Akademik Veri Yönetim Sistemi
Diğer Ülkelerdeki Kamu Kurumları Tarafından Desteklenmiş Proje, 2018 - 2021
Our research focuses on the dynamics of urbanization in Turkey under the Justice and Development Party (AKP). It investigates how an urbanization-driven national development strategy has been institutionalized and implemented, ultimately turning Turkey’s “national revolution” into an urban one. It shows how historic broad-based demand for urbanization was reformulated into a state-led regime. First, taking the case of Ankara, we show that this policy framework was long in the making at the level of local governments, which pursued urban transformation. This was subsequently institutionalized and scaled up into a national regime by the AKP which offered urbanization as a magical solution for a host of demands ‘from below,’ while it also drew in a host of new stakeholders. The development regime that emerged was state-led, yet not completely top-down nor purely coercive. It was inherently negotiable and the state served as the key broker. Furthermore, Ankara served as a genuine model as many urban policies passed at the national level originated in Ankara. Second, our analysis of “unsuccessful” attempts to transform the city exposes the limits of urban revolution, helping us to explain why the AKP eventually adopted a strictly top-down approach while changing the scale of its urbanisation strategy, shifting the focus from place-based interventions to large-scale territorial projects. While this reduced consultation at the community/neighbourhood scale, it has afforded opportunities for new actors - international investors, organizations and firms – to participate in Turkey’s urbanization-oriented development strategy. Most notable was the involvement of Chinese actors, whose participation in Turkey’s infrastructure sector has grown significantly in recent years. Currently the AKP is responding to the race between China and other global players to integrate territory in pursuit of a new geopolitical/economic order by implementing a series of institutional reforms and orienting its infrastructural networks to the northeast.