Urban Turkey: Opportunities and Limits

"Within the Turkey of Cities, some cities stand out for their contributions both to themselves and their surroundings, serving as laboratories; consequently, working on these cities opens the door to a politically creative process. In this book, we hope that by attempting such an evaluation and analysis, we have produced an academic work that can serve as a reference for future studies, and that we have contributed to the continuation of scientific and public discussions.”

Fırat Genç, Çağlar Keyder, E. Fuat Keyman, and Ayşe Köse Badur’s Turkey of Cities: Possibilities, Limits, and Conflicts examines the 2000s, a period when Turkey underwent dramatic changes in every respect, by focusing on its cities. It reveals the connections between Turkey’s political regime's over-centralized structure and neoliberal practices, and urban-scale dynamics, at a time when cities have gained importance worldwide as a result of comprehensive transformations in economic, human, technological, and administrative fields. The authors, addressing İzmir, Adana-Mersin, Konya, and Van individually, discuss the consequences of developments observed in an environment where the Turkish economy has become much more deeply integrated into global markets, the political sphere has rapidly narrowed, and the administrative structure has become unprecedentedly rigid, on urban life, economy, and politics. They also reveal how powerfully the relationship between cities and the state influences their destinies.