Professional Documents
Culture Documents
SKOR,Amsterdam,2012
State of exception
In recent years, the state of Turkey has strengthened its governmentality and
its control of the use, design and development of public space through greater central
administration. It has not only established specific administrative departments, such
as TOK, but has also passed laws on land-property transfer and state-led urban reproduction. It is a state that justifies, normalizes, and governs through laws of
exception; it controls cities and urban spaces. The recent law on Disaster Risk
Management gives full power to the Ministry (of Environment and Urbanism) and
TOK in order to transfer property, agree terms, and to decide what should be
demolished. TOK and local municipalities are the main actors of urban
transformation projects in Turkey. They present a localized version of neo-liberal
urban condition and rescaling. TOK (Toplu Konut Idaresi Baskanligi) is the Housing
Development Administration of Turkey, a state department aiming to build social
housing complexes for poor people. However, TOK also acts as a collaborator with
municipalities and as a private company in urban clearance projects that replace poor,
ethnically diverse communities with the aim of replacing them with increasingly
middle class neighborhoods. All the actors involved in building activities can be
viewed as a local version of broader neo-liberal activity, a neo-liberalism, as
described by David Harvey, that: ... generates a complex reconstitution of stateeconomy relation in which state institutions are actively mobilized to promote marketbased regulatory arrangements. Introducing urban policies that allow the
displacement of inhabitants, shifting their ownership and property rights, using
Istanbuls image as a marketing tool for local and foreign investors, and manipulating
urban fears (of terrorism, earthquake, safety etc.), are components being used in the
SocialHousingHousingSocial:Art,PropertyandSpatialJustice
SKOR,Amsterdam,2012
function of urban clearance and rescaling. Legitimizing gecekondu4 areas and
connecting them with capitalist productions of urban spaces, or expanding the city
with enclaves/gated communities, became possible through the manipulation of
related urban and economic policies. In a manner of continuity, the 2000s have
witnessed the emergence of large-scale urban transformation projects under titles such
as urban renovation or urban development which legitimize demolishment and
reconstruction via abstract discourses of urban fear, ecology, cultural heritage, and
natural disasters (i.e. earthquakes). Since 2005, with the introduction of the Urban
Transformation and Renewal Policy 5366(5) which allows municipalities full
authorization of over urban renovation and development the legitimization of recent
urban transformation projects, which were planned for Istanbul, speeded up. The
policy allows municipalities to define places or districts in Istanbul as an urban
transformation area, with control over property rights, urban planning, and
architectural projects.
SocialHousingHousingSocial:Art,PropertyandSpatialJustice
SKOR,Amsterdam,2012
between five and five-hundred hectares (zoned or unzoned).
Another argument for describing the situation and the investment in housing
and real-estate in Turkey, is the direct relationship between the conservative proIslamist ruling party (AKP) and its community that realizes the creation of a new
middle class supported by new social housing projects, property transfers, and
housing constructions. The urban researcher Ayse avdar claims that housing projects
such as Basakshehir present a new urbanism for the new middle class pro-Islamic
society.7 The direct centralization of urban policy making is moderated and initiated
by minister Tayyip Erdogan, a former Mayor of Istanbul, and Erdogan Bayraktar,
former director of TOK, and now the newly-established Minister of the Environment
and Urbanism.
Following the collaboration of these actors and the new urban policies, many
local municipalities are now applying the same process of urban clearance to the
neighborhoods that are under their jurisdiction. However, these neighborhoods have
diverse geographical situations, social structures, identities of communities, and
different levels of suffering due to the process. The diversity of these neighborhoods
requires localized urban policies, but also specific organizations and ways of
solidarity. To exemplify this, I will offer a few diverse examples from the past five
years.
SocialHousingHousingSocial:Art,PropertyandSpatialJustice
SKOR,Amsterdam,2012
Empire. In recent years, the district is characterized as physically run-down and its
heterogeneous, but poor, community (ethnically diverse, mixed sexualities, etc.) as
socially unacceptable. This resulted in many urban clichs, describing the area as
insecure, unsafe, and a home of terrorism. The population is mostly employed in the
informal service sectors, presumably, in Taksim-Beyoglu. The Beyoglu municipality
collaborates with TOK and the construction firm GAP, in order to transform this
district for the upper classes. The justification used by the municipality to transform
the district is based upon a renewal and renovation plan. When the municipality began
the process, using the force of Policy 5366, they got in contact with the owners in
order to buy their buildings and flats for lower than market-value prices.9 However, it
was only later that the inhabitants were informed of this when the construction firm
joined the joint venture and signed the agreement on April 4, 2007. In order to find
out their dwelling rights, and to act against the process forced upon them by the
municipality, the owners established an association to protect and defend the rights of
ownership and of tenants in Tarlabas (the Association for Solidarity with Tarlabas
Property Owners and Renters). The Association halted the agreement process between
the municipality and the owners, unless the municipality and GAP take into
consideration the rights of the inhabitants. Tarlabas is one example of a rundown,
ethnically diverse ghetto area. The municipality does not only want to improve the
physical condition of the built environment by rebuilding facades and flats for the
upper classes, but also to change its entire demographic, replacing the current
population with a more homogeneous, richer class of citizen.
SocialHousingHousingSocial:Art,PropertyandSpatialJustice
SKOR,Amsterdam,2012
to other neighborhoods in that it cant be defined as an ethnically diverse, leftist
minority neighborhood. This post-gecekondu-area is legitimized through the
installation of infrastructure (electricity, water, gas) that has been slowly increased by
the local municipalities in each election since 1984. The plan of TOK was to build
social housings in an undeveloped area in Basbyk, to transfer the 6,500 families
there, and to build luxury houses on the rest of the land. TOK offers very low prices
to these families and forced them to sign a mortgage agreement for the new social
housing. This means that they will get less money for their existing properties than
they will have to pay for the apartment flats built by TOK. But the families refused to
accept the agreement, resulting in street conflict and resistance against the
municipality and the police which continued for months. Still the negotiation goes on.
SocialHousingHousingSocial:Art,PropertyandSpatialJustice
SKOR,Amsterdam,2012
transformation). Many of these migrant families moved to Istanbul in the 1970s and
the recent generation is strongly united as a leftist political community.
What about urban movements or right to the city discourse? In general, the
discourse of right to the city is based on property rights in urban movements in
Turkey. However, this discourse should be revised and be based on our understanding
SocialHousingHousingSocial:Art,PropertyandSpatialJustice
SKOR,Amsterdam,2012
of commons, and our act of common-ing, and in claiming urban spaces and
dwellings in cities. All the examples mentioned represent different outcomes and
types of resistance according to the background of the district and the inhabitants.
Many campaigns and collaborations with academics, NGOs, independent activists,
journalists, and artists have been taking place in the last three years. Cultural events,
artistic interventions, research projects, and campaigns try not only to create public
awareness, but also to provide the right information to the public about what is going
on in the neighborhoods of Istanbul.
However, are ongoing urban struggles and discussions enough to prevent the
activities of TOK, of local municipalities, and of police control in urban space?
Poverty, low levels of educational attainment (for example most Kurdish people dont
understand Turkish, many cant write and they dont understand the official papers
that they receive from the municipalities), and several other reasons are still
SocialHousingHousingSocial:Art,PropertyandSpatialJustice
SKOR,Amsterdam,2012
preventing the emergence of solidarity among oppositional urban activism. The
Istanbul-based urban researcher/geographer Jean Franois Perouse questions the
reasons for the weakness of oppositional civil movements in the urban sphere in
general, and in the neighborhoods against state-led urban transformation projects in
particular.13 Giving the example of Ayazma, he cites several reasons for the failure of
oppositional urban struggles including the instability of the local population (because
of forced migration), the low profile employment (informal flexible labor), the
distances to the city centers, the complexity of ownership, and the lack of a communal
identity. 14
SocialHousingHousingSocial:Art,PropertyandSpatialJustice
SKOR,Amsterdam,2012
influence some institutional discussions about what culture and social identity
means in a segregated urban sphere. In general, academies, cultural institutions
(museums and art institutions), or the 2010 Istanbul European Capital of Culture
project often presented a hygienic, normalized urban culture that ignores
heterogeneous elements of society and generally acts against any kind of oppositional
political agenda in favor of representational multiculturalism. It is because of this that
the neighborhood platform prefers to collaborate with local urban collectives,
independent researchers, academics and artists as the most effective protagonists.
In Istanbul, we cannot pursue the same life that we have had. Istanbul has a
side that encompasses/enfolds us all and yet goes beyond us. We have left
behind the nine month period of being the European Cultural Capital. In a city
that is a European Cultural Capital, it is not possible to accept the destruction
of artworks in galleries and violence toward each other, violence where there
are foreigners.
The Turkish Minister of Culture and Tourism,, Ertugul Gnay gave a press
conference in a local cafe in the Tophane district, where around forty people from the
neighborhood had recently attacked three art galleries. In last year and a half, the
district where I have lived for seven years, Tophane a transitional area between the
cultural entertainment center of Beyoglu and various residential neighborhoods has
been facing a strong privatization process that echoes the culture of consumption of
the Istiklal-Beyoglu district.
The residents of Tophane are generally from mixed ethnic communities where social
conditions are poor. As an old neighborhood dating from the Ottoman period, the
district still represents fragmented localities in everyday life. But in recent years, due
to a process supported by the local municipality, Tophane has begun to transform into
a conservative, pro-Islamic area, although it remains fragmented with Romany,
SocialHousingHousingSocial:Art,PropertyandSpatialJustice
SKOR,Amsterdam,2012
Ottoman Greek, Kurdish, and other communities living in the neighborhood.
Although the district is the focus of a process of cultural gentrification that began
witha string of art galleries, from Beyoglu to Tophane, followed by the Istanbul
Museum of Modern Art, local everyday life continues to be based on the structure of
the heterotopia in which different cultures and values co-exist. Yet, in front of the
curious eyes of the inhabitants, a number of galleries, artist-run spaces, and private
residents have moved into the district. The galleries have redefined this area as the
Tophane Art Walk, linking the modern art museum, Sanat Liman (the art space of
the European Cultural Capital Agency whose agency/office was on Istiklal Street),
and the art line that follows from Karaky to the Golden Horn. The Art Walk, which
is one of the outcomes of Istanbuls globally-forced urban marketing, is a culturallyled transformation that meets the interests and demands of the real estate market. The
art-mahalle (art-neighborhood) conflict, which was widely covered in September
2010 by the Turkish media, focused on the urban violence and the resulting conflict
between two parties: the art scene and the neighborhood. Basically, the inhabitants
told the press that they do not want to accept the lifestyle of art people in their
neighborhood. In contrast, the artists and galleries explained that the neighborhood
has to accept the transformation of their environment.
I find the debate very interesting, for it is a discussion which was actually
hidden and appeared publicly only through the antagonistic claims in Istanbul, a city
which was the European Capital of Culture (ECC) in 2010. The ECC project is an
example, in Istanbul, that has been used by the government to justify the
transformation of the term culture into a total governmental concept. In the meantime,
the use of cultural projects and arguments for remaking the global image of the city,
both in the interests of tourism and real estate, appeared as real facts in urban space.
Since Istanbul was announced officially as the ECC, I have witnessed basically three
problems in the ECC process 18: the conflict between intellectuals, civil initiatives
and bureaucrats (government and municipal); the instrumentalization of art
practices/projects in urban space (selected by the ECC) that do not take any risk in
discussing or facing urban realities; and the strategies of the bureaucrats who are
SocialHousingHousingSocial:Art,PropertyandSpatialJustice
SKOR,Amsterdam,2012
administering the ECC budget in order to implement urban transformation, renewal,
and renovation projects. For the ECC, renovating mosques, bringing the historical
heritage of the city to the surface, or branding the city with artificial populist
discourses is exactly their function. Yet, while transforming urban space, the ECC
remains disinterested in urban conflicts and does not consider, for example, the
evictions and demolition in the Sulukule or Ayazma neighborhoods, nor did the ECC
consider this neighborhoods social environment as part of the heritage and culture of
the city.
Another critical intervention into the process of urban transformation was the
Istanbul Map project 19 initiated by the Spanish artist Anna Sala in collaboration with
Istanbul Urban Magazine, 19 a project that produced critical cartographies about the
privatization of urban space. In 2007, the artist collaborated with artists, urban
researchers, residents, and architects from Istanbul who had concerns about the urban
projects initiated by the Greater Municipality of Istanbul, projects that aim to evict
residents from their neighborhoods. The map (supplemented by explanatory
typography) presented the situation of neighborhoods in several urban parts of
Istanbul. The map clearly showed the urban projects in their entirety and the eviction
process that resulted, revealing current urban conditions and warnings of future
problems threatening the general population of Istanbul. By creating alternative
platforms and counter-public spaces, art projects can create actions and related
discourses of resistance on the thresholds of spatial politics. The question of how the
possibilities of counter-culture are related to the dissemination of localities is part of
SocialHousingHousingSocial:Art,PropertyandSpatialJustice
SKOR,Amsterdam,2012
this complex debate. The recent state-led urban policies that expand the urban
segregation, poverty and fear; the populist contemporary art practices that aim to
catch the wave of global art markets within the urban marketing of Istanbul; the elitist
cultural policies that drive for modern hygiene supposedly-European standards
are being used as part of populist discourse while actually driving pejorative, short
term, political agendas. The Minister of Culture and Tourism said, in his speech in
Tophane, that Istanbul is enfolding all of us as citizens. However, I would claim the
opposite and ask that Istanbul bring us together with our differences, counter to the
normalized culture that the government is pushing. The States policies not only
regarding housing: see the recent discussion of forced design and planning for Taksim
Square in Istanbul and the public demonstration against it create increased
segregation and a normalization, and thus justification, for aggressive urban land
policies.
Today, a critical spatial practice demands a new ethics. Cities, public spaces,
and territories are becoming more severely contested spaces. Actual territories exist
either at the periphery or in-between spaces in several different cities and they act as
spaces of thresholds. Researching and engaging with these territories in an organic
way demands an understanding of its experience in order to take part in its spatial
resistance. Creating a new practice of locality that is connected to the future of a
community, as well as its current spatial practices, has the potential for a new
knowledge of urban thresholds. I call for a new ethics that can result from urban
conflict and the unconditional experience of hospitality. We must do this in order to
counter the general administration of neo-liberal states not only in Turkey, but in
many countries and its control over social housing, the redevelopment of public
space and the transfer of property for profit.
SocialHousingHousingSocial:Art,PropertyandSpatialJustice
SKOR,Amsterdam,2012
2. www.toki.gov.tr/english
3. The whole actors that are involved in the building activity are another local version
of a neo-liberal activity what David Harvey describes as neo-liberalism that:
...generate a complex reconstitution of state-economy relation in which state
institutions are actively mobilized to promote market-based regulatory
arrangements. David Harvey, p.102, Spaces of Global Capitalism: A Theory of
Uneven Geographical Development, Verso, 2006, New York
6. Agamben, Giorgio (2001), Kutsal nsan Egemen ktidar ve plak Hayat, ev.
.Trkmen, Istanbul, Ayrnt Yaynlar
8. Tan, Pelin (2004): Grenzpolitiken und Stadt-Betrachtungen. In: Lanz, Stephan &
Esen, Orhan (ed.) (2004): Self Service City: Istanbul. Berlin; metroZones 4. Berlin: bbooks
10. gn, Pnar (2008): Baybykn derdi byk kadnlar In: Radikal (Newspaper,
Istanbul), 17.05.2008; www.radikal.com.tr/
SocialHousingHousingSocial:Art,PropertyandSpatialJustice
SKOR,Amsterdam,2012
12 Negri, Toni; Petcou, Constantin; Petrescu, Doina & Querrien, Anne (2007): What
makes a biopolitical space? Paris, September 17th, 2007.
www.eurozine.com/articles/2008-01-21-negri-en.html
13 Perouse, Jean Francois & Dler, Kentsel (2007). In: Radikal, (Newspaper,
Istanbul), 24.06.2007
17. Translated by the author who was presence in the press talk from the press speech
at Tophane district.
www.hurriyet.com.tr/gundem/15849123.asp, 23.09.2010
19 Istanbul Magazine / Istanbul Dergisi supported and published the map in order to
disseminate it in public. (Aye avdar, Ulus Atayurt, Frat Gen collaborated in
SocialHousingHousingSocial:Art,PropertyandSpatialJustice
SKOR,Amsterdam,2012
creating the map).