How Globalization Really Happens: Remembering Activism in the Transformation of Istanbul

Abstract

Over the past 20 years it has become accepted wisdom that Istanbul has become a ‘global city', transformed in tandem with a raft of neoliberal economic policies. What is the relevant history of this globalization? A muted local knowledge possessed by Istanbul's inhabitants is that the military coup in 1980 was the crucial event in the re‐engineering of the city. Yet exactly here a contradiction emerges: despite this acknowledgement, there is apparently little public memory about what it was like to study, work and agitate in Istanbul in the ‘crisis' years before the coup. Based on extensive interviews with people active in political fractions in the late 1970s, this article privileges a phenomenological approach to identify spatial practices, performances and perceptions of activists that generated and structured Istanbul's expanding urban environment in that period. Further, it shows how this history is relevant for comprehending both the ‘micro‐causes' of the coup as well as important dimensions of Turkish politics in the present, each of which cast illuminating light on Istanbul's experience of globalization.

“Liberated Neighborhoods”: Reconstructing Leftist Activism in the Urban Periphery

“…My research is different from Aslan's (2004) and Le Ray's (2004), both on the May First neighborhood (1 Mayıs Mahallesi) in Ümraniye, Istanbul, the iconic neighborhood of resistance (direniş mahallesi) of the 1970s, the former focusing on the past and the latter on the present state of affairs in the neighborhood, informing us about the ideological transformation in the gecekondu neighborhoods once controlled by the left. It is also different from Houston's (2015Houston's ( , 2017, who, in his broader goal of exploring spatial politics in Istanbul before its neoliberal transformation, discusses various aspects of transforming space in a phenomenological framework, such as slogans written on walls, songs sung during marches, as well as occupation as spatial practice and violence during breaking occupation, which were part of the contested revolutionary political action in the city in the late 1970s. As such, the attention paid to leftist activism in the urban periphery remains limited.…”

“…There are only a few studies on leftist mobilization in gecekondu neighborhoods (Aslan 2004;Le Ray 2004;Houston 2015Houston , 2017, all on the Istanbul case. This article aims to contribute to the academic literature by bringing in the cases of Ankara and Izmir, the latter limited to one neighborhood.…”

Informal Adult Learning: Advertisements in Women’s Magazines in Turkey

“…However, there are several ways in which Turkey’s socioeconomic transition differs from those of other developing countries. First, the 1980 military intervention and several subsequent years of military rule that preceded the beginning of the neoliberalization period banned labor unions and ignored the social security violations, which eventually resulted in wage suppression (Houston, 2014; Pamuk, 2008). This helped the Turkish enterprises to remain competitive in terms of labor-intensive export goods up until the end of 1980s.…”