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Views on a new Near East

“Tarlabaşı Is Renewed”NearEastQuarterly · Saturday, June 11th, 2011

By Constanze Letsch

Constanze Letsch moved to Istanbul in 2005 has been working as a freelancejournalist, research consultant and literary translator ever since. She is currentlypursuing a PhD in cultural anthropology about the impact of gentrification on theurban poor at the Europe University Viadrina in Frankfurt (Oder), Germany.

The Istanbul neighbourhood of Tarlabaşı has long been the black sheep of the chic andrapidly gentrifying central Beyoğlu district. While in the proximity of Taksim Square,Cihangir and Galata, very few Istanbul visitors would ever stray into Tarlabaşı andmost Istanbul residents avoid setting foot in the area, for fear of its reputation asbeing inhabited solely by robbers, drug dealers and ‘terrorists’. But the current AKPMunicipality under Mayor Ahmet Misbah Demircan is now set to change the image ofthe neighbourhood by implementing a radical urban renewal project dubbed TarlabaşıYenileniyor – Tarlabaşı Is Renewed.

In 2006 the Turkish Cabinet turned a 20,000-square-metre part of the neighbourhoodinto an official Urban Renewal Area. The following year, the tender for the plannedproject was awarded to GAP Inşaat, a subsidiary of Çalık Holding. The CEO of theholding company is Berat Albayrak, the son-in-law of Turkish Prime Minister RecepTayyip Erdoğan. However, the residents and house owners in Tarlabaşı were onlyinformed about the tender and planned demolition of their properties in 2008.1 Two

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years previously, the municipality had spoken2 of World Bank assistance andmicro-credits to assist people in renovating their homes. But this did not last long.Glossy brochures published by the municipality show 15-storey buildings with glassfronts, and computer-generated residents in business suits holding cell phones andshopping bags. As it is now, the renewed Tarlabaşı will likely not be theneighbourhood of the urban poor, of the transsexual sex workers, of Roma andmarginalised migrants on their way to Europe.

People have living around the Tarlabaşı area of Istanbul since the mid-16th century,when non-Muslim diplomats began to settle in the imperial Ottoman city. However, itwas not until 1870, after a fire consumed large swaths of the wooden buildings in Pera(today’s Beyoğlu), that the municipality – itself a new administrative concept in thecity – laid out the district at the drawing board for the first time. It would follow‘Western’ standards in its planning, with most houses built in stone to diminish theever-present danger of fire.

The new Tarlabaşı then became the neighbourhood of the non-Muslim lower-middleclasses: Greek, Armenian, and Jewish craftsmen, smaller merchants and employeescatering to the businessmen and diplomats working in the countless embassies andcompanies on and around Istiklal Caddesi, today Beyoglu’s main shopping avenue.

The houses in Tarlabaşı are unique examples of turn-of-the-century Levantinearchitecture in Turkey: slim, four-storey bow-fronted homes that huddle along narrowstreets. The ground floors often served as stores or workshops – a very largepercentage of the furniture in Istanbul at that time came from carpenters in Tarlabaşı.Erol Usta, who, together with his brother Erdal has been running a workshop for ud(lute) and saz for 37 years still remembers the time when Tarlabaşı was a centre forcraftsmanship: “There used to be about 60 carpenters in our neighbourhood. Todayonly very few are left. Furniture, shoes, belts – most of these things are now producedin big factories.” He points to a violin displayed on a cupboard in his shop. “Thesecome from China. They don’t sound as good, but are more affordable.” Many of Erol’scustomers include local musicians, often Roma and Kurds who entertain people diningin the meyhane of Beyoğlu. He laments the absence of his former Greek and Armenianneighbours and colleagues: “Tarlabaşı was a very different place then”, he says.

With the signing of the Treaty of Lausanne in 1923, Greece and the newly foundedTurkish Republic decreed a population exchange that led to an exodus of OttomanGreeks from Turkey. Greeks residing in Istanbul were exempt from that regulationand allowed to stay – at least for a while. The Wealth Tax (Varlık Vergisi), targetingnon-Muslim citizens and signed into law in 1942, impoverished many of the merchantsand craftsmen in Tarlabaşı; while some went to jail because they were unable to pay,sometimes leaving their stores and workshops in the hands of their Turkishapprentices, others simply ran out on their tax debts, abandoning everything theyowned. On September 6 and 7 of 1955, after the beginning of the Cyprus crisis, theTurkish government under Adnan Menderes organised pogroms on non-MuslimIstanbul citizens during which numerous houses, shops, and churches were looted anddamaged – and in some cases even completely destroyed.3

An elderly Armenian resident, 24 years old at the time, recalls the attacks: “A

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neighbour put up a Turkish flag in front of our store to protect it from the looters. TheGreek-Orthodox church in Dolapdere was demolished; they threw everything on thefloor, I saw it with my own eyes. Children wanted to pick up money that had beenscattered from the collection box, but their parents scolded them and told them not totouch that filthy gavur money.” (Gavur is the pejorative term in Turkish fornon-Muslims.) “Can you believe the attitude of these people?” he added. “These coinswere Turkish; the money was Turkish and bore the profile of Atatürk.”

With tensions still high following the pogroms, many of the remaining Istanbul Greeksleft the city in the years that followed. Today, very few of the original non-Musliminhabitants are left in Tarlabaşı. Groups of Greek visitors can sometimes be seensearching the streets for the houses of their childhood and of their families. In theearly 1950s, waves of rural migration led to profound demographic andsocio-economic changes in Istanbul.4 Empty houses in Tarlabaşı and otherneighbourhoods were soon claimed by workers arriving from all over Anatolia. Youngmen started working alongside local master craftsmen, or usta, and sometimes wenton to open their own stores and workshops. Riza Furat* who owns a small upholsteryworkshop, has learned his trade alongside an Italian master, in Tarlabaşı. After brieflytrying to run a teahouse in the room underneath his workshop, he now works as anupholsterer full-time and provides sofas, chairs and benches to bars and poshnightclubs all over the city. “I love my work, and it provides a good living for me andmy wife. What else could I want?” Asked what he will do once the demolitions start, hesighs and says: “I will retire and we will go back to our hometown on the Black Sea, Idon’t have the energy anymore to start from scratch somewhere else.”

Yusuf Karapinar, a shoemaker, got his start in the profession at the age of 8, as anapprentice in a Greek family. “They were lovely people, extremely nice to me,” he said.“During the month of Ramadan, they never ate in front of me and my mentor’s wifealways insisted on cooking an iftar meal for all of us.” Forty years later, Yusuf Usta istoday one of the very last shoemakers in the neighbourhood and his shop is threatenedwith demolition. Turan Usta, who works with Yusuf and his son Kadir Karapinar andhas been a shoemaker for 45 years, is angry about the prospect: “If they tear Tarlabaşıdown, it will be the end of the artisans and of the craftsmanship here.”

Following the military coup in 1980 and the subsequent implementation of neo-liberalpolicies in Turkey, radical urban restructuring in Istanbul left its stamp on Tarlabaşı.As in many Western cities, the rapidly expanding construction sector focused onbrown- and green-field development at the urban outskirts, far away from the citycentre, which was left to become dilapidated and decayed. This was especially true forTarlabaşı, the lower part of the formerly elegant district of Pera; physically cut offfrom the rest of Beyoğlu in 1988 by the disputed six-lane Tarlabaşı Boulevard, it wasliterally left to rot. The Istanbul Chamber of Architects opened a court case againstthe then-mayor, Bedrettin Dalan, who ordered more than 360 historically protectedbuildings to be demolished.5 He was found guilty and sentenced to several years ofprison, but never served his term. Mücella Yapıcı who works for the Chamber today,says: “City planners and architects told Dalan that this project would abandonTarlabaşı to its fate, and that is exactly what happened.” While early signs ofdevelopment and gentrification started to appear in other parts of the district startingin the 1990s, Tarlabaşı was exempt from any renovation efforts.

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The current mayor of Beyoglu, AKP politician Ahmet Misbah Demircan, has vowed tochange the face of the long-neglected neighbourhood, to turn it into an upscale areacomplete with five-star hotels, shopping facilities and office lofts. Tarlabaşı Boulevard,currently lined with cheap hotels by the hour, wig shops and smaller businesses willbecome “The Champs-Elysées of Istanbul”, according to Demircan. Uğur Tanyeli,professor of Architecture History at the Technical University Yildiz Istanbul, explains:“In Turkey, renewal means the illusion of a historical building. It has to be clean andnew. Houses should only look like they are old, and only on the very surface. It is alittle like Disneyland, in fact.” In a column for the Turkish daily Radikal, writer GündüzVassaf asks: “Why does Istanbul constantly strive to resemble London, Paris or NewYork? Is our city not self-confident enough to simply be itself?”

Critics of the project say that Tarlabaşı Yenileniyor is not only a fierce attack on thehistorical fabric of Istanbul, but also on its growing Kurdish population: about 80 percent of Tarlabaşı inhabitants have migrated there from the Kurdish Southeast. As aresult of the intensifying Turkish-Kurdish civil war, Tarlabaşı began to receive a largenumber of Kurdish migrants in the early 1990s. Many of those newly arrived had beenforcibly displaced from their villages; those who were too poor to move elsewheresettled in the small, run-down apartments on the lower, less popular side of TarlabaşıBoulevard. Havva Yildiz*, a housewife from Bitlis, is looking after her three childrenwhile her husband, Sakir Yildiz* from Muş, works as a cleaner in a nearby hospital,making the minimum wage of 600 Turkish Lira (TL) per month. Her youngest childsuffers from asthma attacks because of the moisture in her small apartment, but thefamily cannot afford the necessary treatment. “I hate Tarlabaşı”, she says. “It’s not agood place to live. If I could, I would prefer to live somewhere else, but this is the onlyneighbourhood where we can afford the rent. Living costs increase every year, onlythe minimum wage stays the same.” Her husband does not agree: “I live here. This ismy neighbourhood. I would not move, even if they’d offer me a luxurious villa to stayin. They destroyed our village, we don’t have a house there anymore, and we cannotreturn anywhere. Now we are facing eviction again.”

In a local teahouse, many men think like him. Ömer Altan*, the owner, came toIstanbul from Siirt and invested the substantial sum of 50,000 TL into the renovationof his shop as recently as 2004. “We won’t let them drive us out this easily”, he says.Osman Tulumcu*, also a Kurd from Siirt, came to Tarlabaşı 15 years ago and now runsa small shop selling second-hand furniture. Sometimes he misses his home village, hesays, but his three children were born and have grown up in the neighbourhood:“They belong here. Tarlabaşı is their home and it would be difficult for them to have tomove anywhere else now.” Osman, himself a tenant, emphasises that he does not wantto be forced out of his home a second time: “The government chased us 2,000kilometres to Istanbul, and now they want to chase us out again? I don’t think so.”

The tension in Tarlabaşı increases a little bit more with every eviction letter thatarrives from the municipality. Speaking about the urban policy in Istanbul, MücellaYapıcı points out: “At this point in time cities are no longer planned in order to sustainurban peace.” She adds: “Once the residents are evicted, once they cannot findhousing anymore and become even poorer, insecurity and crime will become evenworse. As a result, you will get the total and unsettling control of surveillance cameraseverywhere, of total control at all times.”

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Together with TOKI, the Social Housing Administration of Turkey, the municipalitydoes offer the residents of Tarlabaşı an alternative: an apartment in one of the newlybuilt high-rises in Kayabaşı, a remote development zone on the outskirts of the city, atwo-hour bus ride from Taksim Square. With demand often higher than supply,especially in Anatolian cities and towns, TOKI usually sells its apartments through alottery. In Kayabaşı, people from the low to very low income groups and people whotrade in houses classified as a danger in the event of an earthquake – and this appliesto house owners in Tarlabaşı in accordance with law No. 5366 – can apply for a TOKIapartment without having to go through that process. At the moment, however, only 3per cent of the planned 65,000 apartments target the very low income group.Apartments in this category require a monthly payment of 306 TL (approximately 139Euros) over the course of 180 months, as well as an initial 1,000 TL fee to be paidupon application. Additional costs of the move will include bills, fees for the doormanand money for the daily commute to work. Taking one public bus and a dolmuş theround-trip journey to Taksim costs approximately 8 TL, a considerable chunk out ofthe average Tarlabaşı resident’s salary.

For many of the current Tarlabaşı residents, the total cost of that bill is too high.Irregular employment and pay add to the pressure; very few people living in the areahave social security, some do not even have health care. Esad Yarış, who has lived inthe neighbourhood for years and has been told by the Beyoğlu Municipality toevacuate his house by the middle of March, is desperate: “I would move to Kayabaşıimmediately if I could afford it. But 306 TL a month is simply too much for me. Wecannot pay more than 100 TL a month.” Since he has a disability that prevents himfrom working, he has to rely on the very modest income provided by the rest of hisfamily.

Since they cannot afford to buy property, roughly 70 per cent of the people living inTarlabaşı are tenants just like Esad Yarış – compared to an Istanbul average of 20 to30 per cent. Taking on the mortgage required to buy a house in a TOKI development isa risk that could only too easily end in homelessness – and the Housing DevelopmentAdministration does not provide any rental housing. In a renewal project similar to theone in Tarlabaşı, the residents of the Sulukule neighbourhood, known as being one ofthe oldest Roma settlements in Europe, had been offered TOKI housing in Taşoğlukafter their houses had been destroyed by the Fatih municipality and TOKI, in order tomake room for upmarket Ottoman style villas. After only six months in the newapartments, only nine of the 300 Roma families remained in Taşoğluk, the rest hadmoved back to their old neighbourhood, often to live in tents or the ruins of their oldhomes, because they had been unable to pay the mortgage and to make a living.Mücella Yapıcı of the Chamber of Architects is concerned: “A few years ago, Istanbuldid not have a homelessness problem. Most people always managed somehow, eitherin squatter housing – the gecekondu – or in neighbourhoods such as Tarlabaşı orSulukule. But this new demolition policy of the municipality leaves more and more outin the streets because they simply do not find any place they can afford anymore.”

Even architects who are involved in Tarlabaşı Yenilenyor are unhappy with the lack offoresight in urban planning. Tülin Hadi and Cem Ilhan, whose architect’s office TeCeMimarlik is responsible for one of the renewal islands in Tarlabaşı, say: “Of course theneighbourhood requires urgent renovation. Many of the buildings would not resist

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even a medium earthquake.” And Tülin Hadi continues: “But it is very irresponsible toleave urban renewal projects on such a scale in the hands of only one developer whoof course will only care about making profit.”

The timeline of the project is still uncertain: While it was originally scheduled to befinished by 2010, only four buildings have been demolished thus far, with numerouscourt cases between property owners and GAP Inşaat still pending. While people haveslowly started to leave their homes, many residents remain, despite claims by themayor Ahmet Misbah Demircan in August 2010 that sales agreements had beenreached with 70 per cent of the house owners. Debate continues over the accuracy ofDemircan’s claim, an assessment complicated by the fact that the percentage oftenants in Tarlabaşı is very high. Some tenants have stayed even though their formerlandlord has already sold the building to GAP Inşaat – some because of the proximitybetween their living and work spaces, some because they cannot afford to move, andothers because they simply do not want to leave.

Professor Uğur Tanyeli sums up the problem: “A city is a place for people, not forbuildings. But I have the feeling that those who want to renew cities in Turkeyprioritise buildings over people. We have to start to look for compromises together,and these compromises first and foremost have to include that the current residents ofTarlabaşı can stay in their neighbourhood if they wish.”

*Names changed by the author

1. See http://www.milliyet.com.tr/2007/03/30/ekonomi/eko17.html

2. The author derived this information from interviews with several Tarlabasiresidents.

3. See “The Mechanism of Catastrophe: The Turkish Pogrom Of September 6 – 7,1955,” and “The Destruction Of The Greek Community Of Istanbul,” by Speros Vryonis.

4. See for example “Self Service City Istanbul” by Orhan Esen and Stephan Lanz.

5. Interview conducted by the author with Mücella Yapici of the Chamber of Architects.

This entry was posted on Saturday, June 11th, 2011 at 8:26 pm and is filed under TurkeyYou can follow any responses to this entry through the Comments (RSS) feed. Bothcomments and pings are currently closed.

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