Varoş identity: The redefinition of low income settlements in Turkey (original) (raw)
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Impacts of Gecekondu on the Electoral Geography of Istanbul
Gecekondu (squatting) has been the dominant form of urbanization in the major cities of Turkey, especially Istanbul, just as it has been in most developing countries. Istanbul receives an estimated 500,000 migrants each year from the rural areas of the country, most of whom become squatters. The old city is surrounded by gecekondu settlements, which include sixty-five percent of all buildings in Istanbul. In these areas the dominant economic activities are as informal as the housing. In time, most of the gecekondu settlements evolved from that original definition of "housing with poor conditions in order to survive" into areas where lower-middle-income apartments predominate. This evolution not only made gecekondu an economic investment, but also the subject of daily politics. Continuously, there have been populist attempts of various political parties to legalize these settlements. These attempts encouraged new gecekondu investments, and in turn the new gecekondu areas came to depend on such populist policies, creating a vicious cycle. Mainstream urban policies had the tendency to see both gecekondu and their informal economic activities as unwanted, and thus did not include the considerations of such populist groups in their content. The organic tie between gecekondu and politics, together with these unsuccessful urban policies, allowed urban politics to establish in gecekondu areas before urban culture and economics. By 1994 their population had increased to the point where it constituted a majority, and gecekondu areas began to determine local election results. By this token they ensured that urban policies would no longer exclude them. The rise of the Islamic Political Party in these areas is thus not coincidental, but strongly related with the internal dynamics of gecekondu and informal economic activities.
edu.tr Immaterial Dimensions of the Right to the City: The Case of Istanbul’s Derbent Neighborhood in the Urban Transformation Process, 2018
The main objective of this article was to discuss the concept of the right to the city using the example of a gecekondu settlement, sometimes referred to as a squatters' neighborhood or a slum, that is part of a transformation project. The article primarily emphasizes the importance of the immaterial and empirical dimensions of the concept of the right to the city. Within this context, the theoretical part of the article is based on the Lefebvrian concept of the right to the city, which may be explained as the right to live anywhere one wishes to live and/or to decide one's own future. Starting from this point, a study of Istanbul's Derbent neighborhood , a gecekondu neighborhood undergoing an urban transformation process, was conducted. The goal was to seek tangible information on how the inhabitants of the gecekondu neighborhood were currently living and how they wish to live in the future. Additionally, how the urban transformation process is progressing in the opposite direction for this area is illustrated. The findings revealed that Gecekondu inhabitants have a strong sentiment of belonging to the place. They are emotionally attached to the location and to their neighbors. These emotional, intangible, and invisible dimensions of place attachment are very important components of the right to the city. ÖZ Bu makalenin temel amacı, kent hakkı kavramını kentsel dönüşüm tehdidi altındaki bir gecekondu mahallesi üzerinden tartışmaktır. Makale, temel olarak kavramın materyal olmayan, ampirik bo-yutlarının altını çizmektedir. Bu bağlam içinde makalenin teorik kısmında Lefebvre'in ortaya attığı, bireyin istediği yerde yaşama ve kendi geleceğine karar verme hakkı olarak da anlaşılabilecek kent hakkı kavramı tartışılacaktır. Bu noktadan hareketle, kentsel dönüşüm tehdidini deneyimleyen İstanbul Derbent mahallesinde bir araştırma yapılmıştır. Bundaki amacımız, gecekondu mahallesindeki insanların nasıl yaşadıklarını ve gelecekte nasıl yaşamak istediklerini araştırmaktı. Buna ek ola-rak bu makale, mevcut kentsel dönüşüm ihtimalinin mahalledeki-lerin taleplerinin aksi yönde işlediğini göstermeyi amaçlamaktadır. Dolayısıyla makale iki temel izleğe sahiptir. Öncelikle, Derbent mahallesinde yaşayanların nasıl bir hayat tarzına sahip olduğu anlaşılmaya çalışılacak, ikinci olarak mahalle sakinlerin gelecekte nasıl bir mahalle hayal ettikleri aktarılacaktır. Bulgular, mahalle sakinlerinin çok güçlü bir mekansal aidiyet hissine sahip oldukla-rını göstermektedir. Saha araştırması tespitlerimize göre Mahalle sakinleri mekâna ve komşularına duygusal bağlılık içindeler. Biz de bu makalede, mekâna bağlılığın bu duygusal boyutlarının kent hakkının çok önemli birer parçası olduğunu tartışmaya açıyoruz. 1 Gecekondu is the common and particular name of informally and autonomously built houses in Turkey. These buildings started to be built in the 50s and they are comparable to favelas in Brazil or bidonvilles in France; but these structures create neighbourhoods and even big townships. In the 2000s, there are also many gecekondu neighbourhoods all over Turkey. Gecekondu settlements are also known to build a kind of " urban social movement " in cities. For further details: ERDER Sema, " Kentsel Gelişme ve Kentsel Hareketler: Gecekondu Hareketler " , Kent, Yerel Siyaset ve Demokrasi, İstanbul, Demokrasi Kitaplığı, 1998, s.293-309. Jean François Pérouse, " Les tribulations du terme de gecekondu (1947 – 2004): une lente perte de substance. Pour une clarification terminologique. " European Journal of Turkish Studies, sayı 1-Gecekondu, Web: http://www.ejts.org/document117.htmlart
Planning, Development and Community: Transformation of Gecekondu Settlements in Turkey
2013
This thesis aims to investigate changes in gecekondu (slum house) communities through exploring the lives of three generations of rural migrants in Turkey. It suggests that the dynamic relation between their strategies and development policies in Turkey has had a large impact on the urban landscape, urban reforms, welfare policies and urban social movements. I followed qualitative research methodology, and was extensively influenced by feminist theory. Participant observation, in-depth interviews and focus group methods were used flexibly to reflect the richness of gecekondu lives. The data includes 83 interviews, one focus group and my observations in Ege neighbourhood in Ankara. First-generation rural migrants largely relied on kin and family networks and established gecekondu communities which provided them with shelter against the insecurities of urban life and their exclusion from the mainstream. The mutual trust within gecekondu communities was a result of their solidarity and...
Introduction This paper examines the politicization of squatter housing (gecekondu) movements in Turkey with an analysis of construction and demolition processes in two squatter housing neighbourhoods in Istanbul. The paper argues that in order to understand the why gecekondu housing and the population living in gecekondu areas have always called attention in political discussions during the different time periods in Turkey. Gecekondu settlements have been not only a type of housing but they have also been distinctive autonomous settlements because of their foundational, cultural and class related characteristics. However, after 1980s, after the implementation of the neoliberal policies, these settlements have started to lose their autonomous character. This paper addresses the discussions of ‘autonomy’ and ‘autonomous geographies’ by scrutinizing two different settlement experiences from 1970s and 2000s Turkey. The paper compares two gecekondu movements in terms of their organisational structures, historical capacities and goals. It further focuses on the potentials of these two cases to retain anti-capitalistic characteristics. The first case study is related to the establishment process of the Cayan neighbourhood1 in Istanbul, a neighbourhood established through the leadership of a socialist movement during the 1970s. In this first example, I examine the establishment process of a neighbourhood by a socialist organisation in 1970s. Although this process was interrupted by the 1980s military coup in Turkey, this example is one of the important 1 See about Cayan Neighbourhood establisment, Aslan and Sen, 2011 3 examples of socialist planning in Turkey where socialist groups tried to establish an autonomous space. This paper aims to analyse this process and examines the anticapitalist establishment rules. This is a significant and unique example in the history of (socialist) urban planning in Turkey, where, following the establishment of the neighbourhood, a socialist organisation aspires and solidifies its political domination though the process of reproduction of social relationships spatially. Cayan neighbourhood was established through the confiscation of the public land by a socialist organisation. During the construction phase, architects, planners, who were self-defining themselves as socialist architects and socialist planners, worked voluntarily and generated a, so to say, an alternative social housing and living space. The dwellings were constructed for the workers. This paper aims to find out whether this experience of neighbourhood establishment has anti-capitalists features or not. The second case focuses on the struggles of the neighbourhood dwellers in GulsuyuGulensuyu2 neighbourhood against the urban transformation projects and demolition threats, and examines the alternative planning experiments/projects discussions of the dwellers. In 2005, Gulsuyu-Gulensuyu neighbourhood was enunciated as an urban transformation site. Following this declaration, the dwellers in Gulsuyu-Gulensuyu were organized immediately and defeated the urban transformation project with a court action. Following this process, the dwellers of Gulsuyu-Gulensuyu worked on an alternative plan in collaboration with the volunteer academics, activists, experts and professional associations of architects and planners. In other words, the dwellers of the neighbourhood responded to the urban transformation project by producing their own alternative neighbourhood plan. However, this process did not come to a stage where the threats of demolitions in the neighbourhood are stopped. In both of these neighbourhoods, most of the dwellers in these neighbourhoods have been close to left-wing political parties or socialist organisations. This paper examines the experiences of the dwellers against the urban interventions and discusses the similarities and differences among these examples which took place in different periods. 2 See also Sen, 2010 4 This paper explores the following issues: - Why do gecekondu construction processes in Turkey designate autonomous characteristics/features? - How the left-wing political organisations’ role has changed in gecekondu neighbourhoods in these two different periods (1970s and 2000s)? - With regard to definitions of autonomous space and politics, do these two examples have anti-capitalist characteristics? This field study was executed with in-depth interviews with leading founders and witnesses of the period in Cayan neighbourhood and Gulsuyu-Gulensu neighbourhood between in 2008 and 2009. Furthermore, archival research and content analysis is done with the national and socialist press of the time. The observed daily activities, visual symbols, the way of representation in the press and the expression of dwellers of themselves are also taken into account in that concept.
The Evolution of " Gecekondus " in Turkey, 1950-80 Cemalettin TAŞPINAR
Different development policies and structural changes occured in economy of the country entailed varieties of socio-economic consequecens which affected to a large extent the living conditions of people. Urbanization and its direct consequence, housing problems in the cities could not be thought independent from economic and social realities of the country and conjuncture. In almost all developing countries, most of the people were faced with massive migration flows and housing problems, and due to the ineffectiveness of the governments, they had to solve problems themselves. Almost everywhere these processes ended up with squatting which was called as Gecekondu in Turkish language. No doubt, Gecekondu settlements as an urban reality, especially in metropolises, could not be ignored because both existence and demolishment of these settlements deserved to detailed scrutiny. As a reality of developing country in the twentieth century, squatters or its Turkish version, Gecekondu settlements mushroomed and encircled cities from all quarters. Most of the people, especially politicians were inclined to consider Gecekondus and dwellers of them as a political issue, and approached to their problems with political purposes. However, as I tried to show above, there was an undeniable economic aspect of these settlements because the period 1950-1980, Turkey witnessed unprecedented structural transformations in its economy that directly triggered massive rural to urban migration which inevitably ended up with existence of Gecekondu settlements in the absence of enough houses and high rents in cities.