in late-1980s ‹stanbul, also see, Ayfle Öncü, “The Politics of Urban Land Market in Turkey: 1950-
1980,” International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 12, no. 1 (1988). For the discussion of
controversial urban renewal projects in the late 1980s see, Ayfer Bartu, “Who Owns the Old
Quarters? Rewriting Histories in a Global Era,” in Istanbul: Between the Local and the Global, ed.
Ça¤lar Keyder (Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield, 1999).
16 Achille Mbembe, “Aesthetics of Superfluity,” Public Culture 16, no. 3 (2004).
17 “5216 Say›l› Büyükflehir Belediyesi Kanunu,” TBMM (2004),
https://www.tbmm.gov.tr/kanunlar/
k5216.html; “5393 Say›l› Belediye Kanunu,” TBMM (2005),
https://www.tbmm.gov.tr/kanunlar/
k5393.html.
18 In 2006, ‹stanbul, along with the cities Pécs (Hungary) and Essen (Germany), was selected by the
European Union as the 2010 European Cultural Capital.
N E W P E R S P E C T I V E S O N T U R K E Y
13
14 Ayfer Bartu Candan and Biray Kolluo¤lu
Transformation. All of these laws grant the municipalities the power to
undertake major urban projects, overriding the existing checks, controls,
and regulations in the legal system.
This changing legal framework is wrapped within a new language, a
language that Bourdieu and Wacquant call “neoliberal newspeak,”19which is
characterized by the abundant usage of terms such as vision, mission,
transparency, efficiency, accountability, and participation. This language is
not exclusive to the laws, but reproduced through various campaigns and
projects of the current greater municipality and the district municipalities, in
their attempts to engage with their projects with and for the people of
‹stanbul. This language is most apparent, for example, in the glossy annual
activities booklets and the interactive website of the greater municipality.
Through billboards and banners located throughout the city, ‹stanbulites are
informed about the activities of the municipality. The “White Desk” toll-free
line is at work 24 hours a day for any questions, comments, complaints and
feedback about the activities of the municipality. One can send text or e-mail
messages to the companies affiliated with the municipality with any
complaint and/or suggestion about their activities. As highlighted in almost
all of the publications of the municipality, all of this is done in the name of
“transparency,” “efficiency,” “accountability,” and “public participation.”
The planning and implementation of a series of mega-projects called
“urban transformation projects,” a term first coined in the early 2000s, has
also come in this period, suggesting a more rigorous pattern of urban
restructuring. Some of the urban transformation projects of the mid-2000s
involve inviting world-renowned architects like Zaha Hadid and Ken Yeang
to design projects for entire districts. Zaha Hadid’s project for Kartal, an
industrial district on the Asian side, involves relocating industries to the
outskirts of the city and designing office buildings that will accommodate
service industries, five-star hotels targeted towards international visitors,
and a marina catering to cruise tourism. Put differently, the project
imagines a futuristic plan completely disregarding the existing urban fabric
of Kartal. The project of the internationally known Malaysian architect Ken
Yeang was selected for the transformation of the southern part of the
Küçükçekmece district on the European side, where the Küçükçekmece
Lake merges with the Marmara Sea, into a touristic and recreational area. It
includes the construction of a seven-star hotel, an aquapark, and a marina.
Similarly, Ken Yeang’s project seems to assume an empty land for building
spaces for wealthy users. The Galataport and Haydarpafla projects are two
19 Pierre Bourdieu and Loïc Wacquant, “Neoliberal Newspeak: Notes on the New Planetary Vulgate,”
Radical Philosophy, no. 105 (2006).
N E W P E R S P E C T I V E S O N T U R K E Y
other highly publicized and controversial mega-projects in the making. The
former refers to the construction of a cruise ship marina surrounded by
shopping centers, hotels and recreational spaces on an area of 100,000
square meters along the Marmara Sea coast on the European side. The
Haydarpafla project involves the transformation of 1,000,000 square
meters, including the major historical train station on the Asian side, into a
seven-star hotel surrounded by a marina, a yacht club, a cruise ship port,
office buildings, and shopping centers. These projects are highly
controversial in that they foresee the destruction of the historic fabric of the
city in order to specifically cater to the interests of high-income groups,
severely limiting public access to these areas. Moreover, both projects have
provoked serious legal disputes.
Some of the other urban transformation projects, referred to as
“Gecekondu Transformation Projects,” include the demolition of gecekondu
neighborhoods and the dis/replacement of the residents to public housing
projects. Bezirganbahçe, to which we will turn later, is the product of such
a project. There has also been a series of demolitions and evictions in what
is referred to as “historical” neighborhoods, for the “renewal,”
“rehabilitation,” and “preservation” of the “historical and cultural
heritage” of the city, enabled by Law no. 5366 mentioned earlier. The
highly controversial Sulukule and Tarlabafl› projects are examples of these
and concern an area of 100,000 square meters, whose main inhabitants are
low-income groups of Gypsies and Kurds, respectively. A set of
demolitions is also underway for the purposes of strengthening the
housing stock for the anticipated big earthquake in ‹stanbul.
All of these urban transformation projects described above take on
different names, foci, and emphases—such as “Gecekondu Transformation
Projects,” “Prestige Projects,” “History and Culture Projects,” and “Natural
Disaster Projects.” Despite the fact that they are packaged differently, and
regardless of the-case specific implications, one needs to emphasize that all
of them have similar repercussions in terms of the increase in the value of
urban land, the dis/replacement of significant numbers of people, the
relocation of poverty, and dramatic changes in the urban and social
landscape of the city. The repercussions and implications of these
transformation projects for ‹stanbul are yet to be seen.20
It is also essential to draw attention to another process that has been
central in the neoliberalization of ‹stanbul: the dramatic shift in the type of
20 See, Erik Swyngedouw, Frank Moulaert, and Arantxa Rodriguez, “Neoliberal Urbanization in Europe:
Large-Scale Urban Development Projects and the New Urban Policy,” Antipode 34, no. 3 (2002): for a
detailed discussion of the implications of large-scale urban development projects, such as
socioeconomic polarization and social exclusion, which are already underway in major European cities.
N E W P E R S P E C T I V E S O N T U R K E Y
15
16 Ayfer Bartu Candan and Biray Kolluo¤lu
investments and actors in the real-estate market. There has been a
spectacular increase in the number of hotels, shopping malls and office
buildings in the city since the 1980s. A fleeting gaze at the number of fivestar
hotels, shopping malls and office buildings will give us a sense of this
increase. The bedroom capacity of the five-star hotels was 2,000 in the
1980s. In the 1990s, this capacity was expanded to 6,786, and another 50-
per-cent increase in the 2000s has carried the number of luxurious hotel
beds in the city to 10,199.21 Shopping malls in ‹stanbul began to be opened
in the early 1990s, and throughout that decade the city had only ten of
them. Between 2000 and 2008, an additional 47 shopping malls were
constructed, 28 of which were built in the last four years. As of the summer
of 2008, there are 57 shopping malls in the city, with a floor space
approaching two million square meters.22 It is predicted that by the end of
2010, there will be a total of 122 shopping malls with a floor space of nearly
four million square meters.23 The office floor space in ‹stanbul has
increased from 267,858 square meters in 1997 to 1,676,268 square
meters in 2005—more than a six-fold increase in eight years.24 These
developments are embedded in the larger process of the increasing
dominance of the finance and service sectors in ‹stanbul’s economy,
accompanied by the skewed income distribution; the transformations in
‹stanbul’s urban space produce and reproduce this trend.25
There has also been a change in the actors of the real-estate market,
which has had an enormous impact on urban restructuring especially since
the 2000s. In 1996, the first real-estate investment trust (Gayri Menkul
Yat›r›m Ortakl›¤›, GYO) was established, enabled by a law passed in 1992,
which facilitated the investment of finance capital in large-scale real-estate
projects. The Mass Housing Administration, hereafter MHA (Toplu Konut
‹daresi, TOK‹), tied to the Prime Ministry, emerges as another significant
actor central to the urban restructuring process in ‹stanbul. First
established in 1984 with the aim of dealing with the housing problem of
21 We generated these figures through telephone calls to the hotels listed by TUROB (The Association
of the Tourist Hotelkeepers and Hotel Managers,
Turob) and on
Türkiye Otel Rezervasyonu | Otel Fiyatları | Türkiye Otel Rehberi | Travel Guide.
22 We collated these figures based on the numbers in Colliers International “Market Research, Real
Estate Market Review 2007.”
23 Dr. Can Fuat Gürlesel, “Real Estate Research Report-6. Prognoses for Retail Market and Shopping
Centers in Turkey 2015” (‹stanbul: GYODER. The Association of Real Estate Investment Companies,
2008).
24 Ibid.
25 See, “Poverty and Social Exclusion in the Slum Areas of Large Cities in Turkey,” ed. Fikret Adaman
and Ça¤lar Keyder (Brussels: European Commission, Employment, Social Affairs and Equal
Opportunities DG, 2006), for a discussion of the skewed income distribution in Turkey despite high
growth rates and a substantial increase in per capita income in the 2000s.
N E W P E R S P E C T I V E S O N T U R K E Y
middle and lower-middle income groups, MHA was given vast powers
through a series of legal changes in the last five years. These powers include
forming partnerships with private construction companies and
involvement in the construction and selling of houses for profit; being able
to take over state urban land at no cost with the approval of the prime
ministry and the president’s office; expropriation of urban land to construct
housing projects; and developing and implementing gecekondu
transformation projects.26 The MHA’s share in housing construction
jumped from 0.6 per cent between 1984 and 2002, to 24.7 per cent in
2004, and decreased to 12.1 per cent in 2005.27 In ‹stanbul alone, the MHA
has constructed 50,183 housing units.28
So far, we have discussed neoliberal urbanism in ‹stanbul as embodied
in a restructuring of local governance, a set of legal changes that bypasses
former checks, controls, and balances, large-scale urban development
projects, and changes in real-estate investments. To this one must add the
emergence of what we call a discourse of urgency, articulated around
several imminent “natural disasters.” In the aftermath of the devastating
earthquake of 1999, an intense public debate has taken place regarding the
imminent massive earthquake and the extent of the city’s preparedness to
deal with it. In the last five years, an interesting shift has occurred in the
public discourse in the articulation of this problem. Measures that need to
be taken in relation to the pending earthquake, such as strengthening the
housing stock and examining the infrastructure, are discussed in relation to
many other “disasters” that are “awaiting” ‹stanbulites, such as crime,
migration, chaos in the transportation system, and overpopulation. In
other words, the earthquake is discussed in relation to other “naturalized
disasters,” creating a sense of urgency. The only way to handle these
imminent “disasters” supposedly is through the massive urban
transformation projects in the city. The hype about “crime,” what Caldeira
calls “talk of crime,”29 is translated into a naturalized category in terms of
the urban spaces and groups to which it refers and, in return, justifies the
urban transformation projects. The urban spaces that these groups—
especially migrants, “particular” youth, and Gypsies—occupy are
described as in need of rehabilitation. The “risks” they carry are described
enhancing the sense of urgency to intervene. This sense of urgency
26 These changes were enabled through the changes in the Mass Housing Law (Law No. 2985), the
Gecekondu Law (Law No. 775), and the Law for the Protection of Dilapidated Historical and Cultural
Real Estate Through Protection by Renewal (Law No. 5366).
27 YEMAR, “Türk Yap› Sektörü Raporu,” (‹stanbul: Yap›-Endüstri Merkezi, 2006), 33.
28 T. C. Baflbakanl›k Toplu Konut ‹daresi Baflkanl›¤›,
https://www.toki.gov.tr/.
29 Caldeira, City of Walls.
N E W P E R S P E C T I V E S O N T U R K E Y
17
18 Ayfer Bartu Candan and Biray Kolluo¤lu
becomes prevalent in the mainstream media and easily translates into a
“stigmatizing topographic lexicon,” as exemplified in the following
newspaper commentary:
In big cities, while the public housing projects that are constructed
through urban transformation projects end irregular urbanization, they
also destroy the spaces that provide shelter for criminal and terrorist
organizations […] TOK‹ [MHA] and the municipalities realize
numerous projects of mass housing in order to bring about a regular city
look and to meet the demand for housing. Ali Nihat Özcan, an expert on
terror, draws attention to the fact that people coming from the same city
and origin live in the same squatter settlements, and suggests: “But
those living in the public housing projects with different backgrounds
can influence each other. Hence there aren’t any radical ideas and
behavior. They get rid of their prejudices. They become more tolerant.
They get more opportunities to recognize their common
denominators.” The illegal organizations composed by the members of
the terrorist organizations, such as PKK and DHKP-C, provoke people
against the urban transformation projects by means of posters and
booklets.30
As is evident in this depiction, urban transformation and the public
housing projects accompanying this transformation are portrayed as the
solution to “irregular urbanization” in ‹stanbul. Although it is wellestablished
that “irregular urbanization” in the city is hardly a matter
concerning the urban poor and the spaces they occupy, and that many
middle and upper-class residences and production and consumption spaces
have been part of that process,31 it is very common to represent the urban
spaces occupied by the poor as examples of “irregular urbanization.” As
manifested in the above commentary, urban transformation projects are
instantly linked to urban spaces that breed “criminal and terrorist”
activities. Public housing projects are offered as a remedy to such activities.
Moreover, as proposed by the “expert on terror,” these projects are even
promoted as social policy measures enabling people to empathize with one
another. Given this description, the “natural” outcome is that resistance to
these projects can become “terrorist” acts. Erdo¤an Bayraktar, the head of
the MHA, frequently mentions gecekondus as the main urban problem and
30 “Kentsel Dönüflüm Projeleri, Suç Örgütlerinin S›¤›naklar›n› Yok Ediyor,” Zaman, 18 May 2008.
31 Ayfle Bu¤ra, “The Immoral Economy of Housing in Turkey,” The International Journal of Urban and
Regional Research 22, no. 2 (1998), Sema Erder, ‹stanbul’a Bir Kent Kondu: Ümraniye (‹stanbul:
‹letiflim, 1996).
N E W P E R S P E C T I V E S O N T U R K E Y
associates any form of resistance to urban transformation projects with
criminal activities. He states:
Terrorist groups and people who are involved in drug and women
trafficking try to obstruct urban transformation projects, by
manipulating innocent people who live in gecekondu settlements.
Irregular urbanization breeds terrorism.32
A normalized equation appears here: earthquake, migration,
overpopulation, and crime create a sense of urgency, urban fear, and the
need to intervene. Urban transformation projects emerge as the only
possible solution/remedy for these “naturalized” urban problems; hence,
they are justified and normalized.
In the remaining part of this paper we will focus on two urban spaces
which have come into existence as part and parcel of the processes of
neoliberal urbanism: a public housing project, and a gated town.
Bezirganbahçe is an example of one of the public housing projects
constructed as part of the gecekondu transformation projects, whose
population has become the target of the emerging discourse of urgency and
urban fear. Göktürk, a gated town, is an example of an emerging space of
urban wealth, the inhabitants of which justify it by reference to urban fear.
An urban captivity: Bezirganbahçe
In 2007, the MHA completed a public housing project of 55 11-story
buildings with a total of 2,640 apartments in Küçükçekmece. The
Bezirganbahçe housing project became home to approximately 5,000
people displaced from two gecekondu settlements, demolished in 2007 as
part of urban transformation projects, Ayazma and Tepeüstü,33 both
located in the Küçükçekmece municipality.
Located in the ‹stasyon neighborhood, Bezirganbahçe is a ten-minute
minibus ride from the penultimate station of the Sirkeci-Halkal› train line, or
a fifteen-minute walking distance from the last station. It is like an island of
tall buildings that have mushroomed in the midst of two other low-income
areas, Yenido¤an and Tafltepe. The residents of Bezirganbahçe, especially the
32 “Kentsel Dönüflüm Gecekonduculara Tak›ld›,” Zaman, 28 November 2007.
33 Ayazma and Tepeüstü are gecekondu settlements that were established in the late 1980s and late
1970s, respectively. Ayazma is located across the Olympic stadium constructed in the early 2000s.
Tepeüstü is located on a small hill overlooking the ‹kitelli organized industrial zone. These two
settlements are about 2.5 kilometers apart, yet their population make-up is rather different from one
another. Tepeüstü’s population consists of migrants from the Black Sea region and Kurds who have
migrated from eastern and southeastern Turkey. Ayazma is predominantly populated by Kurds who
settled there in the late 1980s.
N E W P E R S P E C T I V E S O N T U R K E Y
19
20 Ayfer Bartu Candan and Biray Kolluo¤lu
women, prefer to use the minibus instead of walking the road to the
neighborhood because it has no sidewalks and is always lined with trucks,
since a customs zone is located nearby. Passing by the trucks, one reaches
Bezirganbahçe’s entrance with its bereft gate standing alone in the absence of
any walls or fences, and a security cabin with no security personnel. It has
barely been a year since the first residents have moved in, yet Bezirganbahçe
is already derelict, with the fallen plasters of the buildings, fading paint, and
shabby construction work. Neglected playgrounds, plots allocated for
landscaping with a few dead plants, and half-finished pavements and streets
add to the dilapidated look of this housing project.
This description of Bezirganbahçe is at odds with the Küçükçekmece
Municipality’s and the MHA’s discourse promoting the project as a remedy
for the housing problem of low-income groups in the city, by providing
affordable housing and better living conditions, and alleviating poverty. In
contrast to these claims, we argue that Bezirganbahçe can be interpreted as a
captive urban geography where emerging forms of poverty and social
exclusion are carved into urban space. In other words, through the
Bezirganbahçe case, we intend to illustrate the emergence of a new space of
urban poverty within the context of the neoliberal restructuring in ‹stanbul.
The Küçükçekmece municipality has been an ardent proponent of urban
transformation projects. Being well-versed in the neoliberal language, the
mayor of Küçükçekmece, Aziz Yeniay, describes his “vision” on the
municipality’s website as follows: “To be a home for happy people and the
center of attraction for the world, having completed its urban
transformation projects, to host the Olympics, with its lake, sea, forest and
all sorts of social utilities.”34 Küçükçekmece’s promixity to the airport, its
natural assets, and its capacity to host potential future international events
such as the Olympic Games are all highlighted to prepare the city for the
“world” and to justify various urban transformation projects. In line with
this vision, two high-profile urban transformation projects are publicized.
One of them is the pending project of the Malaysian architect Ken Yeang
mentioned above; the other is the already completed project of “cleaning
up” the area around the Olympic stadium, which brought about the
demolition of Ayazma and Tepeüstü.
In the past, similar “cleaning up” projects were carried out during highprofile
international events hosted in the city, such as the HABITAT II
conference in 1996, Champions League football games, and the Formula 1
races in 2005, as well as during the various failed bids to host the 2000,
34 “Misyon & Vizyon,” Küçükçekmece Belediyesi,
https://www.kucukcekmece.bel.tr/icerik_detay.
asp?tur=20&id=7.
N E W P E R S P E C T I V E S O N T U R K E Y
2004, 2008, and 2012 Olympics. The ongoing urban transformation
projects are yet another wave of “cleaning up” the city, and squatter
settlements seem to be the primary targets. In his discussion of various
“beautification” projects in the Third World, Davis suggests:
In the urban Third World, poor people dread high-profile international
events—conferences, dignitary visits, sporting events, beauty contests,
and international festivals—that prompt authorities to launch crusades
to clean up the city: slum-dwellers know that they are the “dirt” or
“blight” that their governments prefer the world not to see.35
This has exactly been the case in Ayazma and Tepeüstü. Although the
current municipality law gives the municipalities the authority to
designate areas that are physically dilapidated for urban transformation,
brochures prepared by the Küçükçekmece municipality explicitly describe
Ayazma and Tepeüstü as areas of “social and physical decay” (emphasis
ours), hence not only commenting on the physical conditions, but also
stigmatizing the residents of these areas. Ayazma and Tepeüstü were
designated as “urban clearance” areas, meaning that these urban spaces
were considered to be in need of “complete demolition and to be replaced
with new ones and the users of these spaces should be displaced and
replaced.”36 In the light of these depictions, these areas were demolished in
2007, and the residents were relocated to the Bezirganbahçe public housing
project.
Since Ayazma and Tepeüstü are gecekondu areas with complicated
ownership status, there have been different procedures for groups with and
without title deeds in the relocation process.37 There has been a series of
35 Davis, Planet of Slums, 104.
36 S›rma Turgut and Eda Çaçtafl Ceylan, eds., Küçükçekmece Mekansal Stratejik Plan› (‹stanbul:
Küçükçekmece Belediye Baflkanl›¤› Kentsel Dönüflüm ve Ar-Ge fiefli¤i, 2006), 47. Two other categories
are used in designating urban transformation areas: “urban regeneration” and “urban renewal.”
“Regeneration” refers to the creation of a new urban fabric in spaces that are destroyed, damaged and
ruined, and the integration of improvable/recoverable spaces into the new fabric by way of betterment.
“Renewal” refers to the protection and preservation of certain parts of the urban fabric or a structure
by using appropriate techniques, and the improvement of public spaces and infrastructure.
37 Gecekondus have been built predominantly on publicly owned land in the cities, and ownership in
these settlements has always been a complicated matter. Ownership in the gecekondu might mean
several things. It could mean (1) having the “use right” of a house through a gecekondu amnesty law;
(2) having a title deed of the land but not the house on it; or (3) not having any title deed or the “use
right” of either the land or the house. See, Bu¤ra, “The Immoral Economy of Housing.”, Ça¤lar
Keyder, “Liberalization from Above and the Future of the Informal Sector: Land, Shelter, and
Informality in the Periphery,” in Informalization: Process and Structure, ed. Faruk Tabak and
Michaeline Crichlow (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000), ‹lhan Tekeli, “Gecekondu,”
in ‹stanbul Ansiklopedisi (‹stanbul: Tarih Vakf›, 1993).
N E W P E R S P E C T I V E S O N T U R K E Y
21
22 Ayfer Bartu Candan and Biray Kolluo¤lu
negotiations, the content of which is not revealed either by the local
municipality or the MHA, conducted with the residents with title deeds
regarding where they will move, and the conditions of payment. For those
without title deeds, who constitute the majority of the residents, the realestate
value of the house was calculated, and this amount then considered
as down-payment for their new houses in Bezirganbahçe. Official
agreements were signed between the residents and the MHA, specifying
the conditions of payment.
We argue that the new life and the daily experiences of former Ayazma
and Tepeüstü residents in Bezirganbahçe can be conceptualized as an urban
captivity. In what follows, we will discuss this urban captivity,
characterized by the emergence of new forms of poverty, social exclusion,
immobility in space, and ethnic tension.
It is not their declining income that creates the conditions of the further
impoverishment of the Bezirganbahçe residents. The conditions that had
contributed to their increasing poverty since the 1980s, which came on the
heels of the liberalization processes, have not changed with their move.
Nevertheless, Bezirganbahçe introduced new rules to the game. One of
these is the formalization of land use and ownership rights, through a
formal agreement between the residents and the MHA. If residents are
unable to meet two consecutive payments, their houses are confiscated.
The residents have also become formal users of basic services such as water,
natural gas, and electricity, rather than getting them through their
negotiations with the local municipality or through informal means.38
Now, they have to pay regular bills in order to sustain these services.
Among the displaced population, those who are employed predominantly
work in the industrial or garment production sectors. But most of them
have precarious jobs, irregular income, rely on the sporadic financial
support they get from their children, or depend on the aid they get from the
local government and/or NGOs in terms of clothing, food, and school
supplies. The monthly household income ranges from approximately 400
to 1,000 YTL.39 Of this income, 220 to 250 YTL is paid monthly to the
38 In Ayazma and Tepeüstü, as in many other gecekondu areas, the majority of the residents used
electricity through illegal and informal means, and there was no provision of piped water and natural
gas. The municipality delivered water with tankers for free. In other words, they did not get any
formal bills, especially for water and natural gas.
39 The minimum wage in Turkey is net 503.26 YTL per month (USD 425). The food poverty line that
contains only food expenditures for a household of four is 231 YTL. The complete poverty line that
contains both food and non-food expenditures for a household of four is 598 YTL; see Türkiye
‹statistik Kurumu,
..::Türkiye İstatistik Kurumu Web sayfalarına Hoş Geldiniz::... Adaman and Keyder argue that although the ratio of people living
below the food poverty line is around 2 percent, the “risk of poverty,” defined as 60 percent of the
median of equivalized net income of all households, is 26 percent based on 2003 figures. They also
N E W P E R S P E C T I V E S O N T U R K E Y
MHA. The monthly maintenance fee required by the administration of the
housing project is 35 YTL. In addition, there are electricity, water, and
natural gas bills. Overall, approximately a minimum of 350 YTL is required
to cover their basic monthly expenses, a significant financial burden for a
population which already has a precarious and limited income.
Secondly, some of the mechanisms that enabled the residents to survive
in Ayazma and Tepeüstü have ceased to exist in Bezirganbahçe. For
example, the gardens that used to provide produce for their survival are
now declared as part of the landscaping, which, as we mentioned earlier, are
actually in rather dismal condition. “We had our gardens there [Tepeüstü],”
says a 55-year-old woman, “we would grow our own produce, we had our
fruit trees in the garden. We would not starve there. Here we are stuck in
our apartments.” “If we can, we go out for grocery shopping once a week,”
her husband adds, “otherwise we just keep on drinking tea.” This Turkish
couple relies heavily on the financial support they get from their two sons
who have irregular jobs with no social security. A related mechanism has to
do with the use of credit, veresiye,40 which used to be crucial for their
survival, but is extremely limited in Bezirganbahçe. In the housing complex
itself, there is a chain supermarket that does not allow such transactions,
and few of them have managed to find a small grocery store in neighboring
Yenido¤an where they continue to practice veresiye. Since the veresiye
system relies on trust, familiarity and ongoing negotiations, this option has
been especially limited for Kurds, due to the ethnic tension in the area, that
will be discussed below.
Thirdly, due to financial constraints, the residents’ mobility in the city
is rather limited, or their movements are restricted to utilitarian purposes.
Those who have jobs go to work, and the mobility of others, and especially
women, is shaped by several tasks: searching for means of delaying the
monthly payment in the central office of the housing administration in
Baflakflehir,41 going to the AKP headquarters in Sefaköy for networking,
going to the kaymakam’s (district governor) office to get second-hand
clothing for their children, and going to the local municipality’s office in
suggest that the incidence of the “working poor” in Turkey is very high: the risk of poverty among
the employed is around 23 percent. See Adaman and Keyder, “Poverty and Social Exclusion.”
40 Veresiye refers to a form of economic transaction where the payment is deferred, with the expectation
that the debt will be periodically paid, depending on the income of the customer. Credit does not
aptly capture the nature of veresiye. It is based primarily on trust and negotiation. There may be
different forms where payment dates are negotiated between the buyer and the seller. This has been
a common economic practice in many neighborhoods and is based on personal and informal
networks and relations.
41 All of these place names mentioned in this section are neighborhoods within a 5 to 15 km range from
Bezirganbahçe (except for Çatalca, which is 35 km away). This points to an extremely limited urban
geography within which the interviewees circulate.
N E W P E R S P E C T I V E S O N T U R K E Y
23
24 Ayfer Bartu Candan and Biray Kolluo¤lu
Küçükçekmece, to the “White Desk,” for various needs, most of which are
not met. But usually their mobility is extremely limited. A 36-year-old
woman commented that the only places she has been to in ‹stanbul are
Ba¤c›lar, where some of her relatives live, and Çatalca, where she went for
a picnic with her family. A young man, the father of three, resented the fact
that he was not able to take his family for a walk along the sea shore in
Küçükçekmece last year, a ten-minute minibus ride away, because he could
not save two liras for such a trip. He works in a plastic bag production
workshop in Davutpafla, works six days a week in shifts, and makes the
minimum wage of 503 YTL per month. For illiterate people, living in the
new and unfamiliar environment of the public housing project becomes
even more limiting. For example, a 55-year-old woman who moved from
Tepeüstü states: “I am illiterate and scared of leaving the apartment,
thinking that I might get lost. What if I cannot find my way back? When
we were there [Tepeüstü], I would go out to the garden, I would wander
around the house.” A 42-year-old man who works as an electrician aptly
describes the close relationship between poverty and the kind of
immobility described by many of the residents in Bezirganbahçe: “When
you have low income, you become more like a robot. You have limited
income, your expenses are predetermined. What you can do is also
predetermined.”
Fourthly, regulations regarding the use of public space in Bezirganbahçe
are very limiting. A private firm, Bo¤aziçi A.fi., is in charge of the
administration of the housing complex.42 This firm is responsible for
collecting the monthly maintenance fees, providing social facilities such as
parks and playgrounds, and overseeing the maintenance of the housing
complex. The regulation of the use of space in the settlement also enhances
the sense of captivity described by the residents. There is an overemphasis
on the implementation of a new life style, as exemplified by the elaborate
signs posted at the entrance of each apartment building, describing “ways
of living in an apartment building,” including information on how to use
the balconies and toilets. There are rules against stepping on the lawn
which is actually just bare earth demarcated by fences. The residents are
forbidden to sit and gather in front of the buildings. This especially affects
women, since they had to give up their common practice of gathering in
front of the houses and in their gardens in gecekondu areas. Any social
42 As we have discussed above, two recent municipal laws in 2004 and 2005 have enabled the greater
municipalities to establish and form partnerships and to collaborate with private companies.
Bo¤aziçi A.fi. is an example of such a partnership. This firm has a partnership with K‹PTAfi, another
private partner firm of the municipality. Bo¤aziçi A.fi. took over the administration of the
Bezirganbahçe housing project through the bidding process of the municipality.
N E W P E R S P E C T I V E S O N T U R K E Y
gathering in the gardens of the apartment buildings is monitored and
regulated, so that these activities do not damage the landscaping scheme
proposed by the administration. These regulations in their totality not only
assume that the new residents of Bezirganbahçe are alien to the rules and
norms of modern urban life, but also exhibit an unabashedly
condescending attitude. The project administration assumes absolute
command over the knowledge of what is modern and urban and is
imparting this knowledge. All this, inevitably, connotes the civilizing
project.
Added to the limitations described above, Bezirganbahçe is a place
where potential and actual violence is evident and rampant. The public
housing project is located in a neighborhood whose residents are known to
be supporters of an ultra-nationalist political party (Milliyetçi Hareket
Partisi, MHP). Their political affiliation is visible through the graffiti and
symbols inscribed on the walls of the houses in Yenido¤an. Given the
ethnic make-up of the current population in Bezirganbahçe, the tension
between the Kurdish and Turkish population is noticeable. A recurrent
story we heard from many is that a group of young men from Yenido¤an
attacked the housing project in a car covered with a Turkish flag during the
campaigns for the general elections of 2007. A young man was seriously
wounded, and similar tensions have been ongoing since then. Internal
tensions between the residents of the housing project are also evident.
There has been an increasing sense of resentment towards the Kurdish
population, expressed very explicitly by those who identify themselves as
Turkish. A 56-year-old man, originally from the Black Sea coast, who
moved to Bezirganbahçe from Tepeüstü suggests:
The ones who come from Ayazma are wild, untamed. They are from the
East. They lived across the Olympic stadium, in the middle of an open
space, there was nothing else around. They have been left too much on
their own, without any control or authority. We in Tepeüstü had the
police station across our houses. We, at least, had some contact with the
police, state officials, whereas, the ones from Ayazma haven’t seen
anything.
Another woman, also from Tepeüstü, shares similar sentiments:
We are also squatters, we also come from a squatter settlement. One
needs to learn something in a new environment. I hope that they [the
ones from Ayazma] leave. They want to live by their own rules here.
Our hope is that their houses will be confiscated and they will have to
N E W P E R S P E C T I V E S O N T U R K E Y
25
26 Ayfer Bartu Candan and Biray Kolluo¤lu
leave. These are people who came out of caves. If they leave, we will be
more than happy and live here comfortably. If they stay, we would have
to live with that.
It is evident that living in Bezirganbahçe has overturned the balance of the
ethnic relations that were established in Ayazma and Tepeüstü. In contrast
to the former organically formed spatial boundaries and social relations, in
Bezirganbahçe Turks and Kurds find themselves in an artificially formed
physical environment that they are forced to share. They become neighbors
in apartment buildings and use the same public facilities, such as the
gardens and playgrounds. In this new spatial proximity, ethnic relations are
redefined, currently in rather tense and sometimes violent terms. The
Kurds we interviewed have divergent views on this tension. Some of them
express resentment about the hostile feelings expressed by the Turks, but
some of the Kurds see the spatial proximity in Bezirganbahçe as a “learning
experience,” as an opportunity for assimilating to mainstream Turkish
culture.
Given the formalization of their relationship with the municipality and
the state, the changes in the subsistence mechanisms, the limited mobility
in the city, and the ethnic tensions, a new form of poverty, and various
forms of social exclusion emerge in Bezirganbahçe. Those who used to own
a house in the gecekondu area potentially run the risk of losing their homes
in Bezirganbahçe, unless they are able to meet the monthly payments. Since
many of the households either have extremely limited or irregular income,
it is very likely that a significant number of people will have to leave
Bezirganbahçe. Although it is difficult to obtain official numbers, our
respondents mentioned that already some of the families’ apartments were
either confiscated or that they had to sell them and move, mostly to
Çerkezköy, a growing industrial town in the Thrace region, to build another
gecekondu.43 In other words, we have so far observed a potential process of
expropriation of gecekondu residents and displacement of poverty in urban
space, rather than the alleviation of poverty or ownership of homes in
modern buildings. Those who stay in Bezirganbahçe are subjected to
multiple layers of social exclusion—social, economic, spatial, and
43 In the agreement made between the residents and the MHA, there are restrictions regarding the
conditions for selling these apartments, but the residents use informal means to sell their
apartments for around 50,000 YTL, along with the remaining payment installments of approximately
40,000 YTL (a total of approximately USD 75,000). Since they bought these homes for about USD
45,000 (the real-estate value of their previous residence is counted as the down payment,
approximately USD 10,000, and they need to pay the remaining USD 35,000 in installments), they
do not lose money when they sell, but they give up their chance of owning an apartment.
N E W P E R S P E C T I V E S O N T U R K E Y
cultural—as described by Adaman and Keyder in their study of the slum
areas of six metropolitan cities in Turkey.44
Compared to similar dis/relocation and “urban clearance” projects,45
however, what is novel and remarkable in Bezirganbahçe and other ongoing
urban transformation projects in ‹stanbul is the overemphasis on “social
inclusion.” This is rather ironic, given the processes of social exclusion we
have described above. This theme of “social inclusion” runs through the
various campaigns of the greater and local municipalities. As suggested by
Aziz Yeniay, the mayor of the Küçükçekmece Municipality, “urban
transformation does not mean destruction, our aim as the municipality is
to eradicate gecekondus through specific plans without harming our
citizens and to provide them with better and healthy living conditions.”46
In Bezirganbahçe, there are always officials or staff from the Küçükçekmece
municipality conducting questionnaire surveys regarding the needs of the
residents. A “Career Center” located within the housing complex was
established by the local municipality, funded through a European Union
project called “Alleviation of Poverty and Social Inclusion Project,” with
the aim of training the residents for available jobs in the market.
This pretension of social inclusion is pertinent to what Miraftab
describes as the complex and paradoxical nature of neoliberal
governance.47 In her discussion of city improvement districts and
community-based waste collection strategies in Capetown, Miraftab
draws attention to the ways in which the local municipality, through
various discursive and spatial practices, simultaneously creates symbolic
inclusion and material exclusion.48 She suggests: “The complexity of
neoliberalism’s mode of governing lies precisely in such simultaneously
launched spaces of inclusion and exclusion.”49 Bezirganbahçe seems to be
a good example of the simultaneous processes of symbolic inclusion and
material exclusion. On the one hand, a range of “social inclusion” projects
are enacted and surveys conducted; on the other hand, residents are
stripped off of their material means of survival. As a result, such a
relocation project ends up being a project of relocation of poverty and its
44 “Poverty and Social Exclusion.”
45 For a discussion of similar urban dis/relocation projects see, Farha Ghannam, Remaking the Modern:
Space, Relocation, and the Politics of Identity in a Global Cairo (Berkeley: University of California Press,
2002), Davis, Planet of Slums.
46 “Yeniay: Kentsel Dönüflüm Kimseyi Ma¤dur Etmeyecek,” Zaman, 9 August 2005.
47 Faranak Miraftab, “Making Neoliberal Governance: The Disempowering Work of Empowerment,”
International Planning Studies 4, no. 9 (2004), Faranak Miraftab, “Governing Post-apartheid
Spatiality: Implementing City Improvement Districts in Cape Town,” Antipode 39, no. 4 (2007).
48 Miraftab, “Making Neoliberal Governance.”
49 Miraftab, “Governing Post-apartheid Spatiality,” 619.
N E W P E R S P E C T I V E S O N T U R K E Y
27
28 Ayfer Bartu Candan and Biray Kolluo¤lu
reproduction in new forms. Indeed, the residents are very skeptical about
this pretension of social inclusion. There is a sense of distrust among the
residents that none of the information collected through the
questionnaires is being used for anything other than creating an effect of
participation, accountability, and transparency. As a 20-year-old Turkish
woman from Tepeüstü puts it:
I wish they had asked these questions, our needs, before they made us
move here. They loaded our things on trucks, demolished our houses,
took pictures, then moved us here and gave us the keys to these new
houses. This is not urban transformation, this is a means to push us back
to our villages. We have nothing to rely on, no security. Those who will
be able to pay the monthly bills will stay. But there will be people who
will fall behind, and they will have to leave. And then the municipality
or the MHA will sell their apartments. What these questionnaires do is
that they enable them [the municipality] on paper to say that they ask
the residents what they want and need. It is not that they use this
information. We know that they throw away these papers.
But even attempts at symbolic inclusion can easily be dismissed, rendered
irrelevant in the face of other urgencies awaiting ‹stanbul, as is evident in
the following news coverage:
The Küçükçekmece municipality moves those living in squatter
settlements to public housing projects and conducts education
programs to help them learn “urban culture.” Aziz Yeniay, the
Küçükçekmece mayor, emphasizes: “With this method we can finish
the urban transformation in slightly less than 500 years [...] The state
should immediately take the urban transformation project in ‹stanbul
within the scope of ‘national security.’ The highest priority of Turkey
should be the buildings of ‹stanbul. If the anticipated ‹stanbul
earthquake occurs, this country will collapse and even be divided not
because of terror, but because of the earthquake. A war must be declared
immediately [...] first we will try to convince people. If we can’t, the
transformation will be realized by force of law.”50
Here the discourse of urgency is mobilized, especially through the pending
earthquake, to justify urban transformation projects. As pointed out by the
50 Funda Özkan, “Vatandafl Omuz Vermezse Kentsel Dönüflüme 500 Y›l da Yetmez,” Radikal, 10
January 2008.
N E W P E R S P E C T I V E S O N T U R K E Y
Küçükçekmece mayor, educational programs and attempts to convince the
people can be suspended, and a “war” should be declared to pursue these
transformation projects, in which the law will be employed as a weapon.
From this urban captivity we will turn to a qualitatively different urban
margin, the gated town of Göktürk, which emerges as a new space of urban
wealth and a new urban order in the context of neoliberalizing ‹stanbul.
A gated town: Göktürk
Göktürk, a relatively insignificant village at the beginning of the 1990s,
located in the northwestern periphery of ‹stanbul, became a gated town of
16,000 in the latter half of the 2000s. The village’s fate changed with the
building of roads that connected it with Maslak, the new commercial and
financial center of ‹stanbul, also built in the 1990s.51 In 1993, Göktürk’s
administrative status was upgraded from a village to a belde municipality.
The latter category, a relatively autonomous local administrative structure,
opened the area for land development and enabled unbridled and fast
growth.52 The fast growth can unmistakably be traced through population
figures. Göktürk’s population rose from 3,068 in 1990, to 8,693 in 2000,
only to double by 2008.53
It is not the rapid population growth that renders this place
particularly significant, but the structure and characteristics of the
population and the space. Göktürk is populated by people whose
minimum income is at least 20 times higher than the official minimum
wage, whose family structures closely resemble one another, who shop
in the same places and eat in the same restaurants, send their children to
the same schools, see movies in the same theaters, and spend their
weekends engaged in similar activities. Göktürk inhabitants share yet
another set of characteristics which actually both render them a distinct
sociological group and make their distinctiveness visible. The majority
51 For an analysis of the planning, building, and the impact of the Maslak axis see, Binnur Öktem,
“Küresel Kent Söyleminin Kentsel Mekân› Dönüfltürmedeki Rolü: Büyükdere-Maslak Hatt›,” in
‹stanbul’da Kentsel Ayr›flma: Mekansal Dönüflümde Farkl› Boyutlar, ed. Hatice Kurtulufl (‹stanbul:
Ba¤lam, 2005).
52 For a further discussion of the administrative flexibilities provided by the status of belde municipality,
see, Dan›fl and Pérouse, “Zenginli¤in Mekânda Yeni Yans›malar›.” We need to note that Göktürk’s
administrative status has recently been changed again as part of the restructuring of the municipal
administrative structure of ‹stanbul in early 2008. It has been demoted from a belde municipality to
a mahalle of the Eyüp Municipality, a smaller local administrative unit. Although the consequences
of the newly drawn local administrative map of the city, which, among other changes, eliminated the
majority of the belde municipalities and consolidated them under the already existing or newly
created district municipalities, are yet to unravel, we can say that the relative autonomy and
administrative flexibility of Göktürk will diminish to a large extent.
53 Türkiye ‹statistik Kurumu,
..::Türkiye İstatistik Kurumu Web sayfalarına Hoş Geldiniz::...
N E W P E R S P E C T I V E S O N T U R K E Y
29
30 Ayfer Bartu Candan and Biray Kolluo¤lu
of the inhabitants of Göktürk live in houses with gardens, maintained
with the assistance of domestics, gardeners and drivers. These spacious
and luxuriously furnished houses are located in housing compounds
whose borders are clearly identifiable through physical markers, usually
walls. What strengthens the physical markers of separation is the strict
surveillance through controls at the gates and security personnel inside
the compounds, backed by high-tech surveillance devices. These
physical and spatial attributes are assembled in a particular manner that
strictly regulate and limit the relation of these compounds with the
outside. They are inward-looking spaces that have decidedly cut
themselves off from the outside, or as Caldeira writes about the fortified
enclaves of Sao Paulo, “the enclaves are private universes turned inward
with designs and organizations making no gestures toward the
street.”54
The old village of Göktürk in the Göktürk mahallesi, which covers an
area of 25 square kilometers, now resembles an island surrounded by these
segregated residential compounds. The overall housing stock is 4,803 units
in 34 compounds. The first compound—the earliest and leading example of
gated communities in ‹stanbul or the ur-gated community—Kemer
Country, was built in 1989. It was only a decade later that the rush to
Göktürk actually took off. The next compound was built in 1997, followed
by two others in 1999. The rest, in fact, came into existence in the 2000s.
The increasing pace of development in Göktürk is no exception to the rapid
growth of gated towns in other parts of ‹stanbul.
As one approaches Göktürk on the highway, one is taken aback by the
sudden appearance of these residential compounds whose effect of
artificiality is amplified in their togetherness. The architectural styles of the
compounds vary greatly, from the mimicking of Ottoman architecture to
minimalist buildings, creating a kitsch look. There are currently five
schools (three of which are private), four hospitals (three of which are
private), four shopping malls, six supermarkets and 25 restaurants and
cafes in the area. Hence, Göktürk cannot be pinned down by concepts such
as gated community or fortified enclave. Rather, this is a gated town,
despite the absence of actual walls enclosing the development in its
entirety.
54 “Privatized, enclosed, and monitored spaces” are also the characteristics that Teresa Caldeira
includes in her definition of what she calls fortified residential enclaves in Sao Paulo. Her
characterization helps us come to grips with what we see in Göktürk and with what others have
observed for widely differing cities around the world. See, P. R. Teresa Caldeira, “Fortified Enclaves:
The New Urban Segregation,” in Theorizing the City: The New Urban Anthropology Reader, ed. Setha
M. Low (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2005), 93.
N E W P E R S P E C T I V E S O N T U R K E Y
In reference to Ridley Scott’s movie Blade Runner, Mike Davis aptly
calls these gated towns “off worlds,” spaces of disembedded urban lives.55
The residents of these “off worlds” not only share similar spatial
arrangements, but also exhibit similar patterns in their daily practices, in
their familial arrangements, and in their urban practices. These include a
spatially and socially shrinking city, a bloating of the private sphere, the
increasing centrality of family and children in their lives, a deepening
isolation from the rest of the city and society for that matter, and the
privatization of urban governance. Now we will turn to a discussion of
these patterns as they emerged in our interviews with the residents of
various segregated residential compounds in Göktürk.
The most striking and salient pattern is that, while ‹stanbul has expanded
geographically and demographically, the “‹stanbuls” used, experienced, and
lived in by different social groups and classes are actually shrinking. What
we mean by shrinking ‹stanbuls is that different socio-economic groups in
‹stanbul are increasingly caged to an ever-smaller city, roaming around in
very limited spaces with little or no contact with one another. All our
respondents said that they go to the city less frequently since they began to
live in Göktürk. The most common reasons cited to frequent the city was to
see their doctors or do their shopping. The latter activity is taking place in
designated and predictable places. They shop mostly in Akmerkez and
Kanyon, both high-end shopping malls. The former is located in Etiler, one
of the elite neighborhoods of ‹stanbul, and the latter was built recently at the
tail end of the Maslak axis, the new financial district mentioned earlier.
Göktürk residents also go to Niflantafl› for their shopping, an old upper-class
neighborhood. Almost exclusively they frequent the movie theaters in
Kanyon, and eating out usually means the restaurants in Kanyon, the kebap
houses in Levent and Niflantafl›, or fish restaurants on the Bosphorous. We
should note that our respondents said that they went to the city for eating
out less often than before. Increasingly, they patronize the restaurants in
Göktürk or the social club in Kemer Country. This is how a 43-year-old selfemployed
respondent explained the way her city was getting smaller and her
unfamiliarity with most of its parts was increasing: “Our life is limited to
very specific neighborhoods like Etiler, Niflantafl›, Kemerburgaz, that is,
around here. Nowadays because of my new job I have been going to parts of
‹stanbul that I had never seen in my life. I do not even know the names of
these places. There is a prison, what is it called?”56
55 Davis, Planet of Slums, 118.
56 Kemerburgaz is a village near Göktürk, after which the ur-gated community was named. Some of the
residents of Göktürk and specifically those who live in Kemer Country use Kemerburgaz rather than
Göktürk to name their neighborhood. Here, she refers to the prison in Bayrampafla, a lower-middle-
N E W P E R S P E C T I V E S O N T U R K E Y
31
32 Ayfer Bartu Candan and Biray Kolluo¤lu
Working people have flexible working hours that enable them to evade
rush hours, and their offices are located either in Niflantafl› or Levent. Hence,
they can glide through the Maslak axis to their work places only to directly
return to their homes. This is similar to what Dennis Rodgers describes for
Managua, Nicaragua, where the elites not so much insularly withdrew from
the city, but managed to disembed themselves from the city, “through the
constitution of a fortified network that extends across the face of the
metropolis.”57 The Asian side—that is, the part of ‹stanbul east of the
Bosphorus—is visited almost exclusively for family visits. More importantly,
the residents of Göktürk’s segregated residential compounds seem to be
clueless about parts of ‹stanbul other than the few middle- or upper-middleclass
neighborhoods. They can hardly name neighborhoods on the outskirts
of the city. A 43-year-old woman, an architect, says: “There are those who
live in ‹stanbul, yet never have been to Taksim Square. These people live
somewhere, but I do not even know the names of those neighborhoods.”58
While the residents of Göktürk live and circulate in a maze of fortified
networks in an increasingly smaller ‹stanbul, the dominant characteristics
of most of the spaces they use, including their residential compounds, are
their anonymity, artificiality and indistinct character. Göktürk’s residential
compounds—like the shopping malls, chain restaurants, chain cafes or the
chain hair-dressers and other places that their residents use—can be
described as non-places; that is, places that lack history, do not have
distinguishable markers of identity, and perhaps most importantly are
places that can be replicated endlessly in different spaces. In other words, if
Göktürk, or similar gated towns like Göktürk, were to be moved to a
different location, they would not lose any of their defining characteristics.
This, we argue, renders them non-places.59 The artificiality, anonymity and
class district with over 200,000 residents. This district expanded in the 1950s, mainly as a result of
Muslim immigration from former Yugoslavia. The Bayrampafla Sa¤malc›lar prison, infamous for its
political prisoners, was in recent years vacated and declared as a site of “urban transformation,”
along with its vicinity.
57 Dennis Rodgers, “‘Disembedding’ the City: Crime, Insecurity and Spatial Organization in Managua,
Nicaragua,” Environment and Urbanization 16, no. 2 (2004): 123. Mike Davis also cites Dennis
Rodgers and argues that these fortified networks make the disembedding of affluence viable. The
highway, Davis writes “has been the sine qua non for the suburbanization of affluence.” Davis, Planet
of Slums, 118.
58 Taksim Square is the most central place of the city, which in a way defines it, like the Times Square
of New York, the Piccadilly Circus of London, or the Potsdamer Platz of Berlin.
59 One of the best-known conceptualizations of non-places is provided by Marc Augé, Non-places: An
Introduction to an Anthropology of Supermodernity (London: Verso, 1995). In contrast to a place that
is identifiable through relations, history and identity, a non-place is “a space which cannot be defined
as relational, historical or concerned with identity” (p. 78). Augé also talks about the anonymity and
similitude of non-places. George Ritzer defines non-places as generic, interchangeable, and spaceless
and time-less places. See, George Ritzer, The Globalization of Nothing (Thousand Oaks: Pine
N E W P E R S P E C T I V E S O N T U R K E Y
generic nature of Göktürk is readily acknowledged by the respondents. One
of them described Kemer Country in particular and Göktürk in general as a
“simulation, a lego city.” Another respondent was arguing that her
compound carried no clues of being in ‹stanbul. As she put it, “it might as
well have been in Konya [a central Anatolian city].”
As the residents of Göktürk use an increasingly smaller part of the city and
as the parts that they frequent and live in have fewer identifiers and markers
of particularity, their idea of the city is epitomized by certain areas such as
Beyo¤lu and Cihangir,60 where they do not go at all. Living in such places
presents itself as a daring act. Here is how the architect quoted earlier put it:
I think that those people who want to live in a rooted environment
prefer old neighborhoods… I think Beyo¤lu is such a place and I respect
those who choose to live in Beyo¤lu. They make a very conscious
choice… and they cope with many challenges because of their choices. I
would have liked to be able to do that but I do not have that kind of
courage. I respect those who have it.
One could argue that on the one hand a city that is chaotic, heterogeneous,
old, rooted, and infused with signs of particularity is increasingly relegated
to a state of fantasy; on the other hand, the possibility of actually
experiencing it is rendered more and more unthinkable. As the idea of the
city and urbanity is embodied in places where one can feel anonymous,
rather than in anonymous spaces, the idea itself becomes an object of desire
that is potentially fearful.61
Forge Press, 2004), 39-54. For a further discussion of place and non-place see also E. C. Relph, Place
and Placelessnes (London: Pion, 1977).
60 Beyo¤lu is the neighborhood around ‹stiklal Street which leads to Taksim Square. Since the
nineteenth century, Beyo¤lu has been the heart of urban sociability and entertainment with its movie
theaters, restaurants and cafés. In the past two decades, this neighborhood whose nineteenthcentury
architecture remains largely intact has exhibited more extravagance both in its day- and
night-life and attracted ever-larger crowds to its exponentially increasing shops, movie theaters,
exhibition centers, bars, cafés, meyhanes (taverns), restaurants and night clubs. It is a neighborhood
that never sleeps and attracts people from all walks of life, and might as well be counted among the
most crowded in the world. Cihangir is also an old neighborhood located between Beyo¤lu and the
Bosphorus and has undergone gentrification in the 1990s. While between the 1960s and 1990s it
used be rather dilapidated, it now is one of the most favored places of residence for artists,
intellectuals and expats, among others. Its late-nineteenth and early-twentieth-century apartments
have been rapidly renovated, and cafés, bars and restaurants have mushroomed in its narrow and
intricate streets over the past two decades.
61 For an interesting discussion of the beginning of night-life in cities in the nineteenth century, the
emergence of desires and fantasies about the unknowns of urban life, and the threats and dangers
in which these unknowns are wrapped, see, Joachim Schlör, Nights in the Big City: Paris, Berlin,
London 1840-1930 (London: Reaktion Books, 1998). Peter Stallybrass and Allon White also offer a
discussion of the coupling of fear and desire through the mediation of the urban context. Regarding
N E W P E R S P E C T I V E S O N T U R K E Y
33
34 Ayfer Bartu Candan and Biray Kolluo¤lu
This spatial shrinking translates into increasing social distances
between different groups and classes. As Bauman argues, nearness and
farness in social space “record the degree of taming, domestication and
familiarity of various fragments of the surrounding world. Near is where
one feels at home and far away invites trouble and is potentially harmful
and dangerous.”62 This is how Göktürk residents approach the working
classes. They have little if any contact with other social groups. The only
contact they have with the working classes is through the services they
receive from waiters, delivery boys, porters, security personnel and
caddies, and most intimately from nannies, domestics, drivers and
gardeners. Their indifference towards the people who are working in their
domestic settings and intimate spaces is telling. They may not know how a
domestic who has worked for them for years commutes, or where a live-inservant
of two years is from.63 The knowledge and information about the
rest of the lower classes are filtered through the media and draped in fear
and anxiety. For instance, a 45-year-old dietician says, “I had no personal
experience of assault or attack. But we constantly read these kinds of things
in the papers and watch them on the television. One must be afraid.” The
city presents itself as a space that is contaminated by unknown groups, as
we have discussed above.
The same respondent relates her urban experience as follows:
When I go to the city I look forward to the moment that I come back
home, and I try to return as quickly as possible. Perhaps I have forgotten
how to walk on the streets but it feels like everybody is coming onto me.
All people seem like potentially threatening when I am in the city,
particularly when I am not that familiar with the neighborhood. It does
not feel like this in Niflantafl› or Etiler but in other places, especially
when dusk sets in everybody becomes dangerous.
In our interviews we asked if our respondents had any actual experiences of
attack or violence in the city. While none of them were subjected to any
nineteenth-century European urbanity, they write about the rat’s emergence as “the conscience of
the demonized Other from the city’s underground” and becoming an object of fear and loathing as
well as a source of fascination. See, Peter Stallybrass, The Politics and Poetics of Transgression (Ithaca:
Cornell University Press, 1986), 145.
62 Zygmunt Bauman, “Urban Space Wars: On Destructive Order and Creative Chaos,” Citizenship
Studies 2, no. 3 (1998): 174.
63 Hatice Kurtulufl discusses a similar kind of indifference towards domestic workers in the Beykoz
Konaklar›, another gated community on the Asian side of ‹stanbul. See, Hatice Kurtulufl, “‹stanbul’da
Kapal› Yerleflmeler: Beykoz Konaklar› Örne¤i,” in ‹stanbul’da Kentsel Ayr›flma: Mekansal Dönüflümde
Farkl› Boyutlar, ed. Hatice Kurtulufl (‹stanbul: Ba¤lam, 2005).
N E W P E R S P E C T I V E S O N T U R K E Y
assault, a few had stories of perceived threats that were formulated as actual
acts. Here is one of those stories, told by a 36-year-old housewife who
mentioned a few times during the interview that one of her hobbies was
driving race cars:
Once I was in the car driving up Hac› Hüsrev towards Dolapdere.64 There
was traffic. I sensed that this young boy, who looked as if he was high
from sniffing glue, was walking towards my car. I felt that he was not
going to pass me by. As he was closing in, I immediately checked the rear
mirror and saw that his friend was approaching from the back. All this
takes place in a matter of seconds. Neither of course will be able to break
my rear window or windshield. But still they will be able to upset me and
get on my nerves.65 I drove away so fast and you know I am a good driver
and can control the car very well. Of course there was the possibility of
driving over the foot of the boy standing nearby, but still, knowing that
possibility I pushed hard on the gas pedal. I did not care a jot if I were to
run over his foot because at that moment I was thinking only about
myself. It was not important at all if the boy was to be run over.
The interviewees use the city less and less, and frequent only certain
neighborhoods and leisure and shopping places; put differently, they lead
disembedded urban lives in the maze of their fortified networks.
Nevertheless, they do not feel completely secure either in the shopping
malls or even in Göktürk outside their homes and compounds. In almost all
of the interviews, our respondents told us stories of assault, stories whose
sources were rather vague and ambivalent, around the supermarkets and
other shopping places in Göktürk. Most of them pointed at the Göktürk
village as a potential source of crime and danger, underlining the poverty
and ethnic background of the people living there. Poverty is readily and
unproblematically criminalized. As we have discussed earlier, signs of
poverty in and of themselves are perceived as dangerous and threatening.66
Here is another illustration of this in the words of a 51-year-old housewife:
64 Dolapdere, a neighborhood around Beyo¤lu which predominantly houses migrants and specifically
Kurdish migrants, is reputedly one of the most dangerous places in the city.
65 She had explained earlier in the interview that her car windows were covered with a protective layer
that fortified her car against attacks, including bullets.
66 For a discussion of the relationship between the criminalization of poverty and neoliberalization,
specifically wage instability and social insecurity induced by this process, see, Brenner and Theodore,
“Cities and the Geographies,” Jamie Peck and Adam Tickell, “Neoliberalizing Space,” Antipode 34,
no. 3 (2002), Loïc Wacquant, “Labour Market Insecurity and the Criminalization of Poverty,” in Youth
and Work in The Post-Industrial City of North America and Europe, ed. Laurance Roulleau-Berger
(Netherlands: Brill, 2003).
N E W P E R S P E C T I V E S O N T U R K E Y
35
36 Ayfer Bartu Candan and Biray Kolluo¤lu
Although it is rather poignant to say this, there are people who never
had a chance to see anything in their lives and who think that being in
Akmerkez is a major event or accomplishment of their lives. These are
people who come from places deep in Anatolia and have pretentions to
be modern. They lack norms and values, in a way they are worthless
people. He lives in a gecekondu and wears a fake Rolex watch that he
bought for one lira. This boy is capable of doing everything to my
daughter.
In a world where the outside is defined in terms of the unknowns, crowds,
ugliness, fear, and anxieties, there emerges an ever-clearer trend pointing
towards a return to the pleasures and securities of family life as an end in
itself. Not only did all of our respondents have children (in most cases more
than one), but daily life was almost exclusively structured around the
children, their needs, school and activities. In all the interviews, the
decision to move to Göktürk was enveloped within a story of providing
children with a secure environment where they could play outdoors safely.
For instance, a 40-year-old housewife said, “I do not know if I would have
come here if I did not have a child. That is I came here because of my child.”
The 45-year-old dietician mentioned earlier explained to us that they
shopped around for a school for her five-year-old son and let him choose
the one he liked. The son ended up choosing one of the schools in Göktürk.
She added, “we came here for the sake of my dearest son, so that he would
not have to travel long distances to go to his school.”
In these compounds, daily life, activities and sociability are anchored
around the children. “My husband and I spend Saturdays in their entirety
driving our two kids around. We have to take them to their different
activities, birthdays, etc.,” said a 41-year-old therapist. Another woman,
43 years old and self-employed in the service sector, observed that
“sociability and social relations here usually develop around children.
When you take them to their activities you are almost certain to meet other
parents.” The 36-year-old housewife we quoted above confirmed, “here,
one’s social circle forms around one’s children.”
Lives structured around family and children lead to an ever-deepening
isolation and insularity. Not only are their ties with the city weakening, but
so are their social relations with their friends and neighbors. More
importantly, this isolation is sought, desired and cherished. A very
significant implication of these increasingly family-oriented, child-centric
and isolated lives that have retreated from the city is the promises that the
children growing up there hold for the future society. The 36-year-old
housewife told us: “This is a very funny story. These friends of mine
N E W P E R S P E C T I V E S O N T U R K E Y
moved to England with their five-year-old daughter and she started school
there. In the first days they were asking kids where they were from, and my
friends’ daughter replied ‘I am from Kemer Country’.” In a context where
sense of identity and belonging is vested in an anonymous non-place where
uniformity, order, and homogeneity are the ruling principles, urban
contexts become an abominable aberration. Here is another respondent
mentioned above, the 51-year-old housewife, telling us how her younger
daughter reacts to the city: “[Here] it is the same cars, same houses, same
streets. And it is a very isolated life, out of touch with Turkey. I feel sad for
my younger daughter. She was very young when she came here. I sense that
for instance when I take her to the Grand Bazaar she does not enjoy it at all.
She wants to go home immediately; she cannot stand that ugliness and
mess.” Yet another respondent, a 40-year-old psychoanalyst, related the
experiences of her daughter as follows: “When we go to the city, my
children, perhaps because they are more naïve than others, are stunned.
Once in Levent, for instance, my daughter said to me that Levent was
flooded with people and she was amazed by the crowdedness.”
The retrenchment of this group from the city has another dimension.
Not only do they have very feeble ties to ‹stanbul and with the different
groups in the city, but they have also pulled back inwards in terms of local
governance. Put differently, there is a deepening pattern of the
privatization of local governance. The expanding privatization of urban
governance in Göktürk parallels the trend towards privatization and gating
in the city at large. What we mean by privatization is twofold: privatization
of the provision of public services, and limitation of access to public
resources. In each of Göktürk’s gated compounds, a management company
is hired to organize the necessary services for the residents, such as
maintenance and security. From the perspective of the local municipality,
the development of private communities has the advantage of providing
the infrastructure of construction and maintenance costs. As the mayor of
Göktürk put it:
We do not have the funds to provide everything. Why wouldn’t I try to
lure the real-estate developers to this region? They [the real-estate
developers] provide the infrastructure, build modern, aesthetically
pleasing compounds, and take care of all of their problems, and on top of
that provide a model for good urban governance—how things should be
run in an ideal settlement. With this system everyone wins.
The relationship of Göktürk’s residents to the Göktürk belde municipality
is very frail, if it exists at all. In response to a question about the major
N E W P E R S P E C T I V E S O N T U R K E Y
37
38 Ayfer Bartu Candan and Biray Kolluo¤lu
problems of ‹stanbul, one respondent (the 51-year-old housewife) replied:
“To tell you the truth I do not suffer any of the problems of ‹stanbul. If
electricity is off I have a generator. If water is off I have my own water
supplies. I do not go into the traffic unless I absolutely need to.” When
asked about the nature and content of her relationship with the
municipality, one respondent (43 years old, self-employed) said: “I do not
have any relationship, none at all. I do not recall any occasion in which I had
to get into direct contact with the municipality.” Another interviewee
(housewife, 36 years old) explained, “Our management is separate. Our
technical services are provided privately. We have all these private
arrangements here. We have an ambulance on call for 24 hours, we have
our very own electric generator, so when the electricity is off we are taken
care of. Even when it snows heavily, our roads are cleaned immediately or,
better yet, they are salted before it snows.”
As the mayor states above, the local municipality acts as a facilitator for
meeting the private demands of the residents of these segregated
compounds. But it is also important to draw attention to the costs of this
trend towards the privatization of urban land and governance—that is, the
privatization of public land, the impoverishment of the public realm,
limited access to public resources, and, increasingly, the privatization of
public services. In her analysis of similar trends in the North American
context, Setha Low concludes with a rather bleak vision of urban future and
suggests that “policing and surveillance ensures that the mall, shopping
center, or gated community will only allow a certain ‘public’ to use its
privatized public facilities,”67 and “public space becomes privatized,
walled, and/or restricted for those who are ‘members’ rather ‘citizens.’”68
These patterns, as we have argued above, indicate a decided turn
towards an ever-expanding private. While the eminence of domesticity
and the family is disproportionately growing and swallowing different
forms of sociabilities and relations, the private is also expanding its sphere
67 Setha Low, “How Private Interests Take Over Public Space: Zoning, Taxes, and Incorporation of
Gated Communities,” in The Politics of Public Space, ed. Setha Low and Neil Smith (New York:
Routledge, 2006), 83.
68 Ibid., 100. For the discussion of the privatization of urban governance and its implications for the
restructuring of public space in cities see, Adalberto Aguirre Jr., Volker Eick, and Ellen Reese,
“Introduction: Neoliberal Globalization, Urban Privatization, and Resistance,” Social Justice 33, no. 3
(2006), Sarah Blandy and Rowland Atkinson, eds., Gated Communities: International Perspectives
(London: Routledge, 2006), Georg Glasze, Chris Webster, and Klaus Frantz, eds., Private Cities:
Global and Local Perspectives (London: Routledge, 2006), Evan McKenzie, Privatopia: Homeowner
Associations and the Rise of Residential Private Government (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994),
Andy Merrifield and Erik Swyngedouw, eds., The Urbanization of Injustice (London: Lawrence and
Wishart, 1996), Don Mitchell, “The Annihilation of Space by Law: The Roots and Implications of Anti-
Homeless Laws in the United States,” Antipode 29, no. 3 (1997).
N E W P E R S P E C T I V E S O N T U R K E Y
to conquer the street, the square, the local government. This group’s
perception of the world and their place in it is best captured by what
Sennett calls “an intimate vision of society.” In this imagination, “the world
outside, the impersonal world, seems to fail us, seems to be stale and
empty.”69
This, we argue, has serious repercussions for the future definitions of
urbanity and the future of the city as such. Classical accounts and
conceptualizations of the city and urbanity from Weber to Simmel and
from Wirth to Redfield all emphasize, albeit with much variation,
heterogeneity, impersonality and civility rooted in distances rather than in
proximity or intimacy.70 What comes to the fore in this imaginary of
urbanity is a social existence that allows freedom through anonymity. As
Wirth has famously argued, even if the contacts in the city may be face-toface,
they are impersonal, superficial, transitionary, and segmental. This
feeds into an indifference and immunization against the personal claims
and expectations of others, which emancipates and frees the individual.71
Simmel has also argued that in the face of excess stimulation, the defense is
not to react emotionally. This urban condition has created a civilized kind
of urban freedom.72Weber has seen the source of creativity embedded in
urban cosmopolitanism and isolation. Leaving aside the debate whether
definitions of anonymous, heterogeneous, and impersonal urbanity
capture everyday urban existence in specific socio-historical contexts, we
can argue that these features associated with urbanity have shaped and
structured the different ways in which people imagine and think about the
city.
What we find striking about this new group who has secluded itself in
its well-guarded social and spatial compartments is the new kind of “urban
freedom” that they introduce and promote. This new urbanity and urban
freedom is actually the reverse of anonymity, heterogeneity, invisibility,
69 Sennett analyzes the emergence of this intimate vision within the context of an escalating imbalance
between a bloated, ever-expanding and hence ever-impossible-to-fulfill private life and the emptying
out of public life as a deepening process that has begun in the nineteenth century. Richard Sennett,
The Fall of Public Man (New York: Knopf, 1977), 5.
70 We should note that these notions of urbanity began to be challenged almost as soon as they were
formulated, especially by ethnographic data that emerged from the rich literature on neighborhood
and urban community studies. Some examples include: Herbert J. Gans, The Urban Villagers: Group
and Class in the Life of Italian-Americans (New York: Free Press, 1962), Gerald D. Suttles, The Social
Order of the Slum: Ethnicity and Territory in the Inner City (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1968), Michael Young and Peter Willmott, Family and Kinship in East London (London: Routledge and
Kegan Paul, 1957).
71 Louis Wirth, “Urbanism as a Way of Life,” The American Journal of Sociology 44, no. 1 (1938).
72 Georg Simmel, “The Metropolis and Mental Life,” in Sociological Perspectives: Selected Readings, ed.
Kenneth Thompson and Jeremy Thunstall (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1971).
N E W P E R S P E C T I V E S O N T U R K E Y
39
40 Ayfer Bartu Candan and Biray Kolluo¤lu
and the riches that cosmopolitan existences offer. Instead, freedom is
searched and found in intimacies, familiarity and new forms of visibility
that makes surveillance possible. One can observe the neighbor’s life not
only from the window, but also at the club house, at the gym, at one’s
children’s basketball practice, in the shopping mall, or the restaurant. One
is also rendered visible in all these venues. Daily practices and familial
activities are performed under the gaze of the residents of one’s segregated
compound, transforming the compound into a home.73 A 51-year-old
housewife said this about her well-guarded residential compound: “What
I like most about this place is that outside is also very familiar. This makes
me feel free. On this very, very large territory I feel at home. It is as if it all
belongs to me.” The 40-year-old psychotherapist expressed her distaste
towards the unpredictability and heterogeneity of the city in the following
words: “The city is too crowded. It is as if you are always colliding with
others… And what is more, it does not feel familiar… Here in Kemer I
know what to do, where to go. There is a sense of familiarity, predictability
here.”
But the sense of familiarity and homogeneity sought by the residents of
Göktürk is qualitatively different from the kind of homogeneity and
familiarity that is described in many of the neighborhood studies in
Turkey.74 For the immigrant communities who prefer to reside in the same
neighborhoods, the networks they form on the basis of familiarity are
usually mobilized as a survival strategy to find work and housing, and to
have access to healthcare. In Göktürk, however, the networks are rarely
mobilized for similar purposes; rather, they become part of the status
markers of the new urban wealth.
In this section, we have tried to show that the residents of the gated
town of Göktürk lead increasingly inward-looking and isolated lives in a
shrinking city. Circulating nearly exclusively in enclosed spaces of one kind
or another, this group has very little familiarity with the larger ‹stanbul.
Trying to secure themselves ever further in their non-places with visible
physical markers or invisible surveillance technologies, the residents of
73 For a similar discussion of practices of surveillance and the themes of familiarity and predictability
in Bahçeflehir, an upper-class gated community in ‹stanbul, see, Asl› Didem Dan›fl, “‹stanbul’da
Uydu Yerleflmelerin Yayg›nlaflmas›: Bahçeflehir Örne¤i,” in 21. Yüzy›l Karfl›s›nda Kent ve ‹nsan, ed.
Firdevs Gümüflo¤lu (‹stanbul: Ba¤lam, 2001).
74 Some examples of these studies include Maya Ar›kanl›-Özdemir, “Kentsel Dönüflüm Sürecinde Eski
Bir Gecekondu Mahallesi: Karanfilköy - Kentlere Vurulan “Neflter”ler,” in ‹stanbul’da Kentsel Ayr›flma:
Mekansal Dönüflümde Farkl› Boyutlar, ed. Hatice Kurtulufl (‹stanbul: Ba¤lam, 2005), fiükrü Aslan, 1
May›s Mahallesi: 1980 Öncesi Toplumsal Mücadeleler ve Kent (‹stanbul: ‹letiflim, 2004), Erder,
‹stanbul’a Bir Kent Kondu, Ayça Kurto¤lu, Hemflehrilik ve fiehirde Siyaset: Keçiören Örne¤i (‹stanbul:
‹letiflim, 2001).
N E W P E R S P E C T I V E S O N T U R K E Y
Göktürk rejoice in the increasing social and spatial distances from different
social groups and classes. Yet, perhaps precisely because of these distances,
the city is relegated to a nightmare and fantasy of chaos and fear, but also
desire. Security, although not possible in the city, is nonetheless sought and
found in the family and the child-centric life that leads to an expanding,
bloated private sphere suffocating different realms of urban public life. The
foregoing discussion, we believe, describes new forms of wealth not only in
Göktürk, but in other non-places the numbers of which are increasing in
‹stanbul.
Concluding remarks
The stories of Göktürk and Bezirganbahçe can best be interpreted and
understood within the context of neoliberal urbanism that simultaneously
produces urban spaces of exclusion, like Bezirganbahçe, and exclusionary
spaces, like Göktürk. Within the context of neoliberalizing ‹stanbul—a
process naturalized through a legal framework, a neoliberal language, and a
discourse of urgency—new spaces of urban wealth and poverty are
emerging. Bezirganbahçe represents an urban captivity banishing classes
who have become economically impoverished, insecure and vulnerable,
socially and spatially stigmatized, and politically weaker through
consecutive waves of liberalization of the city over the past two decades.
The local government is becoming an increasingly dominant actor in their
lives, intervening and regulating their daily practices. Göktürk represents a
qualitatively different but parallel form of urban captivity, containing
groups who have emerged on the heels of the rising financial and service
sectors, who have begun to command ever-larger economic resources, and
who have increasingly tenuous ties to the rest of the society, including the
local government whose role has diminished significantly. Within the
context of these qualitatively different margins of ‹stanbul, parallel trends
are emerging which we argue to be the harbingers of a new urbanity.
‹stanbuls of both margins have shrunken. It is not only that the parts of
the city that Bezirganbahçe and Göktürk residents are using are very
limited, but also that the rest of the city is either totally alien, or made up of
no-go and cannot-go areas. This spatial segregation feeds into and
reproduces the social distances between different groups. The social groups
occupying both margins are increasingly socially and spatially isolated and
lead insular urban lives, Bezirganbahçe residents by sanction, Göktürk
residents by choice.
The social distance between these groups is mediated by deepening
anxieties and urban fear. On the one hand, one of the main factors enabling
and justifying primarily Gecekondu Transformation Projects, Prestige
N E W P E R S P E C T I V E S O N T U R K E Y
41
42 Ayfer Bartu Candan and Biray Kolluo¤lu
Projects, and History and Culture Projects is the discourse that marks the
areas populated by the urban poor as dangerous, a breeding ground for
illegal activities, and areas of social decay or social ill. On the other hand,
new groups of wealth narrate their seclusion in their segregated residential
compounds and their almost exclusive circulation within their fortified
network through the discourse of urban fear and anxieties.
Gökhan Özgün, a newspaper columnist, calls the disembeddedness of
the culture and practices of the insulated residents of these segregated
residential compounds, or the “off worlds,” an “expatriate culture.” He
writes, “the expatriate differentiates his/her own future from that of
his/her country’s. He/she carefully separates these two futures. His/her
and his/her grandchildren’s privilege rests on this principle of
difference.”75 The mirror image of this expatriate culture consists of the
new forms of poverty that are deepening in places like Bezirganbahçe. The
residents of the latter are also cut off from the future and consumed in their
increasingly precarious present. In a situation where one class opts out of
the future and the other is exiled from it, the question “who will claim the
future?” pushes itself onto the agenda with all its urgency.
Recently, in urban studies in particular and social analysis in general,
what has become mundane and perhaps even uninspiring is yet another
account of how processes of neoliberalism have re-structured and refashioned
urban centers around the world. In a way, neoliberalism has
become a fire-breathing monster that eats up and then spurts out similar
technologies of power and governance, similar spaces, and similar forms of
urban marginality at both extremes of wealth and poverty. Our account of
the workings of neoliberalism is also infected with this ailment. Yet, we
believe that it is not in vain to reflect adamantly on the particular sociohistorical
urban contexts at hand, if only to see whether we are to defend
the public street and the square,76 or whether we are to start drawing the
contours of new forms of urbanity, urban sociability, and class relations in
the urban context and, hence, to begin imagining new forms of politics.
Biraz uzun ama faydalı..
