Gece-can-do

Istanbul is on the move; and the movement is towards new horizons, probably a search for its new identity on the world map. The movement is guided by a vision that is an off-shoot from a vision of Turkey itself. What Istanbul is experiencing is probably the movement at scale. Searching for new identities has probably resulted in discarding and shunning the old; an identity that is visible in the ‘mahalle’ culture – a beautifully complex and yet simple manifestation of the ‘social order’ that is not rigid or binding, but is flexible and dynamic. The movement is from Orhan’s description of the ‘mohalle’ that encompassed almost all aspects of the society, to an ‘economic’ order of the gated communities – a concentration of money or power or intellect or religion or ethnicity, a mono-block. However, completely subscribing to a critical rhetoric of the movement or romanticising the ‘mahalle’ might be a one-sided approach, bordering on being ignorant of a much larger picture.

Western societies went through similar phases of development pains which many of the developing nations are experiencing today. Most of the world has embraced the neo-liberal ideologies of capitalism and free-markets and have been welcomed in international forums being able to participate in the world economy. The kind of social changes brought about with those ideologies are almost a given fact. Changes in income levels, class, strata, way of life, standard of living etc. will definitely demand a change in the way a city negotiates its space. It is the right of the country, the cities and the people to reap benefits from those changes that have brought latent energies to life and that recognize them at a global scale. And scale definitely becomes the issue where the criticism of the new versus the old falls apart. The scale at which the old operated and impacted is much smaller than the scale at which the neo-liberal economic order operates and impacts. From entering daily lives of the inhabitants to connecting them to the whole world, the scale of the new is all encompassing. This is reason enough for it to demand and create spaces, where its order, creates the rules of participation and exclusion that are embodied in gentrification and Disneyfication.

In Istanbul, we experienced one pole of this process, where the new world order has been embraced whole heartedly for its benefits and far-reaching impacts for the nation, its cities and its people. However, its rhetoric has been stretched into the ‘perceived space’ to develop an image which places the Gecekondus in direct conflict with its goals. How can one merge the two images, the two realities? Probably the question itself is wrong. Are the realities actually that apart? Or is the Gecekondu another manifestation of the same world order but in a much earlier timeline? There are definitely more possibilities in exploring a new line of thought.