Sosyo-yapısal pozisyon ve mobilizasyon dağarcıkları: İstanbul'da kentsel aktivizmi çerçevelemek

As in many other countries around the world, urban movements around the "right to the city" has gained substantial momentum in Turkey. Based on qualitative data collected through participant observation in movement activities and in-depth interviews with activists, this study investigates contemporary urban mobilization in Istanbul to understand the dynamics of opposition to the physical and cultural reconstruction of the urban landscape. The findings of the study are two-fold: First, building on the growing literature on urban politics and urban social movements in Turkey, this study comparatively analyzes two distinct geographies of mobilization in Istanbul: (i) anti-commodification struggles in city's relatively affluent parts against the marketization of public space, and (ii) the collective action in city's informal neighborhoods threatened by state-led urban transformation projects, arguing that the geographical variation entails a class-based differentiation in movement building, where different clusters of Istanbul's middle class try to secure their interests tied to the economic and cultural forms of capital they possess. Second, integrating insights from Pierre Bourdieu's field theory into the existing literature on social movements, the study presents and unpacks the structural roots of the two "collective action frames" used by activists working in these geographies, which are conceptualized here as the "right to the city" and "moral economy" frames.