1st Edition
Settlements and Displacement in Turkey Struggle and Rejuvenation
This book explores the complex relationship between urban space and displacement in Turkey. It evaluates how the displacement of people and cultures has affected the spatiotemporal landscapes of the nation at different periods of contemporary Turkey, with an emphasis on various narratives of the relocating population and their relationship to the environment.
Contemporary cities are constantly changing due to the movement of people from different regions, resulting in shifting population patterns globally. Understanding displacement and its effects on space are crucial in studying this phenomenon, as it not only involves the physical relocation of individuals, but also the transfer of cultural practices within a condensed timeframe. This process changes the destination of settlements irreversibly. This book takes a methodological approach and disclinary approach, examining the migration and displacement of people and its effects upon art, architecture, culture and politics in Turkish cities.
This book will be of interest to students and scholars interested in migration and its effects on cities, urban planning and architecture.
Introduction
Part 1: Interrelations among Forced Displacement, Power and Settlements in Turkey: A Contemporary and Historical Perspective
1. Population Movements, and Settlement in the New Capital City: Spatial and Social Transformation of Ankara During the 1920s
Deniz Avcı Hosanlı (Izmir University of Economics) and T. Elvan Altan (Middle East Technical University)
2. On Spatial Traces of Population Exchange in Aegean Rural Region: Remains at Denizli / Honaz, Aydın / Mursallı, and Izmir / Küçükbahçe
Beste Özçiftci (Izmir Institute of Technology) and Tonguç Akış (Izmir Institute of Technology)
3. From Émigré to Underclass and Petite Bourgeoisie: A Sociospatial Tale of Grave-Caretakers in Ankara
Güven Arif Sargın (METU Department of Architecture) and Gülşah Aykaç (Middle East Technical University)
Part 2: Socio-Spatial Practices of Integration in the Last Wave of Forced Transnational Displacement
4. Unsettled Lives: On Issues of Displaced Persons’ Urban Accommodation
Gizem Deniz Güneri (Middle East Technical University), İlkay Dinç Uyaroğlu (Ostim Technical University), Deniz Altay Kaya (Middle East Technical University)
5. Migrating Proverbs: Bridging Difference through ‘Critical Play’. A Cross-disciplinary Approach to Cultural Integration in the Context of Forced Displacement
Catalina Pollak Williamson (University of East London)
6. Socio-spatial Practices of the Syrian and the Internally Displaced Groups in the Coastal Park of Mersin
Nazelin Pişkin (Harran University) and F. Cânâ Bilsel (Middle East Technical University)
Part 3: Narrations of Human Flows: Settlements in Transition
7. The Interscale Memory of Transnational Displaced People: A Fictional Montage from Realistic Fragments
Gamze Okumuş Solmaz (Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University) and Funda Uz (Istanbul Technical University)
8. Forms of Appearance/ Disappearance: Material Representations of Displaced Communities in Urban Public Space
Ela Alanyalı Aral (Middle East Technical University), Reem Charif (Febrik, Chelsea College of Art and Design), and Deniz Altay Kaya (Middle East Technical University)
Biography
Ela Alanyalı Aral is an Associate Professor of Architecture at Middle East Technical University, Ankara. After receiving her Ms.Science degree in Architecture on the Visual Structuring of Ankara, she studied the Potentialities of Leftover Spaces for the Public Realm in her Ph.D. (METU) and Creative Mapping in Architecture in her post-doc studies (TUDelft). Ela Alanyalı Aral has several printed articles in international journals such as Landscape Research and METU Journal of Faculty of Architecture. She is the editor of the book ‘Mapping Syrian Migration –Migrant Spaces in Ankara’ (2018, Ankara: METU Faculty of Architecture Press). She has continued her research on creative mapping techniques, displacement in the urban context, and possible contributions of leftover spaces to the city and the Ankara tumuli.
Özlem Erdogdu Erkarslan obtained her undergraduate, master's, and doctoral degrees from the Department of Architecture at Dokuz Eylül University. She started her research on gender and space issues related to her previous research areas in the early 2000s. In 2002, she was awarded the Milka Bliznakov Joint Fellowship Award for her article that investigated the role of Turkish women architects in the cultural development of modernity during the early Republic period. Erkarslan played an active role in the preparation of the project titled "2017: Cities in transition: locality, identity, and experience of place: issues for migrant and minority ethnic groups in rapidly emerging urban developments and typologies together." This project formed the first step of the book and was funded by the Newton Fund in 2017, and she remained actively involved until its realization. Since 2021, she has also been publishing on United Nations Sustainable Development Goals and teaching at the Faculty of Architecture and Design of Istanbul Aydin University, in addition to numerous book chapters and articles on gender and space.
"This set of essays demonstrates the socio-spatial and urban aspects of Turkey's unfortunately rich "displacement narratives" through cases mainly on residential neighborhoods and households. The originality of the book is to present the recent forced displacement of Syrians and their "transient" habitats in Turkey within a wider historical panorama of resettlements from the foundation of the nation-state and forced relocations in the 1920s to squatters and their transformations, trans-national immigrants to Western Europe after 1950s and forced migrations caused by internal conflicts in 1990s." - Namık Erkal, TED University, Turkey
"This book is a potent multidisciplinary exploration of settlement and displacement which does not only involve the geographical/physical relocation of people but also translocalization of cultural practices and hybridization of key references of belonging. Each of the individual contributions, based on meticulous research, attempts to challenge readers to confront different facades of the phenomenon in the case of Turkey which is a country witnessing various forms of displacement since its establishment in 1923. In doing so, the book turns into an invitation to consider settlement and displacement as a double-sided phenomenon that simultaneously involves both exclusion and counter-political strategies to develop resilience against this direct outcome of being displaced." - Besim Can Zırh, Middle East Technical University, Turkey
