APPROPRIATION AS AN URBAN PRACTICE: A CRITICAL READING OF DON QUIXOTE SOCIAL CENTER OF ISTANBUL, IN 2013 AND SINCE THEN

2023-1-27
Akın, Fatma Fulya
Today’s capitalist urban reality, in its disguised forms, always finds particular ways of integrating its oppressive powers to our lives, no matter how our life patterns differentiate. As well as all these mechanisms of diverse ideologies, the form of resistance could also take multi shapes, making social groups come together and share their common values, beliefs, and needs. In this context, this study with a sole purpose of searching for the possibilities of just and fair alternative life patterns, questions a specific urban realm as a contested locus of resistance in/through/for space. Therefore, it seeks to investigate the notion of “resistance through space” which is to generate alternative ways of dwelling with non-standard practices. Based on the said theoretical approach, in other words, the main motivation of this research is to search for possible potentials of resistance in an urban context by appropriation and squatting as a grass-root movement. In this regard, the Don Quixote Social Center, which was the first example in its own terms in Turkey, commonly used and utilized during and after the Gezi Parkı uprisings, will be investigated through those of tripartite structures of appropriation and squatting. Its contribution to Turkey’s social and political contexts as well as its generative capacities of social networks for possible urban social movements will also be studied. In pursuit of the above objectives, first, the dynamics of Gezi Parkı movement and its successive urban initiatives will be examined in respect to its socio-spatial history. Secondly, the Don Quixote Social Center will be in question to further understand the said experiences of possible potentials of social solidarity in an urban context.

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Citation Formats
F. F. Akın, “APPROPRIATION AS AN URBAN PRACTICE: A CRITICAL READING OF DON QUIXOTE SOCIAL CENTER OF ISTANBUL, IN 2013 AND SINCE THEN,” M.Arch. - Master of Architecture, Middle East Technical University, 2023.