Rendering Istanbul's Periodic Bazaars Invisible: Reflections on Urban Transformation and Contested Space

Abstract

This is a study of Istanbul's periodic bazaars and an attempt to place them in the context of contestation over urban space, urban poverty and informality. The periodic bazaars in the city are either disappearing or being moved to the outskirts. These trends reflect and reproduce spatial unevenness in the city, manifesting new forms of social exclusion and polarization. The city's increasingly commodified urban space has become an arena of social and economic contestation. We address these questions by focusing on the story of the relocation of one of Istanbul's most popular periodic bazaars, the Tuesday bazaar in Kadıköy. Our analysis reveals that the relocation and reorganization of bazaars in Istanbul in the 2000s have largely been driven by rising real-estate prices in the city: land has simply become too precious a commodity to be left to the bazaaris. Furthermore, in the context of a pervasive neoliberal discourse on urban renewal and modernization that promotes the notion of a hygienic city, the bazaaris, it seems, have become the new undesirables of the urban landscape, leaving them under double siege from the commodification of public land and from spatially defined social exclusion.From the emergence of upscale shopping centres to luxury office and residential developments, from the beginnings of gentrification of the old neighbourhoods to packaged tourist sites, Istanbul has been undergoing major transformations, particularly since the mid-1980s (Keyder, 2005a. It is against this background, which in fact parallels the kind of transformations under way in some other globalizing cities (Sassen, 1991), that this study sets out to map and discuss the changes witnessed in Istanbul's periodic bazaars, which have consisted of either downsizing them or removing them from the city centre. This is an attempt to uncover the underlying dynamics at work, not only with regard to contested urban space but also to urban poverty and informality. 1 Though similar in many ways to events elsewhere, the relocation and resizing of Istanbul's periodic bazaars involves a unique combination of commodification and resistance, and helps underscore the contextual and contingent nature of neoliberalism on the ground.We are indebted to Istanbul's bazaaris and their representatives for their time and for their engagement with our study. Our work benefited from the insightful criticisms of Professor Caglar Keyder as well as the comments of the three IJURR reviewers. We would also like to thank Yeliz Günel for helping us with maps and figures. Finally, Özlem Öz would like to thank the Turkish Academy of Sciences for its financial support, and Mine Eder thanks the Council for Middle East Studies at Yale University. 1 Please note that by periodic bazaars we refer to open-air markets set up on specific days of the week in specific neighbourhoods. Unlike their counterparts in Eastern Europe or the famous Tehran bazaars, Turkish bazaaris move from one neighbourhood to another throughout the week.

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