[In full public view, a long struggle over urban
spaces is erupting as a broader fight over Turkish identity, where difficult
issues of religion, social class and politics intersect. And while most here
acknowledge that every Turkish ruling class has sought to put its stamp on
Istanbul, there is a growing sense that none has done so as insistently as the
current government, led by Mr. Erdogan’s Islamist-rooted Justice and
Development Party, despite growing resistance.]
By Tim Arango
ISTANBUL
— Across this vast city, a capital for three former empires, cranes
dangle over construction sites, tin walls barricade old slums, and skyscrapers
outclimb the mosque minarets that have dominated the skyline for centuries —
all a vanguard for more audacious projects already in the works.
For many Turks, though, the development is not
so much progress as a reflection of growing autocratic ambitions by Prime
Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his government. Anger and resentment boiled
over onto the street over the past three days, as the police barraged
demonstrators with tear gas and streams from water cannons — and as the
protesters attacked bulldozers and construction trailers lined up next to the
last park in the city’s center.
In full public view, a long struggle over urban
spaces is erupting as a broader fight over Turkish identity, where difficult
issues of religion, social class and politics intersect. And while most here
acknowledge that every Turkish ruling class has sought to put its stamp on
Istanbul, there is a growing sense that none has done so as insistently as the
current government, led by Mr. Erdogan’s Islamist-rooted Justice and
Development Party, despite growing resistance.
On Sunday, Mr. Erdogan went on television to
reject accusations of dictatorial behavior while flatly discounting the
protesters’ legitimacy.
“We would not yield to a few looters coming to
that square and provoking our people, our nation, based on their
misinformation,” Mr. Erdogan said, in a speech that managed to feel provocative
even as he called for a return to order, and as protesters returned to Taksim
Square. Demonstrators also took to the streets of Ankara, the capital, and
several other cities and were met with tear gas from the police.
Edhem Eldem, a historian at Bogazici University
in Istanbul, has criticized the government for undertaking large-scale
development projects without seeking recommendations from the public. “In a
sense, they are drunk with power,” he said. “They lost their democratic reflexes
and are returning to what is the essence of Turkish politics:
authoritarianism.”
The swiftly changing physical landscape of
Istanbul symbolizes the competing themes that undergird modern Turkey — Islam
versus secularism, rural versus urban. They highlight a booming economy and a
self-confidence expressed by the religiously conservative ruling elite that
belies the post-empire gloom that permeates the novels of Istanbul by Orhan
Pamuk, Turkey’s Nobel laureate and most famous writer.
Mr. Erdogan’s decade-long rule has dramatically
reshaped Turkey’s culture by establishing civilian control of the military. It
has broken down rules of the old secular order that now permit the wide public
expression of religion, seen in the proliferation of women wearing head scarves,
by the conservative masses who make up the prime minister’s constituency. His
rule has also nurtured a pious capitalist class, whose members have moved in
large numbers from rural Anatolia to cities like Istanbul, deepening class
divisions.
The old secular elite, who consider themselves
the inheritors of the legacy of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, modern Turkey’s secular
founder, have chafed under these transformations. So, too, have liberals, who
do not label themselves Kemalists and are tolerant of public displays of
religion. But they object to Mr. Erdogan’s leadership style, which they
describe as dictatorial, and are put off by many of the development projects on
the grounds of bad taste, a view imbued with a sense of social elitism.
For many, it has also created a sense of
resentment and loss — for longtime residents, urban intellectuals and many
members of the underclasses who are being pushed from their homes so that
upscale housing complexes and shopping malls can be built.
And there is much more on the drawing board that
evokes greater ambitions and controversies: the world’s largest airport, the
country’s biggest mosque, and a proposed canal that would split Istanbul’s
European side and is so audacious that even the project’s most vocal supporter,
Mr. Erdogan, has called it “crazy.” Ground has already been broken on a third
bridge over the Bosporus, named for a contentious Ottoman sultan who was
accused of massacring Alevi Muslims, a large minority in Turkey.
“I was born and raised here, and there is nothing
from my youth that I can connect to anymore in this city,” said Ersin
Kalaycioglu, a professor of international relations at Sabanci
University. “Istanbul is seen as a place where you earn a living, where you get
rich. It is a gold rush.”
Reflecting a sense of elitism that is widely
shared by secular Turks in Istanbul, he complained that the city had “been
invaded by Anatolian peasants” who were “uncultured.”
Ara Guler, who is 84 and Turkey’s most famous
photographer, having produced volumes of black-and-white photographs of
Istanbul’s cityscapes, sat in a cafe that bears his name. He said there was
only one neighborhood left that reminded of him of his city and where he still
liked to take pictures: Eyup, a waterside district that is home to a famous
mosque and many conservative Muslim families.
“The Istanbul that we grew up with is lost,” he
said. “Where is my Istanbul? It’s all about the money.”
A government plan to convert Taksim Square,
historically a place of public gathering, into a replica Ottoman-era army
barracks and shopping mall — what Mr. Eldem, the historian, called “a Las Vegas
of Ottoman splendor” — is what incited the demonstrations. But there are many
other contentious projects that have drawn public outrage.
The city’s oldest movie theater was recently
demolished for another mall, raising howls of protests, including an objection
from Turkey’s first lady, Hayrunnisa Gul, the wife of the Turkish president,
Abdullah Gul. A 19th-century Russian Orthodox Church may be destroyed as part
of an overhaul of a port. And in ghettos across the city, the urban poor are
being paid to leave their homes so that contractors — many with ties to
government officials — can build gated communities.
The neighborhood of Avcilar, near the airport
and historically a place for Bulgarian immigrants, is another area where
residents are being uprooted. As the process unfolds, it has become complicated
by opaque property records in which it is sometimes impossible to determine
ownership.
“One day we just got a notice, and bam, before
we could put up a proper fight, 300 to 400 police came and held us back from
intervening with the bulldozers that knocked down our restaurant,” said Coskun
Turan, who owned a fish restaurant. “They said we didn’t have deeds for the
property, but we do. We showed them. They argued that we only had a deed for
part of the property, so they knocked the rest down.”
At 87, Dogan Kuban is perhaps Istanbul’s
foremost urban historian. He has written numerous books and worked with the
United Nations on preservation issues in Turkey. He complained that he has
never been consulted by the current government. “I am the historian of
Istanbul,” he said. “They don’t consult with anybody.”
He criticized the government for ignoring the
country’s pre-Islamic history by not protecting certain archaeological sites
and structures, an issue he cast as highlighting Turkey’s turn away from
Western culture under Mr. Erdogan’s rule.
“The only things being preserved are mosques,”
he said. “Preservation is a very refined part of the culture. It’s very much a
part of European civilization.”
The outcome of the protest movement is still
uncertain. With Mr. Erdogan still able to count on the support of religious
conservatives, who make up a large voting bloc, few believe that his hold on
power is in jeopardy. But there has been a hint of potential political damage,
and the pulling back of police forces on Saturday, and allowing tens of
thousands of protesters to demonstrate in Taksim Square on Saturday and
again on Sunday night, was seen by some as a sign of weakness.
“This is the first battle Erdogan lost in recent
memory,” said Soli Ozel, an academic and columnist here. “He overreached — his
hubris, arrogance and authoritarian impulse hit a wall.”
But on Sunday, Mr. Erdogan struck a defiant
chord, and while he said no shopping mall would be built in Taksim, he vowed to
build another mosque in the square.
