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In this chapter we take as a point of observation the 2013 Occupy movement in Istanbul's Taksim Gezi Park to discuss practices of citizenship in the contemporary neoliberal city. Through study of this urban contestation, we find that beyond the invited spaces of participation, invented spaces of activism play a critical role in asserting citizens' rights to the city and counter-development of exclusionary urban projects. Our special focus is with the symbolic and performative aspects of strategies that activists use to resist aggressively market-based urban development projects. We highlight these innovative forms of action as effective insurgent practices of citizenship with specific urban development outcomes. architects, and planners (Taksim Solidarity 2013).

State-led urban renewal has been a "modus operandi" for transforming city parts to serve various objectives, including the reproduction of the built environment, maximizing returns to real estate, or changing the socioeconomic profiles of neighborhoods. However, large-scale urban renewal agendas do not necessarily unfold as projected. This paper introduces the term 'detransformation' to define the socio-political nature of this multifaceted and complex process of urban change that diverges from the intended outcome and intensifies the politics of waiting. By conducting a comparative analysis of three extreme cases of urban renewal operations from three major metropolitan cities in Turkey (Fikirtepe-Kadikoy in Istanbul, Karabaglar in Izmir, and Akdere-Mamak in Ankara), we explore the inherent institutional, political, and administrative mechanisms that impede the intended redevelopment outcomes. We identify the socioeconomic and legal dynamics that lead to the institutional bottlenecks in redevelopment planning and conclude that the reckless urban renewal implementation generates exceptions to the order of formal urbanization that is mainly shaped around the politics of waiting.

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This paper explores the governance of a state-led urban renewal project in a politically contested area in the aftermath of a major armed conflict. Building on the ethnocratic regime theory, we explore the governance of the urban renewal process in the historic district of Suriçi by focusing on the political, spatial, and governmental underpinnings of displacement and dispossession in the context of the unresolved “Kurdish Question” of Turkey. We argue that this exclusionary and state-led urban renewal project is shaped around the ethnocratic state interests with limited real estate returns that aims to sanitize and dehistoricize the historic core of Diyarbakir given its political and socioeconomic significance for the Kurdish Movement. The rhetorical formation of a “renewed” historic core epitomizes the racialized governance that intensifies the race-class realities sitting at the center of the decades-old ethnic conflict in Turkey. The central government authority's use of gentrification in practice illustrates the ethnocratic regime's spatial, political, and economic repercussions for the Kurdish population as the country's largest ethnic minority. Suriçi‘s redevelopment illustrates that ethnocratic regime practices coexist with a democratic façade and militarization activates an ethnocratic urban regime. Our findings contribute to the literature on space and power by illustrating the incompleteness and paradoxical elements of settler-colonial urbanism.