Contained in:
Book Chapter

Fikirtepe in limbo: urban transformation, cross-border migration, and re-peripheralization in Istanbul

  • Francesco Pasta

The historical development of Istanbul’s gecekondu areas (informally-originated neighborhoods) can be broadly interpreted as a progression toward the center and subsequent re-peripheralization, both in sociopolitical terms and in actual urban geography. While Istanbul emerged in recent decades as a magnet for transnational migrants and for capitals pouring into the debt-fueled real estate sector, many such neighborhoods have been targeted by speculative socio-spatial restructuring projects, while also absorbing much of the migratory influx. The recent economic crisis plunged these urban redevelopment sites into a deadlock, generating a fragmented urbanscape in which multiple layers of uncertainty, suspension, and informalization overlap and interact. This chapter explores the unfolding transformation in Fikirtepe, the largest ongoing redevelopment project in the city, which has seen its social and urban fabric torn apart by the redevelopment and is currently stuck in an unstable but protracted limbo. As Fikirtepe becomes “unlivable” for many of its long-time dwellers, a number of migrants are moving in, etching out a living: a collateral effect of redevelopment failure, creating a space of opportunity for new disenfranchised populations with varied backgrounds, legal statuses, and life trajectories. Within this setting, this chapter analyzes the periphery as a condition that is articulated, reproduced, and transformed through embodied practices. With their practices, narratives, and trajectories, those who inhabit such botched urban transformation embody different layers of the periphery, contributing to shape an understanding of it as a perspectival condition with a polyvalent spatiality and temporality.

  • Keywords:
  • post-gecekondu,
  • urban transformation,
  • re-peripheralization,
  • neoliberal crisis,
  • urban geopolitics,
  • transnational migration,
+ Show More

Francesco Pasta

Politecnico di Milano, Italy - ORCID: 0000-0001-5262-2336

  1. Adanalı Y. 2017, “Güzel bir Fikirtepe nasıl doğuyor?’’ [How is ‘a Beautıful Fikirtepe’ being born?], Mutlukent, <https://mutlukent.wordpress.com/2017/02/05/guzel-bir-fikirtepe-nasil-doguyor/>, (07/2019).
  2. Akdeniz E. 2018, “Türkiye’de Mülteci Gerçeği: Kayıtdışı Sömürüye Kayıtdışı Mekânlar” [The Reality of Refugees in Turkey: Informal Spaces for Informal Exploitation], Mekanda Adalet ve Mültecilik, Beyond.Istanbul, (07/2019).
  3. Altınok E. 2015, “To have or not to have, that is the question: The Unseen Dimensions of Housing Question in Turkey, The Case of TOKİ-İstanbul in Post-2000 Period,” The Housing Question - Nomad Seminar, University of San Diego, March 12–13, 2015, San Diego, CA.
  4. Amin A. 2013, “Telescopic urbanism and the poor,” City, 17(4), pp. 476–492.
  5. Aslan Ş., Erman T. 2014, “The Transformation of the Urban Periphery: Once Upon a Time There Were Gecekondus in Istanbul,” in D. Özhan Koçak, O. Kemal Koçak (eds.), Whose City Is That? Culture, Design, Spectacle and Capital in Istanbul, Scholars Publishing, Cambridge.
  6. Bakiner O. 2018, “A key to Turkish politics? the center–periphery framework revisited,” Turkish Studies, 19(4), pp. 503–522.
  7. Bastia T. 2015, “Transnational migration and urban informality: Ethnicity in Buenos Aires’ informal settlements,” Urban Studies, 52(10), pp. 1810–1825.
  8. Bayat A. 2012, “Politics in the City-Inside-Out,” City & Society, 24(2), pp. 110–128.
  9. Baydar Nalbantoğlu G. 1997, “Silent Interruptions. Urban Encounters with Rural Turkey,” in S. Bozdoğan and R. Kasaba (eds.), Rethinking Modernity and National Identity in Turkey, University of Washington Press, Seattle.
  10. Bişkin H. 2020, “Fikirtepe'de yeni gelişme: Müteahhit istediğini yapamayacak” [New development in Fikirtepe: contractors won’t be able to do as they please], Gazete Duvar, <https://www.gazeteduvar.com.tr/gundem/2020/05/20/fikirtepede-yeni-gelisme-muteahhit-istedigini-yapamayacak>, (01/2021).
  11. Bozkurt H., Malani S. 2017, “The Disaster Before the Disaster: Building Resilience in Istanbul,” Beyond.Istanbul, <https://beyond.istanbul/the-disaster-before-the-disaster-building-resilience-in-istanbul-41e74b61bf5f>, (01/2021).
  12. Cabannes Y., Göral Ö. S. 2020, “Land disputes on the outskirts of Istanbul: a unique case of legalization amidst demolitions and forced evictions,” Environment & Urbanization, 32(1), pp. 69–88.
  13. Brenner N. (ed.) 2014, Implosions/Explosions: Towards a Study of Planetary Urbanization, Jovis, Berlin.
  14. Caldeira T. 2017, “Peripheral urbanization: Autoconstruction, transversal logics, and politics in cities of the global south,” Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 35(1), pp. 3–20.
  15. Crawley H. et al. 2016, “Unpacking a rapidly changing scenario: migration flows, routes and trajectories across the Mediterranean,” Unravelling the Mediterranean Migration Crisis, MEDMIG.
  16. Cruz T., Forman F. 2017, “The Political Equator,” part of the exhibition “Visualizing Citizenship: Seeking a New Public Imagination,” Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-y6qj_oux5s>.
  17. Çeritoğlu O., 2017, “Yık-yap ve Yeniden Kullanma: İstanbul’da Çıkmacılar” [Destroy-Build and Use Again: Çıkmacılar in Istanbul], Manifold, <https://manifold.press/yik-yap-ve-yeniden-kullanma-istanbul-da-cikmacilar> (07/2019).
  18. Danış D. (ed.) 2006, Integration in Limbo: Iraqi, Afghan, Maghrebi and Iranian Migrants in Istanbul, MiReKoc Research Project.
  19. Darling J. 2016, “Forced migration and the city: Irregularity, informality, and the politics of presence,” Progress in Human Geography, pp. 1–21, Sage, London.
  20. Delibas K. 2014, The Rise of Political Islam in Turkey: Urban Poverty, Grassroots Activism and Islamic Fundamentalism, I.B.Tauris, London.
  21. Demirtaş N., Şen S. 2007, “Varoş identity: The redefinition of low income settlements in Turkey,” Middle Eastern Studies, 43(1), pp. 87–106.
  22. Esen O. 2015, “Post-gecekondu,” in P. Derviş, B. Tanju, U. Tanyeli (eds.), Becoming Istanbul. An Encyclopaedia, SALT, Istanbul.
  23. Fawaz M. 2016, “Planning and the refugee crisis: Informality as a framework of analysis and reflection,” Planning Theory, pp. 1–17, Sage, London.
  24. Fregonese S. 2012, “Urban Geopolitics 8 Years on. Hybrid Sovereignties, the Everyday, and Geographies of Peace,” Geography Compass, 6/5 (2012): 290–303, 10.1111/j.1749-8198.2012.00485.x
  25. Genç F. 2017, “Migration as a site of political struggle,” movements: Journal for Critical Migration and Border Regime Studies, 3(2), <http://movements-journal.org/issues/05.turkey/08.genc--migration-as-a-site-of-political-struggle-istanbul-migrant-solidarity-network.html>.
  26. Gökşin Z. A. 2009, Community-based approach in sustainable neighbourhood regeneration: a model proposal for Kadıköy-Fikirtepe, unpublished PhD thesis, Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University.
  27. Holston J. 2009, “Insurgent Citizenship in an Era of Global Urban Peripheries,” City & Society, 21(2), pp. 245–267.
  28. Holston J., Caldeira T. 2008, “Urban peripheries and the invention of citizenship,” Harvard Design Magazine, 28, pp. 19–23.
  29. Honsa J. 2014, “Istanbul’s Fading Urban Metabolism,” Failed Architecture, <https://www.failedarchitecture.com/istanbuls-fading-metabolism/>.
  30. İçduygu A., Karadağ S. 2018, “Afghan migration through Turkey to Europe: seeking refuge, forming diaspora, and becoming citizens,” Turkish Studies, 19(3), pp. 482–502.
  31. Karadağ S. 2021, Ghosts of Istanbul: Afghans at the Margins of Precarity, Association for Migration Research (GAR).
  32. Karaman O. 2013a, “Urban Renewal in Istanbul: Reconfigured Spaces, Robotic Lives,” International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 37(2).
  33. Karaman O. 2013b, “Urban Neoliberalism with Islamic Characteristics,” Urban Studies, 50(16), pp. 3412–3427.
  34. Karaman O., Sawyer L., Schmid C., Ping Wong K. 2020, “Plot by Plot: Plotting Urbanism as an Ordinary Process of Urbanisation,” Antipode, 52(4).
  35. Keyder Ç (ed.) 1999, Istanbul: Between the Global and the Local, Rowman and Littlefield.
  36. Keyder Ç. 2005, “Globalisation and social exclusion in Istanbul,” International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 29(1), pp. 124–134.
  37. Keyder Ç. 2010a, “Capital City Resurgent: Istanbul since the 1980s,” New Perspectives on Turkey, 43, pp. 177–186.
  38. Keyder Ç. 2010b, “Istanbul into the Twenty-First Century,” in D. Göktürk, L. Soysal, I. Türeli (eds), Orienting Istanbul: Cultural Capital of Europe?, Routledge, London.
  39. Kılıçaslan G. 2016, “Forced migration, citizenship, and space: the case of Syrian Kurdish refugees in İstanbul,” New Perspectives on Turkey, 54, pp. 77–95.
  40. Korkmaz T., Ünlü-Yücesoy E. (eds) 2009, Istanbul. Living in Voluntary and Involuntary Exclusion, Diwan Series, IABR.
  41. Kuyucu T., Ünsal Ö. 2010, “Urban Transformation as State-Led Property Transfer: An Analysis of Two Cases of Urban Renewal in Istanbul,” Urban Studies, 47(7).
  42. Logie Sinan., Morvan Y. 2014, “[Photos] Un-building the Metropolis: Istanbul at the Age of “Urban Transformation,” Nuria, <https://www.noria-research.com/un-building-the-metropolis-istanbul-in-the-age-of-urban-transformation/>, (12/2020).
  43. Lovering J., Türkmen H. 2011, “Bulldozer Neo-liberalism in Istanbul: The State-led Construction of Property Markets, and the Displacement of the Urban Poor,” International Planning Studies, 16(1), pp. 73–96
  44. Madra Y. M., Yılmaz S. 2019, “Turkey’s Decline into (Civil) War Economy: From Neoliberal Populism to Corporate Nationalism,” The South Atlantic Quarterly, 118(1), Duke University Press, Durham.
  45. Marconi G. 2009, “Migrants stranded at the Border of their Dream: Learning from Transit Cities in Mexico and Turkey,” TRIALOG, 101(2), pp. 8–12.
  46. Mardin Ş. 1973, “Center-Periphery Relations: A Key to Turkish Politics?”, Daedalus, 102(1), Post-Traditional Societies (Winter, 1973), pp. 169–190.
  47. McFarlane C. 2012, “Rethinking Informality: Politics, Crisis, and the City,” Planning Theory & Practice, 13(1), pp. 89–108.
  48. Ministry of Interior of Turkey 2020, Distribution of Syrians Under Temporary Protection By Year, <https://en.goc.gov.tr/temporary-protection27>, (03/2021).
  49. Öktem K. 2019, “Erasing palimpsest city. Boom, bust, and urbicide in Turkey,” in H. Yacobi, Nasasra (eds), Routledge Handbook on Middle East Cities, Routledge, London.
  50. Parmaksızoğlu D. 2014, “From Home to Real Estate: Urban Redevelopment on the Axis of Speculation in Istanbul,” Jadaliyya, < https://www.jadaliyya.com/Details/31310/From-Home-to-Real-Estate-Urban-Redevelopment-on-the-Axis-of-Speculation-in-Istanbul>, (07/2020).
  51. Parmaksızoğlu D. 2016, “Istanbul City of Resistance,” in D. Sharp, C. Panetta (eds), Beyond the Square. Urbanism and the Arab Uprisings, UR05, Terreform.
  52. Peeren E., Stuit H., A. Van Weyenberg (eds.) 2016, Peripheral Visions in the Globalizing Present: Space, Mobility, Aesthetics, Brill-Rodopi, Leiden and Boston.
  53. Pieterse E., Simone A. 2017, New Urban Worlds. Inhabiting Dissonant Times, Polity, Cambridge.
  54. Pusch B. 2012, “Bordering the EU: Istanbul as a Hotspot for Transnational Migration,” in S. Paçacı Elitok, T. Straubhaar (eds), Turkey, Migration and the EU: Potentials, Challenges and Opportunities, Hamburg University Press, Hamburg.
  55. Roy A. 2005, “Urban Informality. Toward an Epistemology of Planning,” Journal of the American Planning Association, Spring 2005, 71(2).
  56. Roy A. 2011, “Slumdog Cities: Rethinking Subaltern Urbanism,” International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 35(2), pp. 223–38
  57. Roy A. 2011, “The Agonism of Utopia: Dialectics at a Standstill,” Traditional Dwellings and Settlements Review, 23(1), pp. 15–24.
  58. Roy A. 2019, “Global margins. From the production of marginalization to spaces of hope. An interview to Ananya Roy,” in S. Tulumello, G. Pozzi (eds.), Tracce Urbane, 3(5).
  59. Sassen S. 2009, “The Immutable Intersections of Vast Mobilities,” Istanbul City of Intersections, Urban Age.
  60. Saunders D. 2010, Arrival City: How the Largest Migration in History is Reshaping Our World, Random House, London.
  61. Schindler S. 2017, “Towards a paradigm of Southern urbanism,” City, 21(1), pp. 47–64.
  62. Seyhan Y. 2017, “The evolution of Afghan migration in Istanbul,” Harekact Reporting, <https://harekact.bordermonitoring.eu/2017/12/17/the-evolution-of-afghan-migration-in-istanbul/>, (07/2020).
  63. Simone A. 2010, City Life from Jakarta to Dakar: Movements at the Crossroads, Routledge.
  64. Simone A. 2016, “The UNINHABITABLE? In between Collapsed Yet Still Rigid Distinctions,” Cultural Politics, 12(2).
  65. Soytemel E. 2017, “Urban Rent Speculation, Uncertainty and Unknowns as Strategy and Resistance in Istanbul’s Housing Market,” in G. Erdi, Y. Şentürk (eds), Identity, Justice and Resistance in the Neoliberal City, Palgrave Macmillan, UK.
  66. Şenyapılı T. 2004, “Charting the ‘Voyage’ of Squatter Housing in Urban Spatial ‘Quadruped,’” European Journal of Turkish Studies, Thematic Issue N°1 - Gecekondu, <https://journals.openedition.org/ejts/142>.
  67. T24, 2014, “Fikirtepe'nin inatçısı pes etti, 5 ev alacak” [Fikirtepe’s stubborn gave up, he will get 5 flats], T24, <https://t24.com.tr/haber/fikirtepenin-inatcisi-pes-etti-5-ev-alacak,266849>.
  68. Tuğal C. 2016, The Fall of the Turkish Model: How the Arab Uprisings Brought Down Islamic Liberalism, Verso, New York.
  69. Turk S. S., Tarakci S., Gürsoy N. 2020, “A large-scale urban renewal project in a vicious cycle of commons and anticommons: The Fikirtepe case (Istanbul, Turkey),” Habitat International, 102.
  70. Türkün A. 2011, “Urban Regeneration and Hegemonic Power Relationships,” International Planning Studies, 16(1), Routledge, London.
  71. Uzunçarşılı Baysal C. 2014, “Fikirtepe’den İnattepe'ye Manhattan Macerası” [From Fikirtepe to Inattepe [Stubborn Hill], a Manhattan adventure], Bianet, <https://m.bianet.org/biamag/toplum/158476-fikirtepe-den-inattepe-ye-manhattan-macerasi> (08/2019)
  72. Uzunçarşılı Baysal C. (ed.) 2016, Kentin Tozu: Kent Hakkı Üzerine Konuşmalar [City Dust: Conversations on the Right to the City], Encore.
  73. Yapı 2017, “Araplar Fikirtepe’den Kaçıyor” [Arabs run away from Fikirtepe], <http://www.yapi.com.tr/haberler/araplar-fikirtepeden-kaciyor_157300.html> (07/2020).
  74. Yiftachel O. 2009, “Theoretical Notes On `Gray Cities’: the Coming of Urban Apartheid?”, Planning Theory, 8(1), pp. 87–99.
  75. Yilmaz Ö. 2016, “Yeni Ucube Fikirtepe” [Fikirtepe, a New Monster], Arkitera, <http://www.arkitera.com/gorus/yeni-ucube-fikirtepe/> (08/2019).
  76. Zeydanlıoğlu W. 2008, “‘The White Turkish Man’s Burden’: Orientalism, Kemalism and the Kurds in Turkey,” in G. Rings, A. Ife (eds.), Neo-colonial mentalities in contemporary Europe? Language and discourse in the construction of identities, Cambridge Scholars, Newcastle.
PDF
  • Publication Year: 2022
  • Pages: 170-199

XML
  • Publication Year: 2022

Chapter Information

Chapter Title

Fikirtepe in limbo: urban transformation, cross-border migration, and re-peripheralization in Istanbul

Authors

Francesco Pasta

Language

English

DOI

10.36253/978-88-5518-661-2.08

Peer Reviewed

Publication Year

2022

Copyright Information

© 2022 Author(s)

Content License

CC BY-NC-ND 4.0

Metadata License

CC0 1.0

Bibliographic Information

Book Title

Embodying Peripheries

Editors

Giuseppina Forte, Kuan Hwa

Peer Reviewed

Number of Pages

304

Publication Year

2022

Copyright Information

© 2022 Author(s)

Content License

CC BY-NC-ND 4.0

Metadata License

CC0 1.0

Publisher Name

Firenze University Press

DOI

10.36253/978-88-5518-661-2

ISBN Print

978-88-5518-660-5

eISBN (pdf)

978-88-5518-661-2

eISBN (xml)

978-88-5518-662-9

Series Title

Ricerche. Architettura, Pianificazione, Paesaggio, Design

Series ISSN

2975-0342

Series E-ISSN

2975-0350

428

Fulltext
downloads

261

Views

Export Citation

1,348

Open Access Books

in the Catalogue

2,262

Book Chapters

3,790,127

Fulltext
downloads

4,421

Authors

from 924 Research Institutions

of 65 Nations

65

scientific boards

from 348 Research Institutions

of 43 Nations

1,248

Referees

from 380 Research Institutions

of 38 Nations