Neoliberal kent politikalarına karşı kentsel protestolar: İstanbul örneği

In Turkey, neoliberal policies that have been adopted since 1980 have largely transformed urban areas through market-oriented policies. Both local and national policies have played significant roles in changing urban patterns, social and political structures, and class relations in urban areas by highlighting the exchange value of space. These shifts have also led to the mobilisation of urban-based opposition to the enacted neoliberal urban policies. The main purpose of the study at hand is to analyse historically urban-based oppositional mobilisations within the context of both socio-economic-political processes and enacted urban policies in order to present a causal relationship between social-economic-political processes and urban movements in Istanbul. Within this purpose, the main question of the study explores how urban oppositional mobilisations vary in demand, motivation, organisational type, and repertoire within the context of socio-economic-political processes and enacted urban policies across different periods of time. Since 1980 is an important breakpoint for the study, for the purpose of presenting a comprehensive understanding of the urban policies and urban-based oppositional mobilisations before and after neoliberalism, this study also discusses the period before 1980, extending back to the 1950s. In order to evaluate the socio-economic characteristics, urban policies, legal tools, resulting discourses, and their effects on urban areas, together with urban oppositional mobilisations between 1950 and 2010, this study analyses and categorises trends observed in different historical periods. This analysis reveals that mobilisation efforts and resistance against enacted urban policies in the neoliberal period started to increase after the 1990s. Therefore, the study conducted a systematic search of daily newspapers for articles about urban-based protests between 1990 and 2010 in order to present a quantitative analysis of cycle, changing demands, repertoires and organisational status of the protests over a 21-year period. This quantitative research covers two periods: the first period (1990 - 2001) was marked by political instability and economic recession in Turkey, led by coalition and minority governments; and the second period (2002 - 2010) saw a powerful one-party government (JDP) that strengthened neoliberal urban policies and increased state intervention in urban space with rent-seeking projects. The study's results indicate that the protests present two main characteristics by their goals: they either demand the provision or improvement of urban services or resist the changes imposed by local or central authorities. Contextualising the findings in two different periods, the dataset reveals that, the average number of overall protests increased in the second period; and while the number of protests which demand the provision of urban services relatively decreased in the second period, reactive protests which oppose to the imposed policies and implementations of the authorities significantly increased during the same time in accordance with the strengthened neoliberal policies. Furthermore, the study shows that; the repertoires, organisational types and targeted institutions of urban-based protests present differentiation both by socio-economic characteristics of the periods and claimed demands of the protests.