Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-vdxz6 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-22T14:29:33.926Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Walking in the Periphery: Activist Art and Urban Resistance to Neoliberalism in Istanbul

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 January 2019

Ipek Türeli  and
Meltem Al
Ipek Türeli
Affiliation:
Peter Guo-Hua Fu School of ArchitectureMcGill University
Meltem Al
Affiliation:
Peter Guo-Hua Fu School of ArchitectureMcGill University
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

In 2013, the Gezi Park protests created a wave of optimism in Istanbul – until it was brutally suppressed by the government. Although the ephemeral movement ended without having achieved its immediate goals, it continues to have ripple effects on the public culture of Istanbul. The ruling party, for example, has emulated the forms and formats of performance that emerged during the protests in order to mobilize its own support base. In a post-Gezi Istanbul, however, the occupation of public spaces in protest of the government has become nearly impossible, rendering alternative artistic and activist practices all the more important.

Type
Research: Bridging Boundaries
Information
Review of Middle East Studies , Volume 52 , Issue 2 , November 2018 , pp. 310 - 333
Copyright
Copyright © Middle East Studies Association of North America, Inc. 2019 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

1

Ipek Türeli is Canada Research Chair in Architectures of Spatial Justice and Assistant Professor of Architecture at McGill University. Meltem Al is a current Ph.D. student in Architecture at McGill University.

References

2 Artist Serkan Taycan's website: http://serkantaycan.com

3 Harvey, David, “Flexible Accumulation through Urbanization: Reflections on ‘Post-Modernism’ in the American City,” Antipode 19, no. 3 (1987), 260–86CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Harvey, David, The Condition of Postmodernity (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1989)Google Scholar; Harvey, David, “From Managerialism to Entrepreneurialism: The Transformation in Urban Governance in Late Capitalism,” Geografiska Annaler: Series B, Human Geography 71, no. 1 (1989): 3–17CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

4 Dear, Michael, “Los Angeles and the Chicago School: Invitation to a Debate,” City & Community 1, no. 1 (2002): 5–32CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

5 Sassen, Saskia, The Global City: New York, London, Tokyo (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2013)Google Scholar.

6 Brenner, Neil and Theodore, Nik, “Cities and the Geographies of ‘Actually Existing Neoliberalism’,” Antipode: A Radical Journal of Geography 34, no. 3 (2002): 369CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

7 Lobo, Bruno, “Urban Megaprojects and Local Planning Frameworks in New York City, Paris, and Sao Paulo,” in Urban Megaprojects: A Worldwide View, ed Gerardo del Cerro Santamaría (Emerald: Bingley, 2013), 132Google Scholar.

8 Merriam Webster Online Dictionary, s.v. “megaproject,” accessed on June 1, 2018, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/megaproject .

9 Altshuler, Alan and Luberoff, David, Mega-Projects: The Changing Politics of Urban Public Investment (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press, 2003), 2Google Scholar.

10 Gellert, Paul K. and Lynch, Barbara D., “Mega-Projects as Displacements,” International Social Science Journal, no. 175 (2004): 15–25Google Scholar.

11 Gellert and Lynch, “Mega-Projects as Displacements.”

12 Examples of this growing literature include but are not limited to the following: Balkan, Neşecan, Balkan, Erol, and Öncü, Ahmet, “Introduction,” in The Neoliberal Landscape and the Rise of Islamist Capital in Turkey (New York: Berghahn Books, 2015), 1–12Google Scholar; Karaman, Ozan, “Urban neoliberalism with Islamic characteristics,” Urban Studies 50, no. 16 (2013): 3412–27CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Ünsal, Özlem and Kuyucu, Tuna, “Challenging the Neoliberal Urban Regime: Regeneration and Resistance in Başıbüyük and Tarlabaşı” in Orienting Istanbul: Cultural Capital of Europe? eds. Göktürk, Deniz, Soysal, Levent, and Türeli, Ipek (New York: Routledge, 2010), 51–70Google Scholar.

13 Leitner, Helga, Peck, Jamie, and Sheppard, Eric S., “Squaring Up to Neoliberalism,” in Contesting Neoliberalism: Urban Frontiers, eds. Leitner, Helga, Peck, Jamie, and Sheppard, Eric S. (New York: Guilford Press, 2007), 311–327Google Scholar; 313, 317.

14 For example, Ipek Türeli's guest edited journal issue “Streets of Protest” for the International Journal of Islamic Architecture 2, no.1 (March 2013); or more recently, Hou, Jeffrey and Knierbein, Sabine, eds. City Unsilenced: Urban Resistance and Public Space in the Age of Shrinking Democracy (Routledge, 2018)Google Scholar.

15 Batuman, Bülent, New Islamist Architecture and Urbanism: Negotiating Nation and Islam through Built Environment in Turkey (London: Routledge, 2018)Google Scholar; Paker, Hande, “Developmentalism: The Megaprojects of the AKP as Tools of Hegemony Building,” in Neoliberal Turkey and its Discontents: Economic Policy and the Environment, eds. Adaman, Fikret, Akbulut, Bengi, and Arsel, Murat (London: Tauris, 2017), 103–19Google Scholar.

16 “Canal Istanbul project to proceed: Turkish minister,” Hurriyet Daily News , September 15, 2018. www.hurriyetdailynews.com/canal-istanbul-project-to-proceed-turkish-minister-136890

17 For more information about The Northern Forests Defense, please see: http://www.kuzeyormanlari.org/

18 Paolo Prieri, “The Construction of the Forum against Unnecessary Imposed Mega Projects: An Historic Necessity,” http://www.presidioeuropa.net. The Forum is in contact with social movements and resistance associations in Istanbul. It was represented in a locally organized conference in October 2013 entitled “Pharaonic Projects Conference (Çılgın Projeler Konferansı).”

19 Vento, Amparo Tarazona, “Mega-project Meltdown: Post-politics, Neoliberal Urban Regeneration and Valencia's Fiscal Crisis,” Urban Studies 54, no. 1 (2017): 68–84CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

20 Swyngedouw, Eric, “Interrogating Post-Democratization: Reclaiming Egalitarian Political Spaces,” Political Geography 30 (2011): 370–80CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

21 In indigenous societies, walking was and is a means of bodily knowledge acquisition – a social activity similar to storytelling. Tim Ingold and Jo Lee Vergunst suggest, “In their timings, rhythms and inflections, the feet respond as much as does the voice to the presence and activity of others. Social relations… are not enacted in situ but are paced out along the ground.” Many religions incorporate walking as a devotional activity and have sanctified pilgrimage routes. Mass tourism in the modern era introduced leisure walking as a category unto itself, with many different iterations, ranging from unstructured individual strolling along main streets or promenades in order to see and to be seen, to structured guided group walks where participants listen to a guide lecture about the city as they follow along. Ingold, Tim and Vergunst, Jo Lee, “Introduction,” Ways of Walking: Ethnography and Practice on Foot (Aldershot, UK: Ahsgate, 2008), 1–19Google Scholar.

22 Mauss, Marcel, “Techniques of the Body,” Economy and Society 2, no. 1 (1973): 70–88CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Originally given as a lecture in 1934 and published in 1935 in French.

23 Jacobs, Jane, The Death and Life of Great American Cities (New York: Vintage Books, 1961)Google Scholar.

24 Sennett, Richard, The Fall of Public Man (New York: Knopf, 1977)Google Scholar.

25 Certeau, Michel de, “Walking in the City,” in The Practice of Everyday Life (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984), 91–110Google Scholar.

26 Morris, Brian, “What We Talk about When We Talk about ‘Walking in the City’,” Cultural Studies 18, no. 5 (2004): 675–97CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

27 Martin, Denis-Constant, “Politics behind the Mask: Studying Contemporary Carnivals in Political Perspective, Theoretical and Methodological Suggestions,” Research Questions 2, (2001): 5Google Scholar.

28 Amato, Joseph Anthony, On foot: A History of Walking, (New York: New York University Press, 2004), 264Google Scholar.

29 Amato, On foot.

30 Solnit, Rebecca, Wanderlust: A History of Walking (New York: Viking, 2000)Google Scholar; Careri, Francesco, Walkscapes: Walking as an Aesthetic Practice (Barcelona: Gili, 2003)Google Scholar.

31 Gunning, Tom, “From Kaleidoscope to the X-Ray: Urban Spectatorship, Poe, Benjamin and Traffic Souls (1913),” Wide Angle 19, no. 4 (1997): 25–63CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

32 Poe's story takes place in the city of London in roughly 24 hours. Told in the first person, it is an account of the changing atmospheres of the city through the trail of a wanderer. Although the story takes place in London, it is not specific to London cartography, but to a generic metropolitan city. Poe, Edgar Allan, “Man of the Crowd,” in Tales of Edgar Allan Poe, illus. by Eichenberg, Fritz (New York: Random House, 1944)Google Scholar.

33 Baudelaire, Charles, “The Painter of Modern Life,” The Painter of Modern Life and Other Essays by Charles Baudelaire, trans. ed Mayne, Jonathan (London: Phaidon Press, 1964), 12Google Scholar.

34 Susan Buck-Morss, “The Flâneur, the Sandwichman and the Whore: The Politics of Loitering,” New German Critique, no. 39, Second Special Issue on Walter Benjamin (Autumn, 1986): 103.

35 Buck-Morss, “The Flâneur.”

36 Edensor, Tim, “Walking in Rhythms: Place, Regulation, Style and the Flow of Experience,” Visual Studies 25, no. 1 (2010): 75CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

37 Logie, Sinan and Morvan, Yoann, Istanbul 2023 (Istanbul: Iletişim, 2018)Google Scholar.

38 “Who We Are,” Center for Spatial Justice, accessed June 1, 2018, https://beyond-istanbul.org/who-we-are/.

39 “Memory Walk,” Karakutu, accessed May 25, 2018, http://www.karakutu.org.tr/causes/memory-walk/.

40 “Cins Adımlar: Toplumsal Cinsiyet ve Hafıza Yürüyüşleri,” SU-GENDER, accessed May 28, 2018, http://sugender.sabanciuniv.edu/en/cins-ad%C4%B1mlar-toplumsal-cinsiyet-ve-haf%C4%B1za-y%C3%BCr%C3%BCy%C3%BC%C5%9Fleri.

41 “Stories of Istanbul,” Unison Turkey, accessed May 15, 2018, http://unisonturkey.com/tourtype/special-interest-tours/stories-of-istanbul/.

42 “Mom, am I barbarian?” 13th Istanbul Biennale, accessed on June 10, 2018, http://13b.iksv.org/en.

43 See the program of the February 2013 preparatory symposium on “Public Programme: Public Alchemy.” E-flux, accessed on June 12, 2018, https://www.e-flux.com/announcements/33189/public-programme-public-alchemy/.

44 With curator Fulya Erdemci, interviewed by Gavbi Scardi, “Culture Night Los Angeles,” October 4, 2013, accessed on June 15, 2018, https://culturenightlosangeles.wordpress.com/2013/10/04/istanbul-biennale-2013-articles-reviews-images/.

45 For the website of the organization, please see: http://www.sulukulegonulluleri.org/.

46 Schoon, Danielle V. and Oral, Funda, “The Role of Communities of Practice in Urban Rights Activism in Istanbul, Turkey,” Global Sustainability and Communities of Practice, eds. Maida, Carl A. and Beck, Sam (New York, Oxford: Berghahn, 2018), 94–108Google Scholar.

47 “Mülksüzleştirme Ağları. Sermaye-iktidar ilişkileri üzerine kolektif veri haritalama,” Mülksüzleştirme Ağları, accessed on June 15, 2018, http://mulksuzlestirme.org.

48 Bora, Tanil, ed, Milyonluk Manzara Kentsel Dönüşümün Resimleri (İstanbul: İletişim Yayınları, 2013)Google Scholar. “Million Dollar View” was a photography project by Nar Photos Collective members Serra Akcan, Eren Aytuğ, Mehmet Kaçmaz, Tolga Sezgin, and Saner Şen ve Kerem Uzel, conducted in 2012–3 in the periphery of Istanbul to document and highlight rampant urban transformation. See, “NarPhotos: Million Dollar View at DEPO Istanbul.” InEnArt. Accessed on June 18, 2018, http://www.inenart.eu/?p=10736.

49 Interview with Serkan Taycan by authors (Istanbul, 2016). Since about a year ago, the author has revised this position. He explains, “I deliberately avoided naming Kanal İstanbul until very recently. However, last year, in one of the walks, we came across some engineers and drill operators, who openly said they were working for the “Kanal İstanbul” project. Since then, the project's existence has gone beyond being mentioned in campaign speeches and media coverage, and has become a fact. Therefore, in my recent interviews and writings, I do articulate the relationship between the canal and Between Two Seas.” Email correspondence with authors on November 11, 2018.

50 Text slightly modified from that in the published web-based portfolio, at the request of the artist on November 11, 2018.

51 Some of the English-language articles on the project include: Doğan, Evinç and Stupar, Aleksandra, “The limits of growth: A case study of three mega-projects in Istanbul,” Cities 60 (2017): 281–88CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Görgülü, Aslı Çekmiş and Hacıhasanoğlu, Işıl, “Water crossing utopias of Istanbul: Past and future,” ITU Journal of Faculty of Architecture 9, no. 2 (2012): 67–88Google Scholar. Christian Keller, “Kanal İstanbul: Pipedream or Politics?,” Institut Français des relations internationales 27 (2011). Kundak, Seda and Baypınar, Mete Başar, “The Crazy Project-Canale di Istanbul,” TeMA-Trimestrale del Laboratorio Territorio Mobilità e Ambiente-TeMALab 4, no. 03/11 (2011): 53–63Google Scholar. Turkish-language reports issued by groups of oppositional scholars in Turkey include: “İstanbul'un Geleceğini Etkileyecek Üç Proje: 3. Köprü – 3. Havalimanı – Kanal İstanbul” Report by TEMA Foundation Report, 2014. 159 pages. Available at http://www.tema.org.tr/folders/14966/categorial1docs/1244/BUYUKPROJELER20032014data.pdf and “Ya Kanal, Ya İstanbul, Kanal İstanbul Projesinin Ekolojik, Sosyal ve Ekonomik Degerlendirilmesi” WWF Rapor, 2015, https://d2hawiim0tjbd8.cloudfront.net/downloads/kanalistanbul_1.pdf.

52 Veziroglu Gayrimenkul, “Kanal İstanbul,” YouTube video, 7:48, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0rbgiYJ3v9s.

53 Ibid.

54 Kundak and Baypınar, “The Crazy Project,” 54–57.

55 Baysal, Efe, “Terricide: Poisoning the Lungs of Istanbul,” Research and Policy on Turkey 2, no. 1 (2017): 10–24CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

56 Doğan and Stupar, “The limits of growth,” 286.

57 Interview with Serkan Taycan by authors (Istanbul, 2016).

58 Kundak and Baypınar, “The Crazy Project,” 59.

59 Smith, Anthony D., “The Golden Age and National Renewal,” in Myths and Nationhood, eds. Schopflin, George and Hosking, Geoffrey (London: Hurst & Company, 1997), 36–59Google Scholar.

60 On “relational art,” see: Bishop, Claire, ed, Participation (Cambridge, London: MIT Press, 2006)Google Scholar.

61 Türeli, Ipek, “Modeling the city,” Istanbul Open City: Exhibiting Anxieties of Modernity (London: Routledge, 2018), 108–31Google Scholar; 126.