8 place as matter, matter as identity: objectifying ...

8 PLACE AS MATTER, MATTER AS IDENTITY: OBJECTIFYING ISTANBUL IN THE CONTEXT OF AN URBAN STRUGGLE Aimilia Voulvouli

Introduction This chapter is the product of an anthropological study of a grassroots protest group in the neighbourhood of Arnavutköy in Istanbul, Turkey. The protest began following the announcement of plans for the construction of a third bridge, added to the two already existing, over the Bosphorus Strait, connecting the Asian and the European shores of Istanbul. The residents of the neighbourhood where foundations for the bridge would be built on the European side of the Bosphorus organized a protest movement called Arnavutköy District Initiative – in Turkish ASG (Arnavutköy Semt Girişimi), opposing its construction. According to ASG supporters, they were opposing the project because of the destructive effects the construction of the bridge would have on the area’s natural and cultural assets. The Arnavutköylites are also resisting the construction of the bridge because, according to them, it will have a dramatic, negative impact on their everyday lives.1 1

There are similar cases, such as the Bergama protest, which concerns a conflict between the residents of the Bergama area near Izmir and the Normandy Mining Corporation. The conflict centres on the Eurogold Project for the establishment of a goldmine whose method of gold extraction involves using cyanide, a public health hazard. Another case involves the conflict between the Metropolitan Municipality of Istanbul and the Chamber of Architects over the socalled, Tarlabaşı Demolitions. The municipality, as it turns out, had planned to transform one of the main streets of the Beyoğlu district of the city, İstiklal Caddesi (Independence Street), into a pedestrian area and to open a parallel artery which would ease traffic congestion. This would have meant demolishing, a large number of nineteenth-century buildings. The conflict did not only involve a clash between conservationists and modernizers but a clash between the military regime of the 1980s and its critics (Bartu 1999). Similar issues were at the root of other conflicts such as the case of the İlisu Dam involving protests over the government’s decision to construct a dam that would flood the city of İlisu, a place of historical and archaeological significance,

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One of the central arguments ASG makes against the construction of the bridge concerns the potential environmental damage to the area. As stated on the movement’s website, www.arnavutkoy.org, “The historic, cultural and natural assets of both sides of the Bosphorus are going to suffer either directly or indirectly because of the proposed bridge”. One of the ASG press releases begins: “Dear Minister, Bosphorus and Arnavutköy is protected by the Cultural and Natural Assets Protection Act and this is why we want the decision of the construction of the Third Bridge cancelled”. The ASG website lists these assets as: a. 38 monumental constructions b. 292 examples of civil architecture (houses) c. 5 natural green conservation areas d. 42 yalıs or waterfront houses from the Ottoman era e. 30 ancient trees f. retaining walls, garden walls (Decree 9483 of The High Council of Monuments) Nevertheless in the case of ASG there is an evident relationship between the materiality of these monuments and immateriality (Miller 2005:3). As one of my informants put it: When we think of environmental conservation we usually think of material things like the pollution of historic buildings, monuments etc. But the cultural environment, to my mind, is as important as the material environment. People are not aware of this, they are trying to… remember all those things. When you tell them they will say “Ah, the good old days”. And when you ask them what was good about those old days they begin to tell you about things which I think are very important… Arnavutköy people are reviving their traditions and they are encouraging people to start doing this. Perhaps it won’t be commercially successful like it was before but at least people will be able to say that in Arnavutköy strawberry cultivation started again. something that would necessitate the relocation of a large number of people. The outcome of this conflict was the cancelation of the project, though this result was not achieved by the Tunceli anti-dam activists, who led a similar anti-dam protest but in a mainly Kurdish area.

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Place as Matter, Matter as Identity: Objectifying Istanbul in the Context of an Urban Struggle

My fieldwork has revealed that the residents of Arnavutköy are not so much opposed to the construction of the bridge per se but rather resent the detachment from their “place”. It is my overwhelming impression that the ASG’s opposition stems from the fact that the construction of the bridge would detach residents from the “place” in which they “dwell” and with which they feel united existentially. In Heideggerian terms dwelling describes building and by experiencing this activity human beings shape their thoughts of the world (Tilley 1994:13). For Arnavutköylites, Arnavutköy “is” part of their existence and hence their identity. From a material culture point of view the relationship between Arnavutköy and the Arnavutköylites “has a direct bearing on our understanding of the nature of the human condition and the social being in the world” (Tilley 2001: 258). In this sense, the bridge interrupts this process of home-making, not only by tearing down many of the Arnavutköylites’ houses, but also by commoditizing their place, affecting the aesthetics of the neighborhood, which are strongly connected with the historicity of Arnavutköy and thus the citizens’ collective memory. The above became clear to me through fieldwork conducted in Arnavutköy and other parts of Istanbul involving participant observation and interviews in the framework of what Marcus calls multisited ethnography. This refers to, “ethnography moving from the conventional single-site location contextualized by macro-constructions of a larger social order (such as the capitalist world system) to multiple sites of observation and participation” (Marcus 1995: 95).2 Even though my fieldwork was based in Arnavutköy, as part of a global city like Istanbul, where the dynamics and processes which had become territorialized were global (Sassen 2001: xix), ASG should not be seen as a unique protest movement but as one of many such protests occurring around the world in cities with similar socio-economic and demographic development. Following Marcus’ techniques of multi-sited ethnography, my research revolved around various aspects of the same issue. My fieldwork in Turkey lasted eighteen months, eleven of which I spent in Arnavutköy. I lived in the area, initially in a guesthouse and later on, in the home of one of my informants. I continued my research after I had left Istanbul by keeping in contact 2

Kearney (1995: 1) makes a similar point, claiming that, given cultural anthropology’s commitment to the study of local communities, globalization has implications for its theory and methods. In addition, given that anthropology is centered in the so-called Western nations, globalization entails certain displacements of the production of anthropological knowledge from its historic, national, institutional and cultural contexts to other sites.

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with my informants, receiving newsletters from ASG and keeping up with emerging events related to the bridge through the electronic press and social media. My main methods of data production in the field were multi-leveled, including participant observation, interviewing, collecting news articles, travelling within the country, and keeping the classic ethnographic diary. The Turkish Context: Istanbul as Matter/Identity Manuel Castells (1983: 42) claims that “it is impossible to understand the meaning of a movement without referring to historical conditions in which the movement appears”. In the framework of material culture, Istanbul, as a “thing” whose biography, according to Kopytoff (1986), can define the cultural construction of its meaning, acquires a twofold purpose. Firstly, to introduce Turkey as the historical, socio-political context in which ASG was born. Secondly, following Kopytoff, to track the culturally and historically specific biography of Istanbul in order to be able to overcome the problematic relationship between thing and person and illustrate materiality as social identity. Turkey became a nation-state in 1923 and ever since the changes at institutional, economic and cultural level have been radical and continuous. Until the death in 1938 of the founder of the Turkish state, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, who declared that Turkey belonged to the West, the country experienced both political and cultural changes reflected in institutions, language, clothing, gender relations and religious habits. Since 1938, Turkey has been facing a transition to a multiparty political system and a series of periods of political unrest, repeated elections and coups d’état. At the same time there has been an opening up of the country’s economy to the West, a critical moment of which was the Marshall aid received in 1948. Due to its obligation to be accountable to the donors, Turkey followed a particular development path over the years, the most evident results of which were rapid economic and demographic change and urbanization. The tradition initiated by the State Highways Department, created during the 1950s under the supervision of the USA (Mango 2004), was followed by all the subsequent governments (see Keyder 1999). More specifically, the Özal governments will go down in history as the administrations which invested large sums of money in the construction of highways and the development of new technologies (Şimşek 2004). Turkey’s integration into global processes followed these changes. Today, Istanbul is the largest city in Turkey with 10 million inhabitants 166


(TURSTAT 2004). 36% of the total population of the city lives on the more recently built Asian side of the city, whereas 64% (Bliss n.d) lives on the European side. The old city is well known for its very old buildings, narrow streets and many important historical buildings such as the Topkapı Palace, Haghia Sophia, the hippodrome, the Grand Bazaar and Istanbul University. However, the old city is also characterized by the squatter settlements or gecekondu (literally meaning “built overnight”), which surround it and make up 65% of all the buildings in the city (Yalcintan and Erbas 2003). After the declaration of the Turkish state, one of the first things Kemal Atatürk did was to establish Ankara as the capital of the nation.3 Istanbul had already begun to lose its glory before the status of capital passed to Ankara. According to Mango, by 1923 Istanbul had already become provincial and Atatürk’s administration did not alter this image. Only a few changes took place in this period, such as the rise of new blocks of apartment buildings, some monuments created by Kemal Atatürk and the building of his summer house on Florya Beach, close to the airport. By 1938, when Atatürk died, Istanbul had become an old city and the city’s population was getting around by trams built by foreign enterprises (ibid). Only a few private cars were in circulation in the narrow streets of the city and using the Unkapanı (or Atatürk) Bridge, a pontoon bridge which was completed by a French firm in 1939. As mentioned above, even though Turkey had managed to remain neutral during World War II,4 it was included in the list of nations entitled to receive financial aid under the Economic Assistance Act or, as it was better known, The Marshall Plan.5 During the 1950s Istanbul began to experience rapid pop3

For Atatürk, Ankara was to represent the New Turkey and he hand-picked the German town-planner Herman Jansen to design the new capital in 1928. His plan was to design a city that would accommodate millions of people, since all the administrative centers, a large number of educational infrastructure and governmental organizations were going to be based in Ankara (Mango 2004). 4 Mustafa Kemal’s successor, İsmet İnönü, decided to keep Turkey neutral in the event of war, unless the country’s vital interests were clearly at stake. Turkey signed a treaty of mutual assistance with Britain and France in 1939 and a non-aggression treaty with Nazi Germany in 1941. Even though pro-Nazi sentiment increased due to the successes of the Axis forces, Turkey did not permit the passage of Axis troops, ships, or aircraft through or over Turkey and its waters. Finally, in 1944 Turkey broke off diplomatic relations with Adolf Hitler’s government and, in February 1945, declared war on Germany, a necessary precondition for participation in the Conference on International Organization, held in San Francisco in April 1945, from which the United Nations (UN) emerged. Turkey thereby became one of the fifty-one original members of this global organization (http://history.sandiego.edu/gen/ww2Timeline/turkey.html). 5 The plan was presented by the US Secretary of State George C. Marshall in 1947 as a solu-

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ulation growth due to internal migration and its architectural landscape started changing drastically. Gecekondus began to mushroom and, by 1960, the city’s population had risen to 1,500,000, double the 1938 figure (740,000). In short, beginning in 1948, Istanbul developed in accordance with a foreign, Western, technocratic mentality imported through capital and expertise. In terms of transportation, choices for development favored large highways (rather than railways), designed to accommodate private vehicles, which connected to the Bosphorus crossings. The global character of Istanbul is characterized by efforts to attract foreign investment. In order to achieve this aim, cities prioritize developments which aid their efforts. The construction of business districts and roads which facilitate access to them are examples of this kind of development. In the case of Istanbul, the construction of the existing Bosphorus crossings (the Bosphorus Bridge and the Fatih Mehmet Sultan Bridge) can be seen as such examples. The business districts of Istanbul (i.e. Levent, Taksim) are situated on the European side of the city and the Bosphorus bridges along with the adjacent roads facilitate access to the workplace for those living in Asian Istanbul (which is mainly a residential area). However, such developments resulted in the displacement of many people and this eventually fueled conflicts such as the one on which this chapter focuses. Such processes, in the context of which struggles emerge to resist them, constitute identities. Therefore, in the pages that follow, I introduce Istanbul as a constitutive matter of identity shaping, in accordance with the claim that “subjects and objects can be mutually constitutive; identities are expressed and objectified in persons, but also in things such as flags or state paraphernalia, photographs or landscapes or clothes” (Bampilis 2013: 6). In the case of the ASG activists, these identities are objectified in the spatial context of Istanbul as the product of certain development policies. tion to the catastrophic consequences suffered by the Europeans as a result of World War II. It suggested that the US provide financial aid to alleviate hunger, poverty and desperation in Europe and revive a working economy in the world, so as to permit the emergence of political and social conditions in which free institutions could exist. In other words, the plan aimed to stabilize the international order in a manner favorable to the development of political democracy and free-market economies. Subsequently, the prevention of the spread of communism in Western Europe was also on the agenda. A result of that proposal was the Economic Assistance Act (EAA) signed by President Harry S. Truman who enacted the plan (April 3, 1948). Almost all European countries, except for those of the Soviet bloc, were part of the plan, including Turkey. The American Congress appropriated $13.3 billion for capital and materials to help rebuild Europe’s economy. Furthermore, the plan provided goods, created trading partnerships and extended the administration of American policy into areas outside the United States (http:// loc.gov.exhibits/marshall).

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The Birth of ASG Arnavutköy was formerly called Mega Revma (Greek for “strong current”)6 due to the presence of strong currents in the Bosphorus near the shore where the village is situated, resulting from the flow of water from the Black Sea to the Sea of Marmara. Arnavutköy used to be famous for its strawberry crops and its timber houses. The ones built by the sea, the yalıs, were used as summer houses but many were burned down in a big fire in 1887 (www.megarevma.net).7 Arnavutköy was also, and still is, famous for its churches. The Profitis Ilias and Taxiarchis churches were built when there was still a large Greek community there. There is also a mosque, built by Sultan Mahmut in 1832. It is a small, single minaret mosque attached to the police station and close to the oldest fountain in the area. A hammam, which was ruined in 1930 (www. megarevma.net), was part of the village’s social life. In the seventeenth century, the area was populated by Jewish people but, by the end of the eighteenth century almost the entire population of Arnavutköy was Greek-speaking. After that, a small population of Armenians came to the area. Just before World War I, there were 342 Armenians and 5,973 Greeks recorded as living in Arnavutköy (ibid). Many Greeks left the country between 1914 and 1924, but the big exodus from the area and from Istanbul came during the 1950s and 1960s. During that period many so-called Rum, Orthodox Christians, who were excluded from the exchanges agreed in the Lausanne Treaty,8 migrated from Turkey to Greece mainly due to the hostile climate prevailing between the two countries, with matters coming to a head on 6-7 September 1955 (Septemvriana) (Christides 2000). In the 1960s the Turkish government expelled many Greeks and, in 1974 – after the invasion of Northern Cyprus by Turkish troops – many more Greeks left (Keyder 6

The area was given its Greek name by the Rum Orthodox community which was very large until the middle of the 20th c (see below). 7 That coastline does not exist anymore due to the construction of an expressway (kazıklı yol) in the mid-1980s. 8 The Treaty of Lausanne was a treaty signed in July 24, 1923 in Lausanne between the Allies of World War I and the Grand National Assembly of Turkey, settling the Anatolian part of the partitioning of the Ottoman Empire. The treaty proclaimed the independence of the Republic of Turkey and the guaranteed protection of the ethnic Greek minority in Turkey as well as the mainly ethnically Turkish Muslim minority in Greece. The Treaty also provided for a large part of the Greek population of Turkey to be exchanged with the Turkish population of Greece. The Greeks of Istanbul, Imbros and Tenedos as well as the Muslim population of Western Thrace were all excluded from this exchange.

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1999). Nowadays, there are only a few dozen Greek speakers in Arnavutköy and 90% of the population is of Turkish origin.9 Arnavutköy is located on the European shore of the Bosphorus Strait between Kuruçeşme and Akıntıburnu and the larger area of Ortaköy where the first Bosphorus bridge was contructed and Rumeli Hisarı where the European pylon of the Fatih Sultan Mehmet bridge stands. It belongs to the Municipality of Beşiktaş and it is a separate muhtarlık (local administrative district), a few miles from Taksim Square, which is considered the heart of Istanbul. It is a hilly area, built like an amphitheater from the top of the hill to the edge of a fast road that separates the buildings from the sea and the Arnavutköy İskele (ferry station).

8.1. The Arnavutköy coastline and the İskele (photograph by the author).

The buildings are very close to one another and the very narrow streets often lead to dead-ends. Some of the streets are still stone-paved, a skill for which the Albanian residents of the area were famous. Arnavutköy is still 9

For more information, about people who experienced the events of 6th–7th September 1955 see Danışman and Üstün (2000a; 2000b; 2011).

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known for its Ottoman timber houses, some of which still exist today, contributing to the picturesque atmosphere of the area. However, in many cases the high cost of maintenance of such houses made it necessary to replace the timber parts with concrete or to completely demolish the house, and replace it with a modern construction. Arnavutköy is not a typical neighbourhood of a global city, as one might call Istanbul. There is a sense of closeness among the residents expressed in their everyday activities. It is impossible to leave the house without saying “hello” to at least one person on your way to the grocer’s (bakal), green-grocer’s (manav), butcher’s (kasap), shoe-repairer’s (ayakkabıcı), or fish shop (balık satıcısı). Many of the residents know each other, visit one another at home, meet for dinners or at the famous coffeehouses of the area. In short, there is a small-town feeling, which has been nurtured and strengthened, especially since ASG was formed (1998), due to its supporters’ efforts to raise awareness about the Third Bridge issue. In this sense, the bridge as an imagined object has played a major role in the consolidation of identities and the protests itself. Until 1997 the debate as to whether or not a third Bosphorus crossing (Boğaz Geçisi) was necessary was conducted only between the Ministry of Public Works and Settlements and certain bureaucrats such as a former Mayor of Istanbul (1984-1989), Bedrettin Dalan on the one side and the Chamber of Architects on the other.10 The former claimed that the crossing was necessary whereas the latter claimed that not only was it not necessary but it was also potentially harmful, being likely to cause traffic congestion. At the beginning of 1998, the Municipality of Istanbul (İstanbul Büyük Şehir Belediyesi) assigned the preparation of a traffic master plan for the city to Istanbul Technical University (İstanbul Teknik Üniversitesi - ITÜ). The master plan was delivered in December 1998 and, amongst other solutions for traffic congestion, suggested an underwater tube tunnel to improve public transportation. The construction of the Third Bridge formed no part of it whatsoever (ITÜ ve İstanbul Büyük Şehir Belediyesi: 1998). However, in November 1998, a month before the master plan had been completed, newspapers revealed that the Ministry of Public Works and Settlements was planning the construction of a third bridge which would connect the European and Asian sides of Bosphorus. The bridge would stand/be based in Arnavutköy (European side) and Kandilli (Asian side).11 10

For the majority of academics and people from Arnavutköy I interviewed, Dalan is synonymous with “the destruction of the beauties of old Istanbul”. 11 Even though they expressed their support for ASG, the residents of Kandilli did not organize

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ASG was formed in 1998 immediately after the construction of the Third Bridge had been announced.12 Ever since, weekly meetings have been taking place, press releases have been published, festivals have been held as well as dinners, tea-parties and educational panels on the effects that the bridge would have on life in the neighborhood. In addition, an oral history project on the area has been launched. All these activities are aimed at increasing awareness of the area’s important cultural and architectural history as well as of the destructive effects the construction of the bridge could have. The arguments supporting this claim revolve mainly around the environmental impact of the bridge. According to the ASG activists, a bridge is an ugly piece of concrete that has “destroyed” all the other areas in which one has been constructed (referring to the other two Bosphorus bridges), environmentally and culturally. Within the context of this discourse ASG involves concepts of global environmentalism such as sustainability and the preservation of natural and cultural heritage. It also incorporates issues of democratic participation and human rights. Following the definition given by Manuel Castells (1983) and Lowe (1986), I shall examine ASG as an urban protest, as its struggle is articulated using collective consumption demands and community culture. The ASG struggle is a realm where various identities meet and reinforce involvement with the campaign. These identities are embedded in the material aspect of the struggle, that is, the connection between the participants and their place. Thus, the present analysis revolves around the particular cultural character of ASG, conspicuous through the informal accounts that embrace issues stemming from the material identities that mark the claims and activities of the protesters. Place as Matter/Matter as Identity Tim Ingold (1993) suggests that the local perception of place is revealed through the experience of dwelling in a particular place. This relationship is better expressed by the concept of place as advanced by Tilley (1994: 34), a similar protest. In an interview the muhtar of Kandilli told me that the residents of Kandilli feel solidarity with the people of Arnavutköy but their small number does not permit a similar mobilization. 12 My fieldwork revealed that the majority of the residents of Arnavutköy are indeed against the bridge; in fact, no one told me that he/she supports the bridge – neither in formal interviews nor in discussions arising out of everyday interactions.

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a concept which “privileges difference and singularity”. The narrative of an ASG supporter gives a very good example of Tilley’s definition: I was born and raised here. I buy my bread here. My father had a shop in Arnavutköy. I breathe the air of Arnavutköy. It is a special place. Wherever I go, I always come back, Arnavutköy is me. In this sense, place draws on the social practice of dwelling, the concept of which is epitomized by Macnaghten and Urry (2001), who define dwelling in terms of participation. For them “human subjects are united with their environment and there is no distance between people and things” (ibid: 6). In other words, dwelling is a social practice which describes a unified world between people and things. Similarly, Feld and Basso (1996) argue that dwelling depends on situational and local contexts. My fieldwork has revealed that the residents of Arnavutköy oppose not so much the construction of the bridge but, rather, any detachment from their “place”. Many of them will have to move from their houses and those whose houses will not be torn down will have to adjust to the new reality that the construction of the bridge will impose. For example, Ortaköy, where the first bridge was built, faced the transformation of the seafront from a residential area into an area full of coffeehouses and restaurants. The area where the second bridge was built became an undesirable location for its residents, many of whom had to move due to noise and air pollution. However, none of my informants were willing to move from Arnavutköy or live in a different, changed Arnavutköy: You can’t stay out of this struggle. Your natural instinct pushes you to fight. It’s like somebody is killing you… This house has been the same for generations, and it will not change. My grandson will grow up here. Supporters of ASG, the residents of Arnavutköy, do not want to leave the place they have inhabited most or all of their lives. The words of a resident describe this view: Arnavutköy is my home. Now when we finish I am going to go back to Arnavutköy and I feel very happy there. I walk very happily in the streets, I run early in the morning along the coast, I go to my barber and we chat 173

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a lot and he says: “Why haven’t you come? It’s been a long time since I last saw you!”. That sort of thing, it’s my life. And like everybody else I would like to protect my life as best I can. That’s why I fight. I happen to be a school teacher. [but] I am Arnavutköylü first and then a school teacher. And it happens that the school I work in is not very far from Arnavutköy! But the important thing is that I would like to save the life and the world that I love. And it is in this framework that material culture approaches are quite relevant as they have given rise to topics such as materiality and cultural heritage (Rowlands 2002) as well as the politics of landscape (Bender 1995). Following these initiatives and paraphrasing (Bampilis 2013: 7) “Arnavutköy is not only a “place” but also the material basis on which Arnavutköylites imagine their lives, express and negotiate their own identity”. As such the place connects, in various ways, individuals who might look unconnected at first glance but who a closer ethnographic look reveals them to be very much connected. In other words identity, materiality and the notion of place constitute “webs of significance”. As one of my informants stated in one of our tea breaks, exemplifying Miller’s contention (2005:2) that “the centrality of materiality to the way we understand ourselves may equally well emerge from topics as diverse as love or science”: I feel very fortunate of being part of this group of people. If I hadn’t participated in ASG, I would never have met all these wonderful people I’ve met with whom I feel so close. I would never have found out how much I had in common with my neighbors. Some of them are like my soulmates. Furthermore, as Miller (2005:8) maintains, “we cannot know who we are or become what we are except by looking in a material mirror, which is the historical world created by those who lived before us”. In fact some of the most central arguments of the ASG activists are concerned with this aspect: If Arnavutköy is destroyed, which it will be if the bridge is built, hundreds of years of history will be destroyed. I am planning to leave Arnavutköy, but I am fighting against this bridge because this will always be my neighborhood. This area should stay as it is for future generations. 174


Arnavutköy must be preserved for our children. If you demolish the houses or the physical environment, they will not have the chance to create a connection (bağ) with the past. If someone could prove to me that the bridge can solve the traffic problems of Istanbul, then I would definitely support it. But all it is going to do in the long run is to destroy this beautiful place, which should remain as it is. Thus, “place” represents the particular to which are ascribed senses, practice, memory and desire, dwelling and movement” (Feld and Basso 1996: 8). In other words, “place” is embedded in what Rowlands (2006: 443) defines as material culture; that is “knowledge, either objectified or experienced, that can be defended and protected against abuse, exploitation and loss”. All these are very well described in the following comment from an ASG activist: It has a special smell. The whole Easter week, the whole Arnavutköy would smell of this special smell; retsini (resin) and bread. There were a lot of bakeries and there was a tradition. At least one of the bakeries used to bake bread for the poor and it was distributed free. They (the residents) are trying to recreate some of these traditions as well. Bring back the memories of these days when people used to give, on the holidays and each other’s special festivals. In this sense, place (Arnavutköy) assumes a material aspect through which the residents of the neighbourhood negotiate their identity, culture and their locality, providing a fine example for discussing issues of power relationships between people and the state, individual, collective and local identities. Nevertheless, as Butler (2006: 476) suggests, “alongside cultural and human rights discourse alternative experiences and conceptualizations of ‘personhood’ need to be brought into view, as do the diverse modes of representation that ‘being human’ takes”. Deniz Deniz is transsexual. She has been living in Arnavutköy all her life. Her house is one of the houses that would have to be demolished if the bridge were built. My first encounter with Deniz was at a meeting organized by the Bosphorus Arnavutköy Association (Boğaziçi Arnavutköylüler Derneği - BAD) which 175

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we both attended. Throughout my fieldwork, I did not notice any specific reactions to her, either in the ASG meetings or at the various social occasions she attended. When I interviewed her regarding the Third Bridge, she said: I was born and raised here. I am both Arnavutköylite and transsexual. If the Third Bridge comes here, my struggle will start all over again. If the Third Bridge doesn’t come, Arnavutköy for me will be my paradise. If the bridge comes, I will have to move and start struggling for my specialness. I definitely don’t want the Third Bridge here. Deniz implied that her attempts to establish herself as an equal member of the neighborhood and supporter of ASG had not been easy. Nevertheless, in her opinion she had managed to establish a modus vivendi between herself and the rest of the community, something which the construction of the bridge would destroy. Therefore, Deniz’s relation with Arnavutköy comes through a process of structuration (Giddens 1984), through her dwelling in Arnavutköy in which she has constructed and redefined herself and her role within that particular social setting (Yalouri 2000). Ayşe Ayşe is a middle-aged woman born and raised in one of Turkey’s big cities. She is a college graduate, married to a university professor, mother of two children. She could be described as a contemporary woman with a nice house, a satisfactory income and a circle of friends consisting of well educated, upper middle class individuals. During the coup of the 1980s Ayşe and her husband had to leave Turkey due to their political beliefs. One day she told me: After the 1980 coup d’état, the situation was such that my husband and I went to live abroad because we were leftists. There, we were fortunate enough to make some money. When things were better we decided to come back to Turkey and with the money we had earned we bought this house. Now, if the bridge is built, we shall have to leave again. Ayşe is one of the active supporters of ASG and for them the bridge issue has not been an isolated problem. They see the decision to construct the bridge as one link in a whole chain of political decisions which leads back to a par176


ticular development model chosen by the Turkish state. Another one of the activists said: The whole bridge issue started with the Marshall Plan that Menderes got. After that, roads were built and we [Turkey] started to become a “little America” (See also Keyder 1999). Similarly, ASG’s press agent said: We don’t just focus on the bridge. The bridge is just the cherry on a cake that started being baked a long time ago. The technocratic mentality of the Turkish state started in the late’40s when we accepted help from the Americans. It is when it all started… This kind of politics has been followed by all the governments. For example, Özal, who was prime-minister in the1980s, was known as the “king of bridges”. In this context, Arnavutköy is evolving as a “dynamic site, witnessing and producing socio-political action [...] not only reflecting but also influencing cultural activity” (Yalouri 2000:22). Conclusion The Marxist point of view favors an analysis of the city as a process (Moore 1996). Urban sociologists such as Walton (in Ho Kwok-Leung 2000) suggest that a city combines market, political authority and community. City life is the process of the interplay of economic forces, political control and community interactions (Ho Kwok-Leung 2000: 4). Similarly others suggest analyzing places as dynamic sites, witnessing and producing socio-political action (Yalouri 2000:22). In other words, Arnavutköy and Istanbul are “vehicles of agency”, which inform the ways in which ASG activists understand their identity, by engaging in a dialectic process of objectification, forming, transforming or reproducing each other. For Ayşe, leaving her house in Arnavutköy represents much more than an unpleasant move. It means that, once again, the Turkish state could force people to leave their lives, their cultures and, as another informant told me, referring to the political practices of the Turkish state, “That’s enough”! (yeter!). Her leftist identity is interwoven with the materiality of Arnavutköy as the place of her home and of her culture and creates a new identity, which in turn reproduces Arnavutköy as a place invested with the identities of the 177

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ASG activists. The ASG activists are “people who recognize and mobilize themselves around the pursuit and defence of cultural property [...] which is anything that can be designated as ‘cultural’ in origin” (Rowlands 2006:443). Similarly, for Deniz, her gender identity is interwoven with Arnavutköy as a cultural place; she is not just a transsexual individual, she is a transsexual Arnavutköylü. The preservation and restoration of Arnavutköy’s Ottoman architecture, the protection of its physical environment, the exposition of its historical and cultural heritage, such as “significant hills, large trees, deep valleys” (Rowlands and Tilley 2006:511) are of materiality, connected with the protection of people’s civil rights as well as respect for people’s opinions on their place of residence everywhere, not only in Arnavutköy. All these, emerge as agents between matter and identity and these agents stem from the history of Istanbul and Arnavutköy, which in turn means that in ASG’s struggle new identities emerge through objectification of place, rendering matter a constitutional element of identity.

Transliteration Turkish words and the names of Turkish authors are written using the Turkish alphabet. Listed below are those letters which are not found in the Latin alphabet and those which are common to the two alphabets but are pronounced differently. ı is pronounced rather like the –er combination in some English words ö is pronounced like the vowel in the English word “bird” but shorter ü is pronounced like the vowel -i but with rounded lip c is pronounced like the English -j ç is pronounced like the English –ch ğ this letter is called soft g (yumuşak g) and it serves to lengthen the vowel preceding it ş is pronounced like the English –sh (Rona, B. 1999)

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