Kurdish Life in Contemporary Turkey by Anna Grabolle Celiker

Author:Anna Grabolle Celiker [Celiker, Anna Grabolle]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, Anthropology, Cultural & Social, Ethnic Studies, General
ISBN: 9780857725974
Google: RHb3DwAAQBAJ
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 2015-06-19T05:33:32+00:00

Tepelik: Gecekondu, Varoş, or Just Another Mahalle?

Due to migration, many cities in Turkey have experienced uncontrolled growth. In Istanbul, one can only guess at the population (12 to 15 million) since many migrants prefer to stay registered in their home-towns, where they can then use their vote, or simply do not bother to change their registration. The population explosion has led to the collapse of infrastructure and the uncontrolled building of accommodation. This has been possible because of a cyclical repetition of illegal construction and upcoming elections with political candidates promising title deeds, electricity supplies, and running water to the settlers in return for votes.

According to Neuwirth, a researcher of shanty towns, the trend to occupy land in cities in Turkey can be traced back to a late change to privately-owned land. Up to the second half of the 19th century, land was owned by the Ottoman sultan, but people were permitted to occupy and use it. Many of the settlers in Istanbul and other cities thus settled on land that was not privately owned (2007: 3) and built gecekondus (literally ‘put up overnight’). Somewhat misleadingly, the term gecekondu is still used as shorthand to refer to the many areas of later, rapid settlement of rural migrants to large cities (cf. Karpat 2004), even though the later homes took much longer to build and are often several storeys high.

Social scientists have started to study the gecekondu quarters in the cities (e.g. the thematic issue of the European Journal of Turkish Studies 2004, Erder 1996, Işık and Pınarcıoğlu 2001, Karpat 2004, Wedel 1996, 1997).5 Given that the Vanlı migrants I studied were offered housing by the local council, the term does not apply to their situation. They do, however, live in an area that has many illegal buildings. I would describe the quarter of Tepelik as generally unplanned as the area filled up rapidly in the last 30 years, with infrastructure following behind the building of houses. Tepelik was by no means an anomaly. Indeed, White quotes research that says that in the 1980s, 70 per cent of the residents of Istanbul were living in such unplanned settlements (2002: 59). Tepelik was very similar to how White describes Ümraniye, the area of her fieldwork:

It began, as did many Istanbul neighbourhoods, as a squatter area that over the years was gradually absorbed into the city proper. Despite this bureaucratic and infrastructural incorporation, Ümraniye’s residents hold a tentative position as urbanites that must be continually negotiated. This insecurity extends from the precariousness of their livelihoods to their unacceptability as ‘urban types’ to other city dwellers who see themselves as being modern and Westernized.

(2002: 9)

Tepelik, the quarter the Vanlı of my study inhabited, was in the centre of the European side of Istanbul, unlike Ümraniye, which is on the outskirts of Istanbul.6 However, its proximity to well-established central quarters like Taksim did not preclude it from looking ‘less’: less well planned, less well maintained and cleaned, and less wealthy, resulting in the ‘tentative position as urbanites’ for its inhabitants that White describes so well.

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