State stigmatization in urban Turkey : Managing the 'insurgent' squatter dwellers in Dikmen Valley

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

Deindustrialization in cities of the global south

Recent research by economists has shown that deindustrialization is more severe in Sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America than it ever was in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). Nevertheless, most research on deindustrialization is focused on the former centres of Fordist manufacturing in the industrial heartlands of the North Atlantic. In short, there is a mismatch between where deindustrialization is researched and where it is occurring, and the objective of this paper is to shift the geographical focus of research on deindustrialization to the Global South. Case studies from Argentina, India, Tanzania and Turkey demonstrate the variegated nature of deindustrialization beyond the North Atlantic. In the process, it is demonstrated that cities in the Global South can inform wider theoretical discussions on the impacts of deindustrialization at the urban scale

Confronted and Disappointed?: Struggle of Turkish Planners against Authoritarian State-Regulated Urban Development

Planning in Turkey has always been a rather peculiar profession, in that while its regulation is based on strict top-down rules and principles, in implementation there are actually many grey areas of flexibility, informality, and exception. Moreover, planning education is based on the principles of modernist urban planning and design, and so with the creation of an ‘ideal city’ in mind, young planners, equipped with their newly acquired urban planning and design tools, find themselves facing the contradictions created by market domination, top-down bureaucracy, and informality in an increasingly neoliberal world in which private interests override the principles of ‘public interest’. This struggle has been made even harder by the increasingly interventionist and authoritarian regime in urban regulation under the leadership of the Justice and Welfare Party (AKP) government over the course of the last decade (Eraydin & Taşan-Kok, 2014; Lovering & Evren, 2011; Penpecioğlu, 2011). As a result of these ongoing complex processes, the taught value systems and principles of planning education contradict practice, and recent decades have shown that the gap between planning education and practice is growing. Lacking the instruments to fight authoritarian state-regulated neoliberalism, young planners, we argue in this chapter, are becoming disillusioned with their profession. The findings of this chapter are based on the findings of discussions with young planners (questionnaires, interviews) related to their setbacks, although we believe there is still hope for planning in Turkey. During our research, we came across many boundary-pushing planners, and this chapter will highlight the confrontations and disappointments, turning the spotlight on those who continue to struggle against authoritarian state-regulated urban development