It is a well-known fact by everyone that the World Wars and the impact of the whole world, including Turkey, were affected. Industrialization in Turkey, especially in the field of agricultural industrialization, in the 1950s, after World War II, brought rapid urbanization. There are many causes and consequences of urbanization and the urbanization process in Turkey. This process still continues in Turkey. Urbanization and urbanization issues in Turkey under three main headings in this article; past, present, and future scenarios going to be mentioned in terms of the ecological, architectural, social, and economic points of view.
First of all, it is mentioned in the introduction in the 1950s when industrialization began in Turkey in the field of agriculture, agriculture began to be needed to reduce manpower along with mechanization and job opportunities. For this reason, indigenous people living in rural areas began to migrate to cities because they thought it was more likely to find a job. On the other hand, the cities were not ready and sufficient for this migration wave in terms of substructure and housing needs. People who migrated from the countryside to the city took the first step into their lives by constructing houses called slums in places where vertical urbanization was not so much possible. Slums, in a social manner, when we look at the human relations in highly interdependent and cooperation-based housing complexes. While people were building their houses, they built a collective way and with the help of collective work. From the ecological point of view, since all of them were a single story or maximum two-story and the houses were positioned in harmony with the topography, no house would cut the sunlight of the other. Also, each house has a garden, and there is some food produced in this garden. From an architectural point of view, these houses are very suitable for the principle of solving the Existenzminimum, that is to say, the minimum requirements in minimum square meters. When people living here needed more room, they could still add a room with a modular system to their homes instead of buying a house just like today. They were able to provide their needs in a minimum way. They tried to create their familiar world, which in the countryside, in the city. In the past, human life, together with industrialization, has been striving to keep pace with the rapid change in social, economic, and environmental terms. Slums are regional life strategies and self-protection mechanisms. People who migrated from the same country in the regions lived together. People in the village were displaced due to unemployment in the rural areas.
If we consider the event in another dimension, this place acquisition policy, squatter, has been seen as an integration problem. The presented fact that people had difficulty in keeping up with the city because they had to behave in urban life. Such situations led to some segregation. It was thought that the slums were trying to ruralize the city. This distinction was inevitable for the inhabitants of the Gecekondu members to be able to separate them in their newly acquired places and rebellion. “A wave of rebellion was spreading from the avalanche slum neighborhoods. Arabesque, it was the name of this rebellion and this fight. A rebellion against cultural engineering. Some kind of reckoning with the system (Berdibek, M., 2017, p.16-17).” While pop music was the symbol of the city, arabesque music emerged as the sound of socially abandoned people pushed to the edge of the city. Over time, arabesque music has become a rebellion of people. Having a place in the slums has led to the emergence of economically marginal sectors. For example; shoeshine, street gaming (bul karayı al parayı), street trading, etc. Slum areas have become unwanted areas. This polarization situation has connected people living in slum neighborhoods more closely. One of the most important words is “solidarity”. According to Emile Durkheim, from the mechanical division of society, through the division of labor, organic solidarity has passed. As people began to migrate to cities and physical density, competition for existing resources in the city began to grow. The winners continued their jobs, whereas the losers were forced to specialize (2).
Image produced by Hatice Öz, Urbanism, and Urbanization Theories, Causes, Effects.
Looking at the current situation, it has become more difficult to understand things. Comparison of the effect that occurs when the human hand the consequences of the industrialization of a slum housing situation where people take a hand in the cities in Turkey, where people migrate from rural areas, it is subject to conditions. The 50s in the city called Metropolis in Turkey were to require working with new industries, everything was perfect ideas in town, to be better in the village of health and education services and facilities for the urban and the city of “modern” one of the biggest causes of attracting immigration is of a symbol. In parallel, the idea that mechanization in rural areas, unemployment, and rural areas are the symbol of poverty are among the reasons for migration from the village to the city. People migrated from the village to the city and tried to get a place by building the slums.
When we talk about Metropolis, the mention of Ecumenopolis, “City Without Any Limitations”, will expand the subject in many ways. The film was produced by İmre Azem in 2012. Starting from the last period of the Ottoman Empire at the beginning of the 21st century. Urban population exceeds the rural population in the late 20th century and early 21st century, he appeared for the first time together with the industrialization of agriculture in Turkey. Cities are not ready for this situation. The city’s thresholds are being exceeded one by one. Before the 1980s, the government welcomed people who had migrated from the village to the city, which they saw as the cheap labor force, to build the gecekondu houses in the industrial environment. The Turkish government of the 80s was insisting that the people living in the slums should move to the middle class by housing with apartment blocks. Towards the 1990s, the city’s industrial sector began to emerge out of the city and became a part of the city. Nevertheless, the parcels of the industry where the previous place was empty became the place of TOKI and the municipality. Istanbul, along with the first and second Bosphorus bridges, began to grow towards the North. The northern forests are under threat from construction (Azem, İ., Ecumenopolis: City without limits). With the construction of the third bridge, the green areas around the bridge will be displaced and new construction; both gated communities and slums.
“Hiçbir gecekondu, yaptığımız apartmanlar kadar şehrimizi çirkinleştirmiyor.”
Turgut Cansever
“… In defining urbanization, it is necessary to include the social and economic changes that make up the population movement. In this context, parallel to the urbanization, industrialization and economic progress, the increase in the number of cities can be defined as the increase in the population, which leads to the growth of the cities in the present day, and the population growth leading to differences in cities in the human behaviors and relations that create the division of labor, division of labor and specialization.” (Başaran, 2008: 19, Güven, December 2017, p.25). According to Ahmet Güven, the ones described in the first sections are of a nature to support. In addition to these, it has been effective in the construction sector with the increase in industrialization that started in the past. The places where the building was not possible were started to be opened to parceling and building. In this case, slums and lands have started to come into consideration. New projects have been designed for slums. The owners of the slums were given them modern(?) dwellings, which would be built with high-rise verticalization and provided the possibility of urbanization to the slum owners, provided they were granted a pecuniary right. But the situation was not as bright as expected. Assoc. Dr. Tahire Erman is an academician at the Department of Political Science at Bilkent University. Ankara-Karacaören TOKI suggests that TOBAŞ Public Relations Manager is called “old, unhealthy and makeshift” houses from slum houses, whereas TOKI’s are called “modern, healthy, regular”; in contrast. (Erman, T., December 2011, p.26). The boundaries of the private area and the public sphere were determined by a distinction in the newly constructed TOKI’s. Now people do not have their own private gardens, they can not sit in front of the door with their neighbors, and there is no place to socialize except for the camellias in the garden. It is a rather strange practice that it was not forbidden to grow plants, fruit vegetables or flowers, especially around the building. This is to isolate people trying to urbanize. TOKİ has demolished the shanties and displaced the people living in the shanty houses by making “modern” apartment buildings. They argue that they have been able to “re-establish” the TOKİ by giving due to the apartment. People living in slums and placed in TOKI apartments can feel the difference when they meet people from other sectors. A person living in the slums can become an object of fear in a rich house where she is cleaning up; just because of where she lives. The city is the city of both the poor and people of different cultures. Urban transformation practices that physically change urban space also affect urban life. The urban transformation decision of the right holders living in the project area is excluded. This situation also excludes the area. And the people living in the area are spread to other parts of the city. The project area is filled with higher income people. This process works in two ways, and the first method is the population change in the post-urban space as a result of high-income holders choosing areas where lower income groups live in the urban area. The second method is that the people living in the project area before the urban transformation result in migration to the poor areas of the city due to their inability to live economically in this area. In both cases, after the urban transformation, the poor are no longer able to live in the places where they lived in the past. It is considered that this situation destroys social peace and damages urban culture and urban identity (Akkoç, Y.Selim, 2014:502425, Gülkal, 2013: 164). In other words, the difference in displacement and placement is valid for people from income groups.
Besides, as mentioned in the movie Ecumenopolis, countries other than Turkey, invests in Istanbul. They do not invest in their own countries because investments are not intended to be enriched or improved. They make investments that are more damaging than parking such as parking under parks, turning forests on parcels to construction sites. Today, as a parcel, destroy the forests and then “slogans like life in the green” with the slogans of the gated communities, they put the trees grown in pots on the balcony of houses and “ecological” life are called. Nowadays, the idea that it enables vertical urbanization with the new law in the last months of 2018 is inevitable. The law called in Turkey “İmar Barışı” maybe an encouraging thing to the construction sector in terms of making unbalance to the ecology…
BIBLIOGRAPHY
- Berdibek, M., April 2017, Belki de Dilimden Bu Şarkı Düşmez, 16-17.
- White Fuse Media Ltd. (n.d.). Social Solidarity. Retrieved from http://routledgesoc.com/category/profile-tags/social-solidarity
- Erman, T. December 2011, Kentsel Dönüşüm Projesiyle Dönüşen/Dönüş(e)meyen Yaşamlar: Karacaören TOKİ Sitesindeki Günlük Yaşam Pratikleri, 25-31.
- Azem, İ.(Director), (2012), Ecumenopolis: City without limits = Ekümenopolis: Ucu olmayan șehir, Retrieved December 22, 2018, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=maEcPKBXV0M
- Başaran, İ. (2008), Güven, A. (2017), Kent, Kentlileşme ve Kentsel Yönetim İhtiyacı, 25.
- Akkoç, Y.(2014), Gülkal, (2013), Kentsel Dönüşüm Projelerinin Çevre Etiği Bağlamında Değerlendirilmesi:Ankara Örneği, Ankata Universitesi Soayal Bilimler Enstitüsü Sosyal Çevre Bilimleri Anabilim Dalı.
haticeoz 