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Identity, Justice and Resistance in the Neoliberal City pp 85–115Cite as

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Urban Rent Speculation, Uncertainty and Unknowns as Strategy and Resistance in Istanbul’s Housing Market

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Abstract

Ebru Soytemel’s chapter focuses on the Fikirtepe Urban Transformation Project (FUTP) in Istanbul—the so-called Manhattan-Istanbul Project—as a case study of how different policies and strategies of public/private institutions/companies create uncertainties in housing markets, of how they manage projects and succeed in speculative gains through the social construction of ignorance and exclusion of uncomfortable knowledge. She explores how local dwellers develop counteractions to resist or to adapt to the consequences of these neoliberal place-making processes. The chapter discusses the role and function of ‘mobilising unknowns’ and ‘strategic ignorance’ for different groups, and scrutinises how different tactics and strategies are developed by different actors during the neoliberalisation of the city space.

The fieldwork for this project was funded by the Oxford Programme for the Future of Cities at the University of Oxford, UK. I would also like to say thanks to Leyla Şimsek for her support for this project, and Metin Ofluoğlu and Murat Şensu for allowing me to use their photographs.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Kadıköy is one of the oldest, largest and most populous districts of Istanbul. According to the 2011 census, the population of Kadıköy was 531,997 persons living in 19 neighbourhoods. According to the results of a census in 2008, it is the wealthiest district among the 39 districts in Istanbul. At the time of writing, the mayor was Selami Öztürk, from CHP (Republican People’s Party), the main opposition party, who held the post since the mid-1990s.

  2. 2.

    The project covers 150 hectares and 4500 parcels where 95 per cent of the land is privately owned and the remaining 5 per cent belongs to IMM and other public institutions.

  3. 3.

    Until 2013, the key state actors such as the Mass Housing Administration of Turkey (TOKI), Ministry of Environment and Urban Planning did not have any role in the FUTP. In 2013, in order to solve the ongoing problems and slow progress of the project, the Ministry of Environment and Urban Planning decided to include Fikirtepe as one of the disaster risk areas within the scope of the Law on Disaster Prevention and Transformation of High Risk Areas (no. 6306). With this decision the Ministry of Environment and Urban Planning became an important actor for the following years of the project, thus taking over the role of Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality.

  4. 4.

    Bourdieu defines fields as ‘structured spaces of positions’ (1990, 72) and ‘the network of objective relations between positions’ (1993, 30). Different positions (social actors’ strategies or position takings) in each field encompass each actor’s struggles ‘to defend or improve their positions’. Each actor’s position is linked to the power relations in that field and every position taking is defined ‘in relation to space of possibles’ (ibid.).

  5. 5.

    McGoey mentions non-knowledge as ‘the art of how knowledge is deflected, covered and obscured’ by referring to Peter Galison’s work (Galison 2004 mentioned in McGoey 2012a).

  6. 6.

    Fake building contractors who are referred to as ‘Bagmen’.

  7. 7.

    Fikirtepe used to be one of the squatter housing areas in Istanbul until 1970s. Following the master plan of Kadikoy in 1972, the construction of the first Bosphorus Bridge and the construction of the Trans European Motorway and also amnesty laws within the following years which included amnesty clauses for gecekondus and/or unauthorised buildings, contributed to changing demographic composition and the ownership structure of the neighbourhood. During the fieldwork , almost all of the homeowners I talked to had legal titles for their properties; however, these titles were land titles (toprak tapusu), which secured a joint-ownership of the land instead of a freehold of a flat. Compared to the freehold of a flat, in joint-ownership properties, co-owners have shares and the price of these flats is much cheaper.

  8. 8.

    Ataşehir is a suburban district on the Anatolian side of Istanbul. The district is well known for its luxurious skyscraper condominiums and hosting offices and headquarters of big companies.

  9. 9.

    The research network ‘Networks of Dispossession’ in Turkey provides evidence and data about the networks between the construction companies and the politicians. Different research findings provided by this network show that in Turkey big construction projects involve companies who have connections with the current government or connections with politicians from the ruling party. For further information, see http://mulksuzlestirme.org.

  10. 10.

    During my fieldwork , Fikirtepe dwellers, especially homeowners were expressing their discontent with the district municipality—Kadıköy Municipality. They were blaming the poor physical conditions of the neighbourhood on the inadequate services of the district municipality. However, this narrative needs to be assessed with considerations of the political power dynamics between Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality (IMM) and Kadıköy Municipality. Since the 1990s, the mayor of Kadıköy had been from the main opposition party. Kadıköy Municipality was considered by the homeowners as a weak or an ineffective actor in shaping or governing urban policies. Compared to the district municipality, IMM, whose major was from the ruling party and clearly had connections with the central government, and was acclaimed by the homeowners for the future of FUTP as a powerful actor who could deal with the obstacles the project might face.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Sociology and Policy, Aston University, Birmingham, UK

    Ebru Soytemel

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  1. Ebru Soytemel
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. CNRS-CITERES, Tours, France

    Gülçin Erdi

  2. Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University, Istanbul, Turkey

    Yıldırım Şentürk

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Soytemel, E. (2017). Urban Rent Speculation, Uncertainty and Unknowns as Strategy and Resistance in Istanbul’s Housing Market . In: Erdi, G., Şentürk, Y. (eds) Identity, Justice and Resistance in the Neoliberal City. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-58632-2_5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-58632-2_5

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