Changing forms and strategies of state intervention in the housing of the poor in Istanbul

• Main Author: Celik, Ozlem
• Other Authors: Gough, Jamie
• Published: University of Sheffield 2013
• Online Access: https://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.581638

This thesis examines different ways the Turkish state has attempted to house the poor in Istanbul since 2000, including the rescaling of the state and different interventions of the state in different localities. The rescaling of the state involves the expansion of nation state's planning power by the empowerment the Mass Housing Administration (MHA), but also empowerment of the Greater Istanbul Municipality (GIM). These changes sought to promote 'urban regeneration' as the principle state housing policy for the housing of the poor over the period since 2000. This process crucially involves evicting most of the residents and relocating them to the peripheries of Istanbul, where they are then required to pay for the new housing. These developments have been met with well-organised resistance of the dwellers. However, the interventions of the state to different neighbourhoods vary. I argue in this thesis that the restructuring of the state and its spatiality can be analysed by using an Open Marxist approach to the state, as a product of capitalist class relations and as a particular historical form of social relations. This thesis develops the concepts of 'rescaling of the state' and 'different interventions of the state' by adopting a dialectical Marxist methodology for embedding this research in Open Marxism. In this thesis, these two interrelated issues of restructuring of the state are explored both in 'vertical' level relations, which are the relations between different scales of the state (rescaling of the state) and in 'horizontal' level practices, which are differentiated interventions of the state at different localities at the same time. Hence, the main argument is that the restructuring of the state in Istanbul is a spatial and a scalar process that varies by class struggle.