Reading the conflict of central and local government authority on the axis of neoliberal planning through the kanal İstanbul project

In Turkey, cities have been shaped in line with neoliberal economic policies for the last forty years. According to the approaches of city administrations to neoliberalism, the city has been intervened in different ways for years, and planning institutions have become the most important tool in this process. In response to the 2001 and 2008 crises, the construction-oriented economy model was adopted, followed by intensive construction activities in Istanbul. In this period, many mega projects were put forward in response to the crisis in the election manifesto of the central government. Against the localization trend of neoliberalism, many different institutions affiliated to the central government in Turkey for the last forty years have had a say in these projects. Kanal Istanbul and Yenişehir Project was one of the projects that attracted the most attention due to its scale and expected effects in this period. While the planning process of the project progressed with the cooperation of the central and local governments belonging to the same political party before the 2019 local elections, the planning process became a conflict area after the local government passed to a party management that was against the project. The process continued in the hands of the central government, as the local government was disabled in the process and became unauthorized in a very large area in Istanbul. In order to reveal this conflict of authority that emerged in this study, research has been carried out on the concept of neoliberal planning in order to understand the factors, the actors of the process and the results of this mega-project, which was put forward as a construction-oriented development model with the effect of neoliberal planning. Semi-structured interviews were held with officials from the Chamber of City Planners, the Chamber of Architects and the Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality. The resulting conflict of authority will be tried to be read through the planning process of the project before and after the 2019 local elections, through the negotiations, the zoning plans prepared by the central and local government over the project, the EIA report, the research reports and the explanations made. Keywords: Neoliberal Planning, neoliberal authoritarianism, construction-oriented development, mega-projects, conflict of authority