"What becomes clear from this brief overview is that the redevelopment of Gezi Park and Taksim Square is not an isolated project but is one that grows from a long history of violent, undemocratic and corrupt urban redevelopment pioneered by the AKP. With the decreasing marginal returns of the export-led growth that pushed many AKP supporters (known as the Anatolian Tigers) to economic prominence, capital accumulation through urban redevelopment has developed into one of the bulwarks of the AKP’s core projects. For the AKP, urban redevelopment provides its support base with the economic stimulation it needs, through dubious partnerships in the construction sector, and empowers the government to reshape and control their city spaces in ways that aim to reproduce a society in line with the party’s ideals. "In fact, for the AKP Islam is urban redevelopment. Urban redevelopment was packaged and delivered to party supporters as a central venue through which the state was developing a better society. I was personally schooled in this lesson at the AKP-run offices of Fatih Municipality in Istanbul in the summer of 2012. Towards the end of an interview with a government official about one of the Sulukule urban transformation project, the official started to sense from my questions that I am in fact critical of the project and its “social” goals. Suddenly, out of nowhere, he looked at me with severity and asked, “Müsülman mısın?” [translated as “Are you a Muslim?”]. I was taken aback for a second thinking that it should be obvious to him from my headscarf I that I am in fact a Muslim, until the rhetorical nature of the question quickly dawned on me. I was expected, as a supposed Muslim, to see the linkage between urban redevelopment and an Islamic mission."
Posted on: Sun, 16 Jun 2013 19:00:29 +0000
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