Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and his party, theAKPmake the “new Istanbul” the showcase of their political project: that of rebuilding Turkey by breaking with the Kemalist heritage. Probing the city from its margins, a geographer looks at the emergence of a new social and urban order.
Perhaps because he grew up there, perhaps also because he was mayor from 1994 to 1998, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Prime Minister (2003-2014) and then President of Turkey, has always shown a marked interest in Istanbul. Has he not set up part of his offices there, breaking with the monopoly that Ankara has held since the beginning of the Republic?
Economic and cultural capital, showcase of the “New Türkiye” desired by theAKP (conservative party created in 2001, from political Islam), Istanbul is the metropolis of the country that receives the most public investments and the major urban projects concerning it are decided at the highest level of the State, the municipal authorities having only to submit to them. This is particularly the case with Hedef 2023a series of projects north of Istanbul, highly publicized and colossal, and whose environmental consequences are considerable: a third bridge over the Bosphorus, inaugurated in 2016, a third airport under construction which will be visible from the Moon, or even a canal project (announced in 2011, but on which work has not yet begun) which should connect the Sea of Marmara to the Black Sea, in order to supplement the Bosphorus.
After Paris at XIXe and New York at XXe century, Istanbul became the “capital of XXIe century”, according to the expression of Jean Baudrillard passing through the Bosphorus megacity in 2004 (p.14). Starting from this laudatory description, Jean-François Pérouse proposes to reflect, in his latest work, on the reasons which have brought Istanbul onto the scene of world metropolises, while questioning the sustainable nature of this reclassification.
Istanbul’s metamorphosis into an “urban monster”
Istanbul has a population of at least 14.8 million (according to official figures from 2016), spread over 5,343 km² that stretch along the Bosphorus, from the Marmara in the south to the Black Sea in the north, and extends even deeper inland, both to the east and west of the shores of the strait.
For those familiar with contemporary Istanbul, it is difficult to imagine that at the very beginning of the 1950s, its population did not exceed a million inhabitants: the agglomeration was mainly contained behind the land wall of Theodosius. IIwhich today represents only one district (Fatih) out of the 39 existing ones. For example, a little over 60 kilometers separate the historic Grand Bazaar (in the heart of Fatih) from the headquarters of the district town hall of Silivri, at the western end of the megacity.
Indeed, since the end of the 1990s, Istanbul’s physical growth has far exceeded its demographic growth: the city is thus facing a process of urban sprawl that creates high added value, encouraged by public policies since the Construction is at the heart of Turkish economic growth. As J.-F. Pérouse points out, “the Istanbul ontology can be summed up in this formula: I spread out, therefore I am” (p. 17) and the agglomeration is in the grip of “unbridled urbanization that abhors a vacuum” (p. 155).
Peripheries at the center of the analysis
This work allows the geographer-urban planner to show how the urban development of Istanbul calls into question the supposed universality of the principles of European urban planning on urban sprawl, centrality, heritage and public space (p. 217). In Turkey, urban sprawl is sought after, while in Europe the virtues of the compact city are praised in a concern for sustainable development. The notion of centrality has little meaning in a context of urban sprawl that creates decision-making and diffusion centers on the periphery. Heritage is not intended to be preserved, but can be reproduced at will in order to feed an Ottoman imagination, which explains why “in Istanbul, the most prized heritage is brand new” (p. 138). Finally, very often, in terms of public space, “shopping centers, stadiums and mosques are enough to create society” (p. 217).
All the originality and interest of J.-F. Pérouse’s work lies in what he presents as his “bias” (p. 8), that of analyzing Istanbul “by its effervescent margins” (ibid.), having been walking them relentlessly for about twenty years now. You have to have seen for yourself the contempt and desire to conceal a certain intellectual elite has for these peripheries that do not correspond to the Epinal image of the Istanbul of their childhood to fully appreciate this strong guiding idea.
Istanbul remodeled by theAKP
J.-F. Pérouse explains why theAKP is a “fundamentally Istanbul party” (p.102):
because it is an urban party and Istanbul is considered in the collective imagination as the quintessence of the urban (…); because the conception of development and territorial management specific to theAKP is a design centered on metropolises (and on the metropolis par excellence, Istanbul); and finally because theAKP believes that the promotion of Turkey comes first and foremost through the promotion of Istanbul. (p. 103)
He therefore starts from the analysis of the “political software” (p. 103) of theAKP to show its translation into public policies that are reshaping Istanbul, starting from the peripheries managed by district municipalities of political Islam from the beginning of the 1990s, then later with the support of the State throughout the territory of the metropolis. Social conservatism, economic liberalism, democratism (a paternalistic populism), developmentalism and religio-nationalism are the 5 pillars of theAKPThe “aim is to remoralize Istanbul through urban design and social engineering” (p. 104) in order to perpetuate the social order, which is particularly visible in the satellite cities created ex nihilo upon Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s rise to municipal power, which have now become peripheral districts of Istanbul.
Since his election as Mayor of Istanbul in March 1994, RT Erdoğan presents himself as the defender of the working classes, above all “the Sunni Muslim masses (…), in the name of the law of the majority” (p. 108). Revenge on the old Kemalist (and secular) elites involves, among other things, the reconquest of the territory of Istanbul. After the municipal election of 1994, a discourse of conquest was put into narrative (reactivated after the Gezi revolt of 2013, then the attempted coup d’état of July 2016), in direct reference to the Conquest of Constantinople of May 29, 1453 by Sultan Mehmet II. This historical episode is rewritten as the moment when Istanbul became both Turkish and Ottoman. In the urban space, references to the Ottoman Conquest are recurrent, particularly in the choices of heritage enhancement and creation ex nihilo of “historic buildings” (p.139), in order to weld an identity around an idealized Turkish-Muslim community.
J.-F. Pérouse compares “the tactic (which) consists of emphasizing everything that allows the discourse of Turkish and Muslim greatness to be fueled” (p. 146) to a “symbolic inclusion” compensating for “the extent of economic exclusion” (ibid.) in a megacity where the commodification of every aspect of urban life is increasingly increasing. Since the early 2000s, the urban transformation policy has been implementing a “cleaning project” in order to “make Istanbul more presentable for potential foreign investors, as well as for foreign tourists” (p. 124).
Istanbul must be reordered and cleansed of all the dross that is harmful to its brand image. This is the whole point of urban transformation. (p. 111)
This public policy was launched in the early 2000s, then relaunched in 2012 with a law that instrumentalizes seismic risk. It is articulated between two essential trends: demolition operations, mainly of the self-built urban fabric where the most modest populations live, and construction sites for the reconstruction of new collective housing for home ownership, often by private real estate development groups. The urban transformation has produced vast new rehousing territories in the peripheries of Istanbul, where “the new urban order created from scratch seems to engender a certain moral order that assigns (to families with children) a predetermined place and role” (p. 118-119). This moral order can be read in particular by the central place dedicated to mosques and high schools of imams and preachers in the urban space, generally adjacent to a shopping center.