Turkish Urban Professionals And The Politics Of Housing, 1960-1980

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2006

Author

Batuman, Bülent

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As Castells (1977) has argued, a major dynamic of urban politics is the specific forms of social struggle generated in the city around urban services that are consumed collectively. In Turkey, similar to other Third World countries experiencing rapid urbanization after the Second World War, the most crucial question regarding such services was the chronic problem of housing and squatters. This article will analyze the politics of the housing question between 1960 and 1980. As will be shown below, the politicization of the housing problem took place through the practices of two major social actors: squatters who directly experienced the shortage of housing, and urban professionals trying to first define, and then solve this urban problem. Both the question of housing and the issue of squatters have been subject to analyses from various perspectives. My intention here is to put emphasis on the politicization of the housing question especially through the influence of Turkish architects and urban planners on the discourses and policies regarding housing. The article charts the interconnection of three themes. The first is the analysis of the political economy of housing in the period under discussion. This is crucial for the tightening moments of the housing market represent not only instances of social conflict but also open up possibilities for inventing new concepts and policies regarding the problem. That is, such moments act as occasions for the discursive means utilized by urban professionals to be effective on daily politics. The second theme is the changing conceptions of, and the proposed solutions for the housing problem by the urban professionals, various generations of whom would produce different approaches. Various events (such as congresses and conferences organized by the Ministries, universities, unions and Chambers) were occasions for the production of discourses on the housing question, and I will trace the discursive transformations through these events giving particular consideration to the representation of housing and squatter settlements.The third is the transformation of squatters, as both a category of political discourse and as a political actor. Throughout the period, as an outcome of the social transformations they went through, the squatters gradually changed from a negative symptom (first of shortage of shelter, then of insufficient industrialization) into a political agent possessing potentials for breeding a socialist way of life at the margins of capitalist social formation.

Subject Keywords

Housing, Politics of housing, Urban professionals, Architects, City planners, Urbanization in Turkey, Squatters (gecekondu), Architecture and politics, Urban politics

URI

http://jfa.arch.metu.edu.tr/archive/0258-5316/2006/cilt23/sayi_1/59-81.pdf
https://hdl.handle.net/11511/51037

Journal

ODTÜ Mimarlık Fakültesi Dergisi

Collections

Department of Architecture, Article

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Citation Formats

B. Batuman, “Turkish Urban Professionals And The Politics Of Housing, 1960-1980,” ODTÜ Mimarlık Fakültesi Dergisi, vol. 23, no. 1, pp. 59–81, 2006, Accessed: 00, 2020. [Online]. Available: http://jfa.arch.metu.edu.tr/archive/0258-5316/2006/cilt23/sayi_1/59-81.pdf.