Urban transformation and gentrification in Istanbul: Dispossession case in Fikirtepe neighborhood

Urban transformation and gentrification in Istanbul: Dispossession case in Fikirtepe neighborhood

There is a major construction program, being undertaken in the past decade, named “urban transformation” by the ruling government in Turkey. As the transformation moved forward, it turned out this building activity was intended for profit and not for better urban environments. The construction was also a social engineering construct, causing people lose their native homes during the demolition process (dispossession) to make ground for new costlier housing to be bought by the rich. People who have left (or have been forced to leave) suffer from cultural deconstruction, intense feelings of longing for home due to compulsory exile. Urban rights activist David Harvey puts it very well: “A process of displacement and what I call ‘accumulation by dispossession’ lie at the core of urbanization under capitalism.”

Urban development in populated cities has always been problematic in Turkey, especially in Istanbul. Since migrants from the countryside were not offered decent places to live at first, they started to take shelter in illegal urban squatter settlements known as “gecekondu”, usually located at the perimeter of the city and later legalized (but never improved) with the ulterior motive of collecting votes. The new legal version for the supply of housing are either the social housing projects built by TOKI (Mass Housing Administration of Turkey) which tuck people into inhumanely dense high-rise building blocks; or lavish gated communities of low and / or high-rises conceived and built for richer people by closely connected pro-government construction companies.

As the economy went down with a major devaluation of Turkish currency around %40, the over-urbanization conducted by a myriad of profiteers had to slow very much down. Many companies are now in big debts and some of them already declared bankruptcy. Some of the promised new homes could not be built after demolition of old houses they were supposedly going to replace. As a result of this, a country-wide total of ten thousands of previously-house-owner families were left homeless, dispossessed! In addition to several neighborhoods in Istanbul and rest of Turkey, Fikirtepe, on the Asian side of Istanbul remains to be one of the neighborhoods that suffered the most from gentrification caused by dispossession.

Existing low-rise affordable housing units that provided ground for collective, unified, participatory neighborhood living had to demolished to open space for the new high-rises to come, which lead to detached, individualistic living mode devoid of neighborhood spirit and collectivism. Some companies declared bankruptcy, unable to complete construction, leaving many house owners dispossessed and homeless. The luckier others who sold their homes to developers cannot afford flats in the newly erected skyscrapers and they are forced to an internal urban migration to the periphery where housing prices are much more affordable.

Academic, photographer and artist Murat Germen has been to Fikirtepe various times (2013-2018), before and after demolition, in order to be able to follow the physical, social, moral, cultural changes. He did various kinds photographic documentations produced from the street level and also from the air with a drone. He used some of these photos in a few exhibition contexts, deploying different assemblage techniques.