State Stigmatisation in Urban Turkey: Managing the “Insurgent” Squatter Dwellers in Dikmen Valley

Abstract

This paper contributes to the accounts of territorial stigmatisation by examining the state role in it in the case of Turkey, a country that suffers from growing state power. The existing debates are mainly restricted to its function as an economic strategy paving the way for capital accumulation through devaluing working-class people and places. Drawing on textual analysis of political speeches, local newsletters and mainstream national newspapers and fieldwork material that include interviews and observations in Dikmen Valley where some squatter communities mobilised against the state-imposed urban transformation project, I demonstrate that state conceptualisation of "problem people" targets the "insurgent" rather than the "unprofitable" groups. Stigma in urban settings functions in inciting the desire to meet the patterns deemed appropriate by the state, rather than the market. Moving from that, I argue that stigma is used as a state-led political strategy, which is integral to the growing authoritarianism in Turkey.

Counter hegemony, popular education, and resistances: A systematic literature review on the squatters’ movement

“…Urbanization has become a key tool for the development of capitalism, and the city plays a central role in capital accumulation ( Novák and Kuřík, 2020 ; Yardımcı, 2020 ). Accelerated urbanization causes more and more people to move to cities ( González et al, 2020 ; Novák and Kuřík, 2020 ); in turn, urban spaces are increasingly commodified, what has turned cities into neoliberal spaces where life is increasingly individualized and based on the free market ( Novák and Kuřík, 2020 ).…”

“…Firstly, the stigmatization of the movement, which has been publicly delegitimized through its criminalization ( Nowicki, 2020 ; Yardımcı, 2020 ), to which the media have contributed by portraying squatters as fanatics, criminal gangs, parasites, and invaders ( Martínez, 2019 ). This has served political interests on the part of the state to continue urbanizing without encountering resistance ( Kallin and Slater, 2014 citats per Yardımcı, 2020 ; Novák, 2020 ; Yardımcı, 2020 ).…”

Trustees Instead of Elected Mayors: Authoritarian Neoliberalism and the Removal of Kurdish Mayors in Turkey

“…As Bruff states, in the context of authoritarian neoliberalism, dominant social groups become “less interested in neutralizing resistance and dissent via concessions and forms of compromise that maintain their hegemony, favoring instead the explicit exclusion and marginalization of subordinate social groups through the constitutionally and legally engineered self-disempowerment of nominally democratic institutions…” (2014, 116). This situation resulted in “aggressive” centralization in Turkey as “municipal administrations became sub-servient to the centre in project implementation,” especially after 2010 (Yardımcı 2020, 1525). By briefly examining this process, it can be seen that neoliberal policies in Turkey resulted in enhancing the power of the central government and administrative “recentralization,” similar to other “developing” countries that experienced the process of neoliberalization (Kuyucu 2018, 3).…”

Post-conflict Urban Renewal as an Ethnocratic Regime Practice: Racialized Governance of Redevelopment in Diyarbakir, Turkey

“…Urban renewal, as a state-led gentrification agenda, has been a ubiquitous urban strategy that both central government and municipal authorities have pursued since the early 2000s in many cities across Turkey (Candan and Kolluoglu, 2008;Kuyucu and Ünsal, 2010;Karaman, 2013;Ay, 2019;Yardimci, 2020;Ay and Penpecioglu, 2022;Kuyucu, 2022). A determining characteristic of this nationwide urban redevelopment agenda is the market-based logic of neighborhood-scale demolition and reconstruction often in the form of public-private partnerships as a quintessential case of neoliberal urban restructuring in cities (Lovering and Türkmen, 2011;Demirtas-Milz, 2013;Lelandais, 2014;Unsal, 2015).…”