State Stigmatisation in Urban Turkey: Managing the “Insurgent” Squatter Dwellers in Dikmen Valley

Öznur Yardımcı

doi:10.1111/anti.12651

Abstract

AbstractThis paper contributes to the accounts of territorial stigmatisation by examining the state role in it in the case of Turkey, a country that suffers from growing state power. The existing debates are mainly restricted to its function as an economic strategy paving the way for capital accumulation through devaluing working‐class people and places. Drawing on textual analysis of political speeches, local newsletters and mainstream national newspapers and fieldwork material that include interviews and observations in Dikmen Valley where some squatter communities mobilised against the state‐imposed urban transformation project, I demonstrate that state conceptualisation of “problem people” targets the “insurgent” rather than the “unprofitable” groups. Stigma in urban settings functions in inciting the desire to meet the patterns deemed appropriate by the state, rather than the market. Moving from that, I argue that stigma is used as a state‐led political strategy, which is integral to the growing authoritarianism in Turkey.

Highlights

The cities that we will construct, new houses, workplaces and living spaces will become the nucleus of the Turkey that we will erect
This paper examines stigmatisation in the urban transformation settings in Turkey by focusing on the role of the state actors in stigmatising the squatter activism in Dikmen Valley and demonstrates how stigmatisation has become a key form of power integral to the growing authoritarianism in the country
While the state invited the socially and spatially marginalised squatter dwellers to “get modernised” through urban transformation projects, stigma was activated targeting the squatter activism in places like Dikmen Valley. It drew on the long-lasting prejudices about left-leaning and Alevi individuals and groups who were already associated with disloyalty to the state authority and tendency to criminal/marginal political ideologies, and assumed to be threatening for the well-being of the urban society

Summary

Introduction

The cities that we will construct, new houses, workplaces and living spaces will become the nucleus of the Turkey that we will erect. After coming to power in 2002, the Justice and Development Party (AKP) government imposed a country-wide campaign of urban transformation that favoured large-scale projects that rapidly transform urban space (Tu€rku€n 2011) in line with neoliberal ideas of profit These areas were formed by ruralbased migrants in response to the absence of a formal social housing policy and were later partially regularised and improved for political patronage (Erman 2001), going beyond an innocent attempt to solve the housing problem. State-led urban transformation projects were prescribed as tools to modernise the city by transforming the “primitive” squatter dweller into homeowners in the mass housing estates This evokes accounts of territorial stigmatisation (Paton 2018; Wacquant 2007; Wacquant et al 2014), which highlight the link between stigmatisation and profit, arguing that the former advances the future investment of capital (Paton 2018). Moving from that, I will argue that stigma is used as a state-led political strategy, which is integral to the growing authoritarianism in Turkey

Methodology and Data

Findings

Conclusion