From "right to housing" to social spatial segregation: TOKI's luxury and social housing practices in Karaman

In the 1950s, the need for housing reached serious dimensions due to the Industrial Revolution, rural-urban migration, rapid population growth, and the need for housing renovation. In order to overcome the housing deficit, various national and international documents have imposed duties and responsibilities on the states under the name of "right to housing". In Türkiye, the State started to produce social housing with various policies to realize the right to housing for some disadvantaged groups after this period and it wanted to carry out its activities in this field through the TOKI. However, the inequality in income distribution resulting from the changes in the economic, social, and political spheres under the influence of neoliberal policies and globalization since the 1980s has adversely affected the lower income group in terms of access to the right to housing, while the educated middle class, referred to as the new middle class, has changed its consumption preferences and living spaces with the increase in income. The gated communities, which emerged in the American cities and became widespread in Türkiye after the 1990s with the impact of globalization, have become the choice of the new middle class. This type of housing causes social spatial segregation by separating those who live in gated communities with social facilities where they can spend their leisure time with homogeneous groups similar to themselves, away from the groups they do not want to live with. The gated communities, which were initially seen in such big cities as Istanbul and Ankara, started to be seen in other small cities over time. Since 2003, with the legal and institutional regulations, the TOKI has also become a producer of housing for the market and has moved away from social housing production. Following a theoretical and conceptual discussion on the subject, this study comparatively analyzes the social housing units produced by the TOKI in Karaman Province for the lower income groups and luxury housing units produced for the new middle class in the context of social spatial segregation. It is observed that social spatial segregation, an evident in large-scale cities, has also spread to small-scale cities such as Karaman Province. It is concluded that the social housing and luxury housing projects produced by the TOKI in Karaman Province build a homogeneous structure in terms of housing standards, social class structure, and income levels and cause social-spatial segregation.