“Everywhere Is Taksim”

Batuman, Bülent

doi:10.1177/0096144214566966

Cited by 36 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 19 publications

(8 reference statements)

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“…Many stateled urban redevelopment projects and TOKI-built social housing buildings drove disadvantaged city residents to either leave the neighbourhood and be pushed farther out to the peripheries, or to take out mortgages and become indebted to the state or state-backed banks. This new strategy was extremely different from the traditional Turkish urbanization paradigm, which relied on overlooking squatting and instead advocated for total and full commercialization of the urban landscape (Keyder 2010;Batuman 2015;and Kuyucu and Unsal 2010).…”

Section: Neoliberal Urbanism In Turkey and Brazilmentioning

confidence: 98%

Section: Neoliberal Urbanism In Turkey and Brazilmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In all Turkish cities, without any citizen engagement in the decision-making and execution process, large regions and neighbourhoods were classified as urban regeneration/renewal areas (Batuman 2015). Squatter areas were targeted initially, but subsequently deteriorating inner-city regions became the focus of urban regeneration efforts (Batuman 2015). As neoliberal urban policies grew more prevalent, formerly destitute and 'undesirable' but historically significant regions of Istanbul's inner city became increasingly valuable, attracting domestic and foreign investment-Tarlabaşı, Bomonti, Sulukule, Talimhane, and so on (Can 2021).…”

Section: Neoliberal Urbanism In Turkey and Brazilmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Global Authoritarianism

2022

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once again discusses dependency, forms of subordination and exploitation, ecologies of territories and knowledge systems, the racist legacies of state forms, and the ways that capital metabolizes that which combats it. From my point of view, the initiatives of militant investigation develop a kind of sensitivity in composing statements and resolving conflicts. It's a form of action: it is not a mode of analysis that is devoid of imagination, and even less of calling on others to act. Understood in this way, militant investigation is less a thematization (in the sense of constructing an agenda) and more a question of method, and of a practical commitment. The gravity of the themes discussed here demands nothing less.whether the concept of authoritarianism can provide us with anything more than a formal description of what, in the worst case, is seen merely as a 'deviation' from the ideal liberal model of the state.We consider that it can, but this requires acknowledging, as Pedro Salgado argues, that "liberal values are not mutually exclusive with authoritarian practices, but simply rearrange them around a different conception of political subjectivity" (in this volume). Likewise, as the Brazilian sociologist Florestan Fernandes pointed out, under capitalist democracy, the "authoritarian element is intrinsically a structural and dynamic component of preservation, strengthening and expansion of the 'capitalist democratic system'" (2019, 45). In this sense, Julieta Mira shows how authoritarian institutional practices are embedded within democratic regimes, and Hülya Dinçer in her text points towards the often processual authoritarian transformation when discussing Turkey's transition towards "autocratic legalism" and the systematic creation of "legal black holes" for arbitrary authoritarian rule.Thus, a critical global perspective on authoritarianism implies both to acknowledge its inherent inscription and embeddedness in (post)colonial capitalist states and societies, and to think of it in historically and geographically specific terms, as Inés Durán Matute and Mariano Féliz develop in this book. In this sense, we consider that the concept does not compete with other, sometimes more specific accounts-be they fascism or Bonapartism, authoritarian populism or authoritarian neoliberalism-but rather allows us to build a conceptual arc between the concrete and necessarily specific expressions of a global trend towards an increasingly weaponized regime of capital accumulation coupled with processes of de-democratization and brutalization of social and political practices and relations.At the core of the current authoritarian turn of global capitalism lies a shared experience of a world in crisis-a multifaceted or 'civilizational crisis', as some observers write. The ecological crisis coincides with overlapping national, regional, and international political crises, a global crisis of representation and, by extension, of the legitimacy of (neo-)liberal democracies, massive economic dislocations, and a long train of closel...

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Section: Neoliberal Urbanism In Turkey and Brazilmentioning

confidence: 98%

Section: Neoliberal Urbanism In Turkey and Brazilmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Neoliberal Urbanism In Turkey and Brazilmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Global Authoritarianism

2022

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“…These different strains of tensions are very hard to separate when the history of a place is highly politicised (Palabıyık, 2018). Such conceptual junctures in İstanbul have been examined by other scholars, including the case of Kuzguncuk (Mills, 2006(Mills, , 2008, the Panorama 1453 History Museum (Bozkuş Barlas, 2014), Taksim Square and the Gezi Park protests (Batuman, 2015), commemoration practices for the coup attempt of 15 July 2016, the Stevi Stefan Church in Fener (Walton, 2021), and Topkapı Palace Museum (Kınıkoğlu, 2021). Building upon those previous studies with the help of the theoretical background that we have presented, we now focus on how such encounters take place in the commercial setting of coffee shops in the neighbourhoods of Fener, Balat, and Ayvansaray and how coffee shop owners become narrators of the past.…”

Section: Theoretical Frameworkmentioning

confidence: 99%

Coffee Shop Owners as Unexpected Tourist Guides in İstanbul's Fener, Balat, and Ayvansaray Neighbourhoods

Karakılıç

Narlı

2023

Sociology Lens

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This study aims to understand how the durability of the past may be visible in a place whose past is constantly reinterpreted and unintentionally remade by coffee shop owners in their conversations with their customers in the framework of ongoing economic transformations while they weave their own identities into that of the neighbourhood. In the absence of any readily available information about the history of the area, the coffee shop owners of the Fener, Balat, and Ayvansaray neighbourhoods of İstanbul interpret the cosmopolitan past of the area within the limitations of the materiality of these neighbourhoods under the influence of economic conditions. In this respect, while this article shows how social memory is commodified and tamed for daily usage, it also argues that it is a process that includes different actors and their interpretations, and that this process is bounded by the materiality and durability of the past.

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“…18 Being an important urban hub, Taksim Square operates in this fashion: it is both the scene of an intense metropolitan rhythm and also the stage of historic events that marked the country's politics. 19 This dual character of public space defines the relation between politics and the city. Discussing Lefebvre's concept of "right to the city," Andy Merrifield argued that the concept is too vast and too narrow at the same time: "It's too vast because the scale of the city is out of reach for most people living at street level; it's too narrow because when people do protest, ... their existential desires frequently reach out beyond the scale of the city itself and revolve around a common and collective humanity, a pure democratic yearning.…”

Section: The Urban Crisismentioning

confidence: 99%