The political economy of housing: the case of Turkey

Abstract

This thesis analyses the agencies, processes and relations in the housing provision system in Turkey in the period 2002-2019. The starting point of the thesis is an analytical and historical examination of the production of housing as a commodity — which is inextricably linked to the capture of ground rent — and the intervention of the landed property into capital accumulation in the housebuilding industry. The thesis then analyses how and why the production and consumption of housing have been restructured under the expanded presence of finance in general and in Turkey in particular. Taking the view that housing forms part of both economic and social reproduction it will be examined through the different phases of capital accumulation and the thesis analyses housing provision under the financialised phase of capitalism that is attached to neoliberalism. The thesis also discusses the changing mode of the state’s intervention in housing as the production and consumption of housing is seen to be primarily (but not exclusively) a national relation and process with different socially-specific class features and institutional forms through which the dominant capitalist relations are managed, reproduced and realised. The thesis explores the contemporary institutional form in housing and land markets (in the case of Turkey, through the Mass Housing Administration), the conflicts and alliances among classes and class fractions attached to housing provision in Turkey focusing on the changing form of the Turkish state and its impact.