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Letter from Istanbul/Turkey to All World’s Urban Precariat
bit - 04.03.2011 12:38
Letter from Istanbul/Turkey to Venezuela’s, Pakistan’s, Nigeria’s, Algeria’s, Indonesia’s, Syria’s, Azerbaijan’s, Iran’s, Yemen’s and all the World’s Urban Precariat
Comrades,
We, the people of the urban movements of Turkey who think that capitalist greediness and the rent drives of the bourgeoisie should not shape cities, are deeply saddened and surprised by a series of recent news. According to one of the news, President Chavez has met with the head of Ministry of Energy and natural Resources of Turkey and told the Turkish committee “the petroleum [of Venezuela] is yours. We need two million houses. We gravely want to see TOKI (Mass Housing Administration) in Venezuela. We expect you to make projects with your qualified contractors.” The other news also, which were similar to the previous one, cited that the presidents of the countries mentioned above were leading negotiations with TOKI and they were in the agreement and even construction process of similar practices.
Although we do not want to believe the validity of this news, we want you to hear from us the realities about TOKI which caused great destruction, plunder, environmental degradation, exploitation and poverty. We hope that our comrades who are far away from us would embrace our objection.
TOKI is an institution, which was founded in 1984 with the purpose of creating social housing units for the poor. However, in an environment of conspicuous neoliberal policies of 2000s, it has become an instrument of maintaining neoliberal policies of AKP, the ruling party of Turkey. Today, TOKI has been transformed into a “public” institution implementing projects for political and economic interests of the ruling classes.
The supposedly successful story of TOKI based on quantitative data is the visible side of the institution. The greatness of the numbers may only legitimize the neoliberal policies. Behind the mask of profit rates, profit sharing, speculations on urban land value and investments on luxurious housing compounds are the displaced masses that are forced to struggle hard to make their living. The commercial success story of TOKI is unfortunately based on deepening inequality, exploitation and plunder. Today, TOKI has lost its public responsibility as it sees the citizens as customers and uses its power in the name of the bourgeoisie interests. The only difference between TOKI and Donald Trump who is the real estate billionaire of the USA is that TOKI was founded by the state.
As TOKI is not an institution that creates good value social houses, it contracts luxurious housing projects to private firms and causes enrichment of the construction companies. The number of the social housing projects is very small compared to luxurious housing projects that are implemented in the left over area from urban transformation projects. Besides these, these social houses are made of construction materials in very poor quality compared to luxurious housing projects in a move to cut the costs of the production of the social housing projects.
The meaning of “Urban transformation” literally transformed into a word of horror due to the destructions caused by TOKI. These projects that are implemented by TOKI occur in the poor gecekondu (illegally constructed buildings of Turkish working class typical but not identical to favelas in South America) neighbourhoods inhabited by the poor, historical sites in the city or in old residence areas. The people living in those places are forced to sign contracts by the municipalities. These contracts transfer the people’s land to municipalities and assign loans to people for the new houses of TOKI. These loans, which are even hard to pay for the people with regular income, deteriorate the living conditions of the gecekondu dwellers who are mostly unemployed or have irregular income. The tenants in these neighbourhoods are immediately displaced from their houses without any consideration of their housing right.
Simply looking at several cases in Istanbul among many others in various cities of Turkey is adequate to demonstrate that TOKI satisfies the demands and interests of local/global capital owners. Roma people who were living in 1500 years old Sulukule Neighbourhood, internally displaced Kurdish people -due to the war between the insurgents and the army in the eastern region of Turkey, who used to live in Istanbul Ayazma neighbourhood moved to the TOKI houses in the very periphery of the city. It is only a few years since they moved to the houses yet a few of them still live in those houses. Besides the poor quality of the houses and their distance to the working places in the city, having trouble in paying the houses’ loans to TOKI is one of the most important reasons for leaving those places. Those people whose houses were taken from their hands have been dispersed to different parts of the city and they are now even poorer than the past. Because they do not have a house anymore. In Istanbul, Ayazma which is yet another urban renewal area, a project marketed as one of the most luxurious housing sites of Turkey is still in construction.
The resistance stories against the TOKI projects are full of cases that illustrate how TOKI uses physical violence. The tenants of Ayazma resisting against TOKI’s regeneration project in their neighbourhood continued to live in demolished area in the tents and shanties for three years, and the municipality and police forces even destroyed their tents for two times. They are still resisting and searching for their rights for five years. People in Istanbul Basibuyuk neighbourhood resisting against the TOKI project in their neighbourhood prevented the construction companies to start the project for months. After a period of violent clashes when everybody faced violence in the neighbourhood caused by police forces, a small part of the project was finished and police officers who had been sent to the neighbourhood to break the resistance were placed to those houses.
One of the reasons lying behind the logic of empowering TOKI with enormous and unquestionable authority is presented as the contribution by TOKI to national economy via increasing employment with the huge demolishment and construction works and therefore revitalizing the construction sector as a whole. However, the reality is completely different from what is supposed. Hundreds of workers employed in many TOKI projects in different cities are working in unsecured, unhealthy conditions without insurance. Moreover, they can not take their wages for months and because of the unsafe working conditions, they are working at the cost of their lives. Recently, two workers lost their lives in the construction of the TOKI’s “prestige stadium” project. In meantime, we have been aware of this reality by the news coming from the workers’ boycott of the construction. Furthermore, we see that the contribution of TOKI to the economy is just about to enlarge certain construction companies and create monopolies within the sector.
It is this miserable and wretched lives of the urban precariat which lies at the core of TOKI’s so called “Productivity and Success Story”. We can formulate the urban regeneration projects as the process of accumulation of wealth under the few wealthy through dispossessing the poor through the legislative framework of the state. From a broader perspective, we can define it as the privatization of public land that belongs to the people and the destruction of the common values and living places for individual benefits.
TOKI supplies land for the luxurious housing projects through development plans supposedly implemented for “public benefit”; constructs luxurious houses in partnership with big construction companies; sells public lands; construct shopping malls, hotels; builds summer houses in the publicly owned coastal zones. It is impossible to define TOKI as state agency for the interest of people. Rather it is more appropriate to define TOKI as an actor of the market which uses the public assets for the benefit of capital. TOKI is nothing but a mere example of the violation of the basic principles of socially just city planning.
We cannot overlook suffering of other countries for the developments we are supposed to have in our country. We cannot watch the people living there to become poorer as the people of Turkey are deceived by the popular lies of cheap petrol and income increase. We do not want you to believe the lies of cheap houses and feed this giant creature that caused exploitation, poverty and destruction by establishing cooperation with it. We are sure that you will take into account this outcry from a region far from you and tell your presidents and governors to “STOP”.
We already know that a better world would be possible if it is for all the people of the world. We declare that we will stand against all the practices in the name of the people of the world whether by the states or the cooperations, results of which are exploitation, poverty and violate human dignity. The world will be a livable place with the common struggle of the oppressed.
In the Name of Solidarity,
IMECE-Toplumun Şehircilik Hareketi
Istanbul, Turkey 4 March 2011
 E-Mail: toplumunsehircilikhareketi@gmail.com  Website: http://www.toplumunsehircilikhareketi.org/
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