Shunted aside by Istanbul’s rising prosperity

Thomas Seibert, Foreign Correspondent

• Last Updated: November 30. 2008 2:46PM UAE / November 30. 2008 10:46AM GMT

In a small house on a street strewn with litter and lined by ruins of buildings whose inhabitants have already left, Goksel Gulkoperan was waiting for his own eviction this week. Mr Gulkoperan was given until today to leave the house near the ancient city walls of Turkey’s metropolis, Istanbul, or risk being thrown out.

“I don’t know where to go,” Mr Gulkoperan said. His home, like the rest of the poor neighbourhood of Sulukule, an old Istanbul quarter that once was a popular nightlife centre and is known for its predominantly Roma population, is to be torn down to make room for luxury apartments, hotels and shopping centres.

City authorities say they want to end the “decay” in this part of Istanbul and give the inhabitants a fresh start elsewhere, but residents and activists say the plans are part of a relentless, money-driven programme of gentrification that destroys the lives of thousands of people.

As Turkey has become richer as a result of an economic boom in recent years, many cities in the country have started programmes of urban development that reflect this new wealth and modernity. Nowhere is that trend more visible than in Istanbul, a city with 3,000 years of history that has suddenly become “cool Istanbul”, attracting more than six million tourists a year.

Shopping malls, hotels and luxury homes have sprung up in many parts of the city. Now it is the turn of the historic peninsula on the European side that is home to landmarks like the Hagia Sophia, the Topkapi Palace and the Blue Mosque, but also to neighbourhoods like Sulukule, which literally means “watery tower” because an important freshwater pipe entered the city here in Byzantine times.

Once home to about 5,000 people, Sulukule’s population has halved since the resettlement programme began two years ago, said Nese Ozan, an activist from Sulukule Platform, a group that campaigns against the plans. “Two out of three houses have been destroyed already,” Ms Ozan said. Some streets in the district look like war zones, with many buildings destroyed and turned into piles of rubble, the former owners gone.

Other houses are still standing, but their windows and doors have been ripped out. A group of men was pulling twisted rods of metal from a destroyed house to sell as scrap metal.

House owners in Sulukule are offered a compensation sum of 500 lira (Dh1,170) per square metre for their homes. But as many of the small houses occupy only 60 square metres, the money is not enough for inhabitants to buy new apartments elsewhere, Mr Ozan said.

Sulukule and similar parts of the historical peninsula “have become regions of decay and rubble in Istanbul’s city centre” because of years of neglect, the municipal government of Fatih district, of which Sulukule is a part, said in a statement.

Also, possible earthquakes were a danger for the inhabitants because of the sorry state of many houses. “We give apartments to those who used to live in demolished buildings, we move them” to a new location, Kadir Topbas, Istanbul’s mayor, said in a speech last year. “Trust us.”

But many people in Sulukule reject the programme for a simple reason: they do not want to leave their neighbourhood for new apartments in a remote suburb without jobs.

Yilmaz Kucukatasayyar, who was chatting with friends in front of a gutted house that used to be his family’s home, said his parents had moved to a new apartment block in Tasoluk, 40km north of Sulukule near the Black Sea coast. “I couldn’t stay there; it is very far away. We are not happy there. Our home is here, in the heart of Istanbul,” Mr Kucukatasayyar said. For the moment he is staying in his family’s old house and is trying to get by as a street vendor.

Asked what he will do if the house is torn down, one of Mr Kucukatasayyar’s friends, Ercan Ozkulan, answered for him with a laugh: “Then we just go to another house until all the houses are gone.”

But for Mr Gulkoperan in his house just up the street from Mr Kucukatasayyar and his friends, things are not that easy. In his cramped living room, Mr Gulkoperan, 47, held up sheets of X-ray photos. He has lung cancer, and doctors took out one of his lungs in an operation.

When he was given an apartment in Tasoluk as a tenant of Sulukule, he immediately sold it to pay for medical bills and returned to the neighbourhood, where he lives with his three children and an elderly uncle. Now the money is gone and he waits for the bulldozer to come.

Nearby, a house owner, Adem Ergucel, said authorities wanted to pay him compensation for only one apartment, although his house had two. “Is the municipality above the law?” he asked. Ms Ozan said activists and residents had launched two lawsuits to stop the project, but although there has been no decision by the courts so far, the demolition goes on.

A group of about 30 academics and experts has come up with an alternative project that they named Stop and that they say would make it possible for Sulukule’s population to stay in the neighbourhood. Mustafa Demir, the Fatih mayor, has promised to look at the project.

“It is not too late” to save Sulukule, Ms Ozan said. But progress of the project, which is to be completed in the next two years, suggests that the city’s plans may be hard to stop. “Social consequences will be dire,” Ms Ozan said.

There has also been international criticism. “The Roma population has faced several instances of demolition of communities, forced evictions and exposure to poor living and sanitary conditions without recourse to any publicly accountable process,” the EU said this month in a report on Turkey’s progress as a candidate for membership.

“Demolitions of Roma neighbourhoods, in some cases involving forced evictions, continue.” The EU report also noted that the human rights commission of the Turkish prime ministry had called for an inquiry into possible human rights violations in Sulukule.

tseibert@thenational.ae