Orhan Esen
Learning from İstanbul
The city of İstanbul: Material production and production of the discourse

The second wave of land-taking. Private ownership and public resources
Although the limits of re-compaction will be reached some time or other, the need for new land is due to persist, even more so as immigration continues at an inflationary scale, which in the nineties is due to the war in the south-east. Leadership is taken by circles from the first generation of immigrants, who organize the new conquest of land at a good profit margin. Public building land at the periphery is no longer available. Land "availability" is now limited to forest and water reserves in the north and the north-east as well as the private farming areas in the west. The battle for these areas is now subject to increased competition. As of the mid-eighties, the major capital is set to invest in urban soil and building contracts.

The second wave of land-taking coincides with the post-gecekondu period. It reaches a peak in the late eighties / early nineties before it comes to a temporary standstill with the 1999 earthquake and the 2001-02 national economic crisis. This wave is much more turbulent and powerful than the first one (1945-80), which was moderate and almost unobtrusive. The main players tend to be individuals who witnessed, some of them as losers, the first wave and toughened up in its wake. The seizure of land on private property is allegorically reflected in the "occupation" of the Sultançiftliği estate (as told by Işık / Pınarcıoğlu) - situated in today's Sultanbeyli district in the water protection area of Ömerli in the north-east of the Asian city centre; 350,000 inhabitants - by those who did not make it beyond having a rented room in Ümraniye, a gecekondu district of the first generation.

During the nineties the city's west end, i.e. the districts Küçükçekmece, Esenyurt and Avcılar, is subject to major-scale new land development: It is the same old story, as narrated by Nazan Üstündağs in this volume, of the purchase, parcelling and resale of land in Esenyurt to people who took part in the first gecekondu generation in a subordinate position, commuting between the country and their city-dwelling relatives. Legal tapus are due to arrive eventually, subsequently, this time in the form of "left-wing" clientele networks, as opposed to the "Islamist" ones of Sultanbeyli. This time, the motive behind the action of initial developers and primary beneficiaries is not personal use, but profit orientation only. The structures and networks of land-taking from the bottom which used to adhere to the principles of equality and solidarity slowly make way to mafia-style substitutes (<.> Postexpress). The old hegemony of utility value is replaced by the new hegemony of exchange value.

Whoever in the era of "strained and excluding urbanization" (<.> Işık / Pınarcıoğlu) privately owned a piece of land he was unable to "occupy" on his own would be at risk of losing it once and for all to any outside occupants who might turn up. The complicated legal proceedings going on for decades would more often than not end in a "settlement" between the de-facto users and the "owners". Unfortunately, the courts often set forth compensation sums that failed to be in keeping with the actual market situation. Due to historic instruments, the conditions of ownership relations had become complicated and ambiguous. All a buyer now has to do is to make sure that he is the sole purchaser who claims his property immediately (<.> Postexpress). Any parcel of land which remains unclaimed is "re-allocated" without replacement! Meanwhile, the new developers dominate the town planning processes - for instance, they identify main streets as commercial settlements they reserve for good fellas. The ruler is now standard equipment. Everybody knows the subtleties of the business: In committee sessions, the developers prepare land use plans for long-sealed soils, issue endless building permits to their clientele and protect them whenever required. The emerging new ambience, with its broad, regular street pattern and three- to eight-storied post-gecekondus, has nothing in common, neither in outward appearance nor in any other way, with the traditional archetypal gecekondu.
Building a "gecekondu" is now restricted to individuals who bring a minimum of capital or have good connections. Poorer people become tenants in the so-called apart-kondus or in the new slums of the now deteriorating old town.

There is no doubt that the second wave of land-taking has exerted a critical pressure on the collective resources of the city, especially in the fragile ecological zones in the north and the water protection areas (Arnavutköy in Sazlıdere, Gazi in Alibeyköy und Sultanbeyli in the Ömerli Reservoir). The policy of imposing the new gated communities project through building a 'Formula 1' course in the Ömerli Reservoir under the protection of influential politicians is but one of many depressing examples. The chapter of a sustainable town planning is still to be written.

Slum, gecekondu in stagnation, neo-gecekondu: On the losing side of neoliberal economic policy
The quarters described in the following are rather unusual recent developments which have had a "bombshell" effect. Still, they were to be expected.
The exodus of capital from the historical peninsula, which began in the middle of the nineteenth century, left the more traditional and also poorer classes behind. At the same time, the Golden Horn area attracted industrial settlements which transformed the neighbourhoods into quasi-proletarian quarters. As a result of the demolition of the industrial plants, which was carried through without replacement and partly by force under the Dalan government, this district turned into the first true slum area of the city . (4)

The post-gecekondu, on the other hand, is not tantamount to saturated middle-class areas - it is also connected to some degree of poverty. Not having to pay rent is still a far cry from "having made it". Apart from the serious internal disagreements affecting the socially advanced post-gecekondu districts, some gecekondu mahalles appear to have been stranded on the losing side altogether, following the principle of "unequal development". Due to disadvantages in terms of topography and/or traffic conditions, some places have been slow, or failed altogether, to bring about the value-added conversion into post-gecekondus; they are affected by the removal of industry, but had little opportunity to change over to alternative sites of so-called flexible small-scale production (i.e., sweatshop centres). Since they have been unable to profit from life-saving self-investments at the micro-level, they have lost out to competing metropolitan districts.

It is often the "small" differences that are at the root of such unequal developments taking place in very confined spaces. The settlements of Çağlayan and Kuştepe, just a few hundred metres apart, offer an illustrative example: The Çağlayan hillside has a transit road which connects the affluent middle-class district Şişli with the industrial valley of Kağithane. This main road has developed into a location for showcases of the office furniture industry operating metal-working plants down in the valley, which are soon to be joined by facilities of the overall furniture sector. By contrast, the hill of Kuştepe, which is just a few steps apart, has no transit road to the bottom of the valley. Due to the lack of urban transformation, the relative stagnation as compared to the neighbouring Çağlayan is already glaringly obvious on account of the building density. The social networks still in place at "still-gecekondu" sites make collective survival easier, while the "real" slums in the old centre, e.g., in the Dolapdere valley, are characterized by a more distinctive individualisation.

Anybody spotting recently self-built shacks at the fairly inaccessible urban periphery will inevitably be reminded of the old gecekondu. But similarities would be rather superficial, as they remain limited to the mere physical buildings. The neo-gecekondu, at least in the short run, has no positive future prospects. Unlike its precursor, this new variant does not represent a collective settling at an industrial centre offering employment, but impoverished families who have found their individual stopgap solution at a remote location without any urban context or foreseeable future benefits. The neo-gecekondu is a result of two decades of neoliberalism and an explicit phenomenon of the recent economic crisis 2001-02. A place of the losers.

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