Growth and Revolt: Resisting Urban Redevelopment in Turkey

Abstract

As the resistance of 25 activists to protect an urban commons met with heavy police violence in Istanbul in May 2013, the cities of Turkey saw a rapid mobilization of millions that turned this small protest into a full-fledged uprising. Following the path of this political mobilization flowing from Gezi Park to larger geographical scales of the neighborhood, the urban, and the national, the first part of the article analyzes the expanding political geography of the uprising. The second part takes a step back from the heat of the uprising and examines the growth-based political economy of Turkey in the last decade, which gave way to a very diverse, albeit mostly localized resistance that eventually exploded in the uprising cities of Turkey. This article, then, weaves together the right to the city claim that unfolded in urban Turkey and the political economy that enabled such a political mobilization.

Keywords

Gezi Protests, Politics of Scale, Political Economy of Urban Redevelopment, Neoliberal indebtization, Right to the City, Turkey

SOCIOLOGIA URBANA E RURALE Special Issue, “The creative destruction of the Mediterranean city.” Vol. 104. pp. 44-66.

http://www.francoangeli.it/Riviste/Scheda_Rivista.aspx?idArticolo=51708