Contested Istanbul: Urban development and planning conflicts in Turkey’s ‘aspiring global city’
(special session organized in association with the AESOP TG Planning/Conflict)
AESOP Annual Congress 2025 Istanbul, July 7th – July 11th 2025
Organizers: Enrico Gualini and Esin Özdemir
Contributions by Deniz Ay, Yildiz Erdoğan, Melis Oğuz Çevik, Adile Avar and Burcu Değerli Çiftçi
Turkish metropoles have experienced in the last decades the impact of state-led boosterist urban policies. Istanbul is at the forefront of this process, as the largest and most dynamic metropolis of the country in both economic and social and terms.
Istanbul has taken central place as an ‘aspiring global city’ (Ay and Özkul 2016) in national state urban policies. This has developed into a peculiar Istanbul way to authoritarian neoliberalism, based on massive investment in support of speculative private entrepreneurialism, and on corporate-style marketing and management framed within state-led governance arrangements.
At the heart of these urban policies are multiscalar interventions – some already implemented, some still on the national government agenda – ranging from infrastructural mega-projects to urban renewal projects at neighbourhood level. These interventions, particularly for large-scale infrastructure investments projects, are often implemented in public-private partnership arrangements lacking accountability and citizen involvement.
Framed by the national government’s globalist ambitions as well as emergency arguments – like earthquake disaster prevention – and by legally supported by ad-hoc legal frameworks, these measures have strongly impacted on the historical urban fabric and on the livelihood and identity of local communities. As a consequence, a broad range of issues of contention and conflict have emerged, concerning among others:
- the centralized-authoritarian decision-making logic, restraining civil society and local communities as well as local governments from democratic involvement;
- the negative impact on local communities such as displacement and dispossession;
- the depletion of natural resources for sustainable urban development, such as water basins and forests;
- the commodification and erosion of public spaces;
- the destruction of the historical urban fabric and identity;
- social inclusion, poverty and the integration of human and more-than-human diversity in the city.
Against this background, Istanbul has experienced a long season of state-authoritarian repression of urban insurgencies – with the case of Gezi Park as a hallmark. Over time, Istanbul has also marked a nation-wide unique if troubled attempt to introduce an original neo-municipalist path to urban reform, possibly introducing opportunities for a different approach to the contradictions and conflicts generated by its recent urban development path.
In this session – organized in association with the AESOP TG Planning/Conflict – we ask engaged scholars and activists to reflect on the contentious nature of urban politics and planning in Istanbul. The aim is not only to give a critical overview of current issues and their long-term causes, but also to reflect on the aftermath and heritage of democratic protest, civic insurgency and planner-activist engagement in a forward-looking perspective of generating possible alternatives.
