Since the turn of the twenty-first century, Turkish cities have undergone large-scale change through a process referred to as urban transformation, involving, notably, the demolition of inner-city low-income settlements. The official authorities and business circles have resorted to various forms of discourse to justify these projects, which have led to the deportation of a significant number of people to peripheral areas. The discourse of 'natural disasters', for example, suggests that urban transformation is necessary to protect people from some pending event. Probably the most effective application of this discourse has occurred in Izmir, where the risk posed by 'landslides' has played a critical role in the settlement demolitions conducted in the huge inner-city neighbourhood of Kadifekale. By examining the case of Kadifekale, this paper provide some insights into how 'natural disasters' serve as a discourse with which to legitimise the neoliberal logic entrenched in the urban transformation process in Turkey.
a b s t r a c tParticularly in the last two decades, urban governors have presented urban transformation projects as ideal solutions to help low-income urban residents improve their living conditions. However, the way they have been carried out and their consequences mean that these projects do not, in most cases, bring the expected improvements. Most projects involve relocating residents to new, more peripheral districts of the city, which causes social isolation and certain socio-spatial incompatibilities between their previous and new habitats.Using a case from Izmir in Turkey, this study aims to analyze such socio-spatial incompatibilities in the lives of low-income residents that are caused by relocation within the framework of urban transformation projects. One of Izmir's earliest inner-city gecekondu neighborhoods, Kadifekale was chosen by Izmir Metropolitan Municipality as a site for urban transformation due to the risk of landslide in the area. Before the start of the project, the neighborhood contained 7324 housing units accommodating rural-to-urban migrants, mainly from the southeast of Turkey. This urban transformation project aimed to relocate at least some of the inhabitants from their homes in Kadifekale to recently constructed apartment blocks in the TOK _ I Uzundere Public Housing Project on the periphery of the city. Although many residents were reluctant to exchange their houses for new apartments, some were persuaded to move to TOK _ I, which was presented as the ideal solution by the municipal officials.This study critically evaluates the Kadifekale urban transformation project, particularly with regard to the relocation of some Kadifekale residents from their one-or two-story houses in Kadifekale to apartment blocks on the periphery of the city. The analysis is based on a comparison between the socio-spatial experiences of migrants in Kadifekale and their recent experiences in Uzundere and the possibility of certain incompatibilities in these two experiences. The argument aims to demonstrate the changed conditions of social life and daily life practices as a result of altered spatial properties at a neighborhood scale: their use of outdoor spaces, the meanings they attributed to neighborhood space (''intimacy of place'' within categories of sensual (visual and olfactory) recognition), and their sociospatial network. The argument draws both implicitly and explicitly on Henri Lefebvre's spatial triad and De Certeau's conceptualization of tactic versus strategy as the major conceptual inspirations for this study.
Juxtaposing the empirical findings of a qualitative research study of an urban transformation project in the Kadifekale squatter district of Izmir with the changed nature of urban politics in a neoliberal context, this article aims to trace the manifestations of the regime of informality in Turkey. Ethnographic consideration of the motives behind these projects, the way they have been carried out and their consequences for the lives of the inhabitants points to an extended space for informal politics tactically manoeuvred by state officials of various ranks. Particularly during the last two decades, neoliberal urban policies have triggered an intensification of power discrepancies in both the vertical and horizontal dimensions and a fragmentation of community structure in the localities -mainly along socioeconomic divides. This research reveals a transition from positive/passive to negative/active uses of informality in the disposition of the state towards the urban poor when the fast and efficient conduct of urban transformation projects is in question. The characteristics of the locality as a landslide zone, the already fragmented socioeconomic structure in the neighbourhood and the dense presence of Kurdish immigrants facilitate the putting into practice of informal strategies. The immigrants who cannot define a place for themselves in the simultaneously formal and informal context of the project have been seriously disadvantaged.bs_bs_banner
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