Who owns the city? – The legacy of space and urban activism in Istanbul

In recent decades urban policies in Turkey have been affected by neoliberal visions aiming to attract foreign investments. As one of the fastest growing cities and central financial hubs in the Mediterranean and Black Sea in recent years, Istanbul has been where the right to the city claims have concentrated following an unprecedented amount of construction, expansion in urban space and a rising number of inhabitants. Urban activism advocating the importance of representing the city dwellers in planning has encountered many challenges. The Gezi Park protests in May-June 2013 came in the midst of the culmination of urban landscape re-skinning and brought new dimensions to the urban struggle. Yet over the following years this movement fragmented. This thesis aims to examine one of the most important reasons why the Gezi Park protestors lost momentum. It focuses on reasons related to logics of action rather than the political restrictions that are often highlighted. It demonstrates how the shift from the right to the city to other causes in two following projects- namely the new Istanbul Airport and the planned 'Kanal Istanbul'- resulted in weakening the movement. It explores other emerging logics of action for claiming right to the city in everyday life that might redraw the map of urban activism. The study argues that activism is more sustained on the micro level when urban planning affects the everyday life of people, hence the rise of nonmovements in global cities. Keywords: Gezi Park protests, Istanbul, logic of action, the right to the city, urban activism, urban space