Metropolitics: The political economy of Istanbul's rail infrastructure

This dissertation narrates the historical trajectory of Istanbul's urban rail infrastructure to trace the transformation of state-business relations and urban politics under late Turkish capitalism. Urban rail transit infrastructure, despite being an aspiring political vision throughout late Ottoman and Republican history, would only be realized after the introduction of neoliberal reforms and a novel legal-institutional environment following the 1980 coup d'état. However, this vision would be partially realized throughout the first two decades of Turkish neoliberalism. Only after the financial and political opportunities and reconfigurations during the AKP era and following the 2008-2009 crisis, a pervasive infrastructural transformation would take hold. This dissertation, building upon mainly media archives, legal documents, urban plans, infrastructure contracts, market research databases and interviews, is preoccupied with the political purposes and meanings that urban rail infrastructure was imbued with throughout the four decades of Turkish ne-oliberalism. The dissertation, with a sensitivity towards continuities and ruptures between each political era, posits that that the historical and contemporary significance of urban rail projects within late Turkish politics lies in its controversial utilization in the service of patronal ties and its endowment with an ambivalent urban vision, torn between urban populism and global city aspirations. The dissertation concludes that this neoliberal transfor-mation of urban rail infrastructure, rather than being decisively marked by coherence, turns out to be ridden with contradictions, shortcomings and political tensions, which helps one to posit a "revisionist" take on the academic threads of neoliberalism and economic reforms.