Urban regeneration and security policy in Turkey: Gaziosmanpaşa Sarıgöl District

Since 2000s increasing urban regeneration projects in Turkey, primarily focuses on gecekondu neighborhoods and the rebuilding of this neighborhoods has become the main target. In the past, the administrative perspective that ignores the gecekondu neighborhoods has been replaced by the urban regenerations restructuring and renewal concepts causing radical changes in the gecekondus. The focus of the regulating and reforming has been the places of living of certain ethnic identities, workers, and marginalized groups. This study examines the relationship between urbanization and the criminalization of neighborhoods, where the urban poor live by, examining the neighborhoods declared as transformed areas under the law on transforming of the areas those are under disaster risk. Semi-structured interviews were conducted in the neighborhood of Istanbul Gaziosmanpaşa Sarıgöl, which is chosen as a sample neighborhood. The concepts of renewal and rehabilitation aimed by urban transformation is also examined and the effect of the urban regeneration in Sarıgöl neighborhood is examined.