that he was a good and trustable guy but he should give up theft and whatever ... that he was a very lucky man and if he did the right things, he could earn.
BERKELEY JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY VOLUME 52 Pp. 50-72
A Story of a Squatter Neighborhood: From the place of the “dangerous classes” to the “place of danger” Deniz Yonucu1 Abstract The paper draws on an ethnographic study conducted in Zeytinburnu, one of the first and largest squatter (gecekondu) districts established in Istanbul in the late 1940s. The paper focuses on the emerging agency of the youth of Zeytinburnu as “druggies,” petty criminals and imitators of the middle class in relation to the neoliberal restructuring of Turkey. After briefly tracing the history of the squatters of Istanbul, I will argue that the squatters, who were formerly the object of a paternalistic civilizing discourse aimed at transforming them into disciplined labor, are now being progressively criminalized; revealing a model of civility and urbanity based less on an ideal of inclusion than on security and exclusion. By focusing upon the experiences of the youth of Zeytinburnu, I will outline the ways in which squatter youths’ lives are turned into “wasted lives” (cf. Bauman 2004) in relation to their desire to be in “privileged places,” and their investment in posing a threat to the urban middle classes. To put it differently, I will try to demonstrate how the very strength of the Zeytinburnu youth’s desire to be part of the “normal” society that is defined according to middle class norms contributes substantially to their exclusion and marginalization. PROLOGUE: tracing the stories of Sevgi and Murat Sevgi (20) and Murat (27) are siblings from Zeytinburnu. Their grandmother and grandfather migrated to Zeytinburnu from a village in the early 1950s. In the very first week of their arrival to Zeytinburnu, they built themselves a squatter house and began to work in a factory nearby. The grandmother was retired from the factory when she was 40, soon before the factory was moved to another city. The grandfather met with the socialists in the factory, became an active socialist and contributed to the organization of the Marxist-Leninist “Vatan Partisi” (The Land Party) in Zeytinburnu. Later, he had to spend years in prison because of his political activities. 1
I am deeply indebted to Biray Kolluoğlu, my MA advisor at Boğazici University. Without her support this research would not have been possible. I am grateful to Ayfer Bartu Candan, Alan Duben, Gayal Tekin, Meltem Ahıska, Melissa Bilal, Nazan Üstündağ, Nükhet Sirman and Zafer Yenal for their contributions in the initial stages of this project. I am thankful to my friend Brandy Doyle, for her contributions in editing this paper. Many thanks to my friends Bernardo Brown, Danielle Flam, Eylem Akçay, Gökhan Irfanoğlu and Nidhi Mahajan for their helpful comments on earlier drafts. I would also like to express gratitude to BJS editors Emine Fidan Elçioğlu and Maia Sieverding for their critical reading and insightful comments that substantially contributed to the development of this paper.
Sevgi and Murat are presently living with their mother in a rented apartment. Since they cannot always afford to pay the rent, they frequently change apartments. Their only official income is their father’s retirement pensions; he passed away in 1998. Murat started to work in a textile workshop in Zeytinburnu when he was 13. After working there for ten years without the safety of a formal contract or health insurance, he was fired without any compensation. Then he found a job as a security guard in a private high school with a very limited salary. Moreover, he had to pay 15% of his salary each month to the subcontractor firm that found the job for him. After he worked there for six months, because of his objection to the subcontractor firm’s cut from his wage, he was fired once again. He got very angry over the unjustness of this situation and he wanted revenge. He stole three computers from the high school. He was caught on the surveillance cameras, arrested and put in jail. After spending three months in jail, he returned to the neighborhood. However, this time, he did want to search for another job and started to commit theft with his friends at nights. He was also involved in drug dealing and began to use drugs. In 2004, he met a fortune teller. The fortune teller told him that he was a good and trustable guy but he should give up theft and whatever “illegal” things he used to do. The fortune teller also told him that he was a very lucky man and if he did the right things, he could earn lots of money, and could be richer than anyone else in Zeytinburnu. He believed what the fortune teller told him. The fortune teller offered him work. He thought this could allow for a fresh start in life and accepted to work with him. After working with him for six months in return for lunches and bus tickets, he realized that the fortune teller was not a reliable person. He turned back to his illegal underground life once again. And Sevgi… She was a very hard working student when she was going to high school. Now, she is enrolled in a public vocational school. While she spends a significant amount of time in the school canteen, she didn’t once attend class. She is enrolled in the school just because she thinks that it sounds cool to be a student. She does not have any plans for the future and she thinks that one should live for the day. For her, image is more important than everything else. She always wears new brand name clothes even if her family does not have enough money to afford such clothes. She also hates to be seen with her relatives and acquaintances who do not dress “fashionably enough”. As an “insider” researcher, I have known these siblings and their parents for more than 15 years. And, I have always been struck by the differences between the lives of my (their) grandparents’ generation and my (their) brother’s generation. I believe that their story is a part of Zeytinburnu’s story and this paper is an attempt to understand their stories as well as the other youth stories in Zeytinburnu which correspond to one another in crucial ways. “Nobody knows my youth from my beards gush out childhood odor, moonlight, since I hanged my jacket up on the rains,I read dangerous poems, I tease the world.”2 2
Lines from a song of Ahmet Kaya, a singer who is popular among the urban poor, leftists and Kurdish people. It was written on a wall in Zeytinburnu.
Introduction This paper draws on an ethnographic study conducted in Zeytinburnu, one of the first gecekondu (squatter) districts of Istanbul established in the late 1940s. As a residential area, it was constructed by the rural migrants who came to the city in search of jobs in the large industrial factories surrounding Zeytinburnu. At the beginning, it was a small shanty neighborhood with around 3000 gecekondu houses which were built by the rural migrants, themselves. Soon after first migrants’ settlement in the area, hundreds of new factories and small workshops were built in Zeytinburnu. And, it rapidly became a working class district with almost 30.000 gecekondu houses by the mid 1950s. Zeytinburnu’s makeshift gecekondu houses turned into four or five story buildings by the 1980s and these new available housing provided shelters for thousands of Kurds who were forced to leave their villages in the 1990s. Now, Zeytinburnu is one of the densely populated districts of Istanbul with official population reaching of 247, 669. 3 While Zeytinburnu had been famous for its factories, its organized labor force and its Marxist youth until the late 1980s, it is now famous for its shopping mall, Olivium, and its dangerous youth. At the brink of the twenty-first century, it is predominantly a residential district whose inhabitants consist of workers who are employed in the informal small-scale workshops, unemployed jobseekers and the permanently unemployed who have lost hope of finding jobs. More and more, some members of the latter group are moving towards the darker side of the “informal economy” as petty criminals and drug dealers. Accordingly, the paper will focus on the emerging agency of Zeytinburnu youth4 as “druggies,” petty criminals and imitators of the middle classes in relation to the neo-liberal restructuring of Turkey. I argue that under new neoliberal processes, gecekondu people, who have always been regarded as a marginal population, yet who were included as a cheap and exploitable labor force until the late 1980s, are, now, faced with a double exclusion. They are excluded from work and wage processes as well as from the “normal Turkey”, defined according to the norms of the urban middle class. Focusing on the experiences of Zeytinburnu youth, I will argue that Zeytinburnu youth who are stigmatized as members of the “Other Turkey”—a term first used by the media to refer to gecekondu neighborhoods in the 1990s, have a desire to be a part of the “normal Turkey.” Hence, they imitate the middle class by performing middle class norms (i.e. dressing similarly, frequenting the same places). However, they also carry a noteworthy anger against the system that excludes and marginalizes them and they engage in selfconsciously “vengeful practices” against the middle classes. In sum, I will discuss how neo-liberal policies both economically and culturally exclude the urban poor from “normal Turkey” as well as produce a desire in them to be a part of “normal” society. I will try to demonstrate how the 3
Information available at: http://www.zeytinburnu.bel.tr/bel_zeytinburnu/zeytinburnu/nufus_profil.cfm 4 Although there is a significant number of Kurds living in the district, since this relatively newly immigrated population’s experiences in the city is different than the ones who are born in Zeytinburnu, this paper does not include Kurdish youth’s experiences. Hence the paper focuses on the experiences of the first generation immigrants’ descendants.
very strength of Zeytinburnu youth’s desire to be a part of “normal” society, contributes substantially to their exclusion and marginalization. Thus this paper also outlines the ways in which the lives of gecekondu youth are turned into “wasted lives” (cf. Bauman 2004) in relation to their desire to be in “privileged places,” and their investment in posing a threat to the urban middle class. Neoliberalism, Consumerism and Criminalization of Poverty As is widely argued, the 1970s and 1980s witnessed a decline of welfare state policies due to the introduction of neoliberalization projects largely shaped by the Reagan and Thatcher administrations in the U.S. and U. K. (Bauman 1997, 1998; Bourdieu 1998; Parenti 1999; Comaroff and Comarroff 2000). Since the early 1980s, neo-liberal policies have become dominant both in advanced capitalist countries and in so-called developing countries due to the global influence of organizations like the IMF, OECD and World Bank. In this new process, consumption, rather than production, became the major basis for self-recognition (see Comaroff and Comaroff 2000; Bauman 1997, 1998). And, labor lost its power to create value and identity (Sennett 1998). As “the culture of neoliberalism […] re-visions persons not as producers from a particular community but as consumers in a planetary marketplace”, norms are reformed according to the demands of consumerism (Comaroff and Comaroff 2000: 304). One’s “ability” and willingness to participate in consumption relations emerges as one of the most important conditions of being a respectful citizen, and those who cannot be “successful” consumers are regarded as redundant, useless and disposable (Bauman 1997, 1998, 2004). Under the sway of neoliberalism, an important portion of the working class has turned into an “excess” population which also, “composes an ‘absolute surplus population’ that will probably never find work again” (Wacquant 2001:1642). Hence, there is no tolerance or hope for inclusion5 for those who cannot participate in consumer society as “successful” consumers. As Bauman (2004) puts it, The old Big Brother was preoccupied with inclusion-integration, getting people in line and keeping them there. The new Big Brother’s concern is exclusion-spotting the people who ‘do not fit’, banishing them and placing them ‘where they belong’ or better still never allowing them come to anywhere near in the first place. (132)
Those who are not allowed to come near, namely the marginalized poor populations are increasingly associated with crime. And, the state of poverty itself is seen as a sign of criminality (Bauman 1997).6 The places where urban poor populations live are labeled as “urban hellholes”, “no go areas”, “lawless zones” and the people who live in these areas are represented as the inherently dangerous people or as the “enemies within”( see Balibar 2004, Bauman 2005, Diken and Laustsen 2005, Silvertein and Tetrault 2005). Accordingly, in the following parts 5
Here I have to note that I am not arguing that inclusion is necessarily a good thing. For the criminalization of poor populations and association of crime with poverty in the USA see Parenti (1999), Wacquant (1999; 2002), in South Africa see Comaroff and Comaroff (2004; 2005), in France see Jordan (2004), in Brazil see Caldiera (2000) and Wacquant (2003), in the UK see Bauman (1997; 1998; 2004; 2005), in Canada see Haggerty (2001), in Turkey Yonucu (2006). 6
of this paper, focusing on the transformation of a working class neighborhood of Istanbul into a “dangerous” “no go era”, I will discuss how this transformation deeply affected the subjectivities of the youth inhabitants of a gecekondu neighborhood of Istanbul. Gecekondu: the place of the working class and/or the “not yet modernized” populations The gecekondu neighborhoods of Turkey were first constructed by rural migrants who came to the city in search of jobs in the 1940s. The gecekondu districts have always been regarded as the places of the “marginal” in Turkey. Gecekondu people have been seen as the “not yet modernized / not yet civilized” population of a modernizing country. From the very beginning, journalistic and scholarly representations have underlined the differences between gecekondu people and middle class urbanites.7 When we look at journalistic and scholarly representations of the gecekondus between the 1950s and 1970s, we can easily feel the influence of the global hegemony of developmentalist and modernist discourses.8 Social scientists, journalists and state elites of Turkey, who saw themselves as the already modernized fraction of the country, they felt it their responsibility to modernize the country and investigated the “gecekondu issue” from a modernist and/or developmentalist perspective. By internalizing this discourse, they saw society in binary terms— traditional/modern, rural/urban, advanced/backward—and situated the gecekondus within these binaries. In the rural/urban dichotomy, urban signified the “developed” or “modernized”, while rural was the “backward”. “Modern” urbanites and “backward” rural migrants occupied opposite poles in the gecekondu literature. Gecekondu people were regarded as a liminal people who had to be completely alienated from their former rural culture before they achieve full identification with urban culture (see Karpat 1976).9 Similar to how Western-centered developmentalist discourses proposing recipes for “Third World” countries to “modernize” and “develop, social scientists of Turkey were also proposing recipes in order for the gecekondu people to become “modern” urbanites10 (see Karpat 1976, Kiray 1998). Hence gecekondu
7
For a detailed outline of representations of the gecekondu people in journalistic and scholarly discourses between 1950s and 1990s see Tok (1999) and Erman (2001). 8 As is widely noted, during the post World War II period, as a result of the world-wide hegemony of developmentalist discourse, the world tended to be divided into two groups: those who are “modern” and “developed” and those who are “not yet developed and/or civilized” (see Lerner 1958; Black 1966; Eisenstadt 1966; Huntington 1968). Traditional and modern became the most important dichotomy, and while traditional was considered as backward and something that should be left behind, modern was considered as the final stage that all societies should evolve through (See Huntington 1971). It was assumed that colonialism was ending and that the “underdeveloped” world should aspire to the example of the “modern” capitalist world (See Rostow 1960). Hence, “modern became the standard against which other societies were judged” (Mc Micheal 1996:16). 9
In the period between the 1950s and 1980s there were a number of studies on the gecekondus and gecekondu culture, however there was no study on urban culture (Erman 2001:982). Thus, we cannot learn what sort of culture the rural migrants were expected to be assimilated into. As Öncü (1993) puts it, there were no definitions of the urbanite in general and the Istanbulite in particular (38). Hence, she argues that to be an Istanbulite was a myth and a series of privileges that were understood without telling. 10 Speaking Turkish with an Istanbulite accent, wearing western types of clothes (mini skirt, suit, tie etc.), “letting” women work outside the home, listening to classical or Western
people were not respected and accepted as such. The acceptance offered to them was conditional on their assimilation into the idealized “urban culture”. While the gecekondu people were from the very beginning regarded as culturally inferior and marginal, they were welcomed as workers because they provided a cheap means of meeting the labor deficit at the time. As such, while they were devalued socially and culturally as gecekondu people, they gained some respect as those who contributed to the industrialization process of the country. Moreover, the period between the 1950s and early 1980s were the years of the rise of the Left in Turkey, which shifted the status of gecekondu people in important ways. Gecekondu people occupied an important place in the working class movement and within socialist organizations.11 As workers, gecekondu people were privy to respectable positions, and they found the means of dealing with exclusionary discourses by adopting a “worker” identity.12 Hence, rather than imitating the urban middle class and taking on middle class norms, gecekondu people created their own culture and norms based on pride in a working class identity and the notion of modest consumption.13 From gecekondu to “varoş”: The place of the “dangerous”, “uncivilized” Other The landscape of Turkey changed drastically after the military coup of 1980 (Keyder 1987 and 2003; Zührer 1993; Kasaba 1997; İçduygu 2004). Economic liberalization and structural adjustment became the main projects of the governments during and after the 1980s.14 These policies aimed at a fundamental break with the national developmentalist strategy of the previous decades, paving the way for Turkey’s full integration into global capitalism (see Sayari 1992; Öniş 1992; Keyder and Öncü 1993). In this process Istanbul became a symbol of Turkey’s liberalization policies. “Marketing Istanbul”, ( cf. Keyder 1996) by making the city center into a hub of service and a consumption to attract tourists, businessmen, and weekend visitors, was a principal policy measure of the city’s governments during the early 1980s (Keyder and Öncü1993; Keyder 1996; Keyder 1999; Öktem 2005). Accordingly, industry left the urban core during the 1980s and the large-scale factories around the squatter districts moved to peripheral areas (Keyder and Öncü 1993; Erkip 2000; Keyder 2005). As the employment opportunities of the previous period decreased/disappeared, inequalities among the citizens of Istanbul sharpened after the 1980s (Erkip 2000; Keyder 2005). The gecekondu people, who were the central labor force of the developmentalist era, now constitute a “peripheral” labor force (cf. music etc. were regarded as some crucial requirements of modernization (see Erman 2001:985). 11 For a discussion of the gecekondu people’s engagement in the working class movement see Dubetsky (1976), Baydar (1999), and Aslan 2005). See also Kaya (2005) for a discussion on the strength of the socialist organizations in Zeytinburnu before the 1980s. 12 For a detailed discussion on Zeytinburnu workers and their investment in working class identity see Yonucu (2005). 13 Hoggart (1970), too, underlines the importance of modest consumption among the British working class and tells how they did not want to have more consumption goods, i.e more furniture, better clothes, etc. (67) 14 Turkey’s structural adjustment program was introduced in January 1980, in collaboration with the IMF and World Bank (Önis 1992: 74).
Şenyapılı 2004:24). Furthermore, during the 1990s, several hundred thousand Kurdish people migrated to Istanbul due to the forced displacement policies of the Turkish state.15 These populations were comprised of poor peasants who ended up as tenants in the older gecekondu neighborhoods (Şenyapılı 2004:67; Keyder 2005:130). In this process of restructuring, the squatter districts were renamed and redefined. This shift in naming and describing the squatter neighborhoods offers an example of the new means of marginalization that neoliberalism brings forth. The Turkish term used for squatter settlements was gecekondu, which can be translated to English as “settled at night”, or “perched on at night.” The term was coined by the gecekondu people themselves, and only thereafter was exported to the “center”. Gecekondu reflects the way in which gecekondu people at that time were naming, describing, and hence owning their own settlement experiences. By the 1990s, the term gecekondu began to be replaced by “varoş”. The term “varoş” is Hungarian in origin and it was first used to denote the neighborhoods outside the city walls (Erman 2001:996). Unlike the gecekondu discourse of the developmentalist era, the varoş discourse does not imply any hope for the inclusion of the excluded (Akçay 2005) and it has strong pejorative connotations (See Etöz 2000; Aksoy 2001; Erman 2001). According to the varoş discourse, common since the 1990s, the urban poor are both culturally and politically marginal people who are unable to modernize. As Erman (2001) puts it: The varoşlu16 are the economically deprived (the deprivation may be relative or absolute) and impoverished lower classes who tend to engage in criminal activities and radical political actions directed against the state. They are the political Islamists, the nationalist Kurds, the radical leftist Alevis who challenge the political authority of the state and disturb the social order of society. They are also the unemployed, the street gangs, the mafia, the tinerci (those addicted to the easily available chemical substance used to dilute paints) who are mostly street children and, in a nutshell, the underclass. (996)
In the past, assimilation of gecekondu people into urban norms was the ideal. Now, the varoş discourse highlights the boundaries between gecekondu people and the middle class. As such, the urban poor began to be seen as the absolute Other of the middle and upper class “urbanites”. Hence, it is not a coincidence that “Other Turkey” or “Other Istanbul” began to be used interchangeably with the concept of varoş by the 1990s (Akcay 2005). The term Other Turkey was first used by communication professor Nabi Avcı in 1993. He first used the term, in contrast to the imaginary “official Turkey”. For him, while the official imaginary, hence official representation, of Turkey is a modern/westernized one, Turkey’s more religious and eastern aspects are not included in this official imaginary (see Avcı 2001). In addition to the Avcı’s use of Other Turkey, by the mid 1990s, especially after the Gazi Ordeal of 199517 and the May Day demonstration of 199618 the term 15
There is no significant data about forced displacement, but as Çankaya (2003) says “a governor of the region declared that 2,785 small settlement places were totally or partially evacuated” (67). Istanbul is the city most affected by migration (see Çankaya 2003). While in 1980, the permanent resident population of Istanbul was 4,133,759, in 2000 this population was 10,018,735 (State Institute of Statistics 2003). 16 People who live in the “varoş”. 17 There had been clashes between the police and Alevi (Alevism is a sect of Islam and Alevi population is minority in Turkey) demonstrators in the Gazi neighborhood of Istanbul, where mostly low-income Alevi people live, in March 1995. In the evening of March 12, unknown gunmen riddled five coffee houses which the Alevis frequent, with bullets, killing one and wounding numerous people. The next day, young people of Gazi neighborhood
began to be used by the mainstream media to refer to the gecekondu populations, the urban poor. In a similar fashion, in 2000, a famous journalist, Serdar Turgut, brought up a discussion about Other Turkey, using the term in order to refer to poor populations and to underline the differences between these populations and the rest. The term is still occasionally used by some journalists when they are writing about gecekondu neighborhoods, Kurds, Islamists etc. The term does not only stigmatize the urban poor populations as the Other, but also it implies that there is a normal and/or real Turkey which, of course, neither includes the gecekondu populations nor the other “marginalized” populations such as Alevis, Kurds, Islamists, etc. Hence, the varoş discourse and its accompanying discourse of “Other Turkey” strengthen the boundaries between the “westernized” and/or “civilized” middle class and the marginalized urban poor populations by emphasizing the differences between the Other and the “normal”.19 For instance, a famous journalist, Yalçın Doğan, in his article on the Gazi Ordeal, in an astonished way tells that “varoş” is not and/or cannot be a part of Istanbul: Varoş is a different world. When I came here, I realized that this place is a different world. Is it Istanbul here? Is this the place that will be integrated into Europe? Is this place part of Istanbul? (Doğan 1995:78)
In a similar fashion, Baydar (1997), a well-known sociologist who celebrated the gecekondu neighborhoods of the 1960s as working class districts, in her article titled “Ötekine Yenik Düşen İstanbul” (Istanbul defeated by the Other), defines the “varoş” as: Varoş as the buzzword of the recent years…. has come to denote the residential areas that are established in the city or at its periphery but that are at the same time, with their rural identity, separated from the city by psychological, social and cultural boundaries. (13)
She further says: as we approach the year 2000, what is bewildering, scary and new is that the urban cultural identity is almost erased by the ‘Other’ Istanbul, and that for the first time, rather than coming up with a new synthesis, two alien structures, having completely closed the doors and sealed themselves off from one another, are trying to exist by destroying each other. (79, italics are mine)
took to the streets in protest, and they were soon reinforced by different groups that came to support the people of Gazi. That night the police shot one demonstrator. The rioting continued the following days and the police, who went completely out of control, shot into the crowds and killed another 15 persons. ( See Dural 1995:5). 18 In the May Day of 1996, there had been a tension between the members of radical Marxist groups and the police in Istanbul. The police killed three young men before the demonstration started. After this event, the clash between the police and the people spread to the whole demonstration area. In spite of the murder of three young men and the clashes between the police and the people, the young people who were “destroying” the tulips in the demonstration area became the major image of the May Day 1996 in the Turkish media (Akçay 2005: 9). The pictures of the young people from the gecekondu neighborhoods who are destroying the tulips were used as the pictures that symbolize the “Other Turkey”. 19 In addition to the concepts of “Other Turkey” and varoş, the 1990s have also witnessed the emergence of the concepts of “White Turks” and “Black Turks”. While the term “White Turks” is used to refer to the middle and upper class “Westernized” “urbanites”, the “Black Turks” were the ones who could not “modernized” and get “adjusted” to the modern and/or urban norms, namely the gecekondu populations, Kurds, etc. For a detailed discussion on the formation of the concepts of “White Turks” and “Black Turks” in the 1990s, see: Sumer 2003.
This emphasis on the impassible boundaries between varoş culture and so-called city culture points to the move from a more corporatist form of governance, which aimed at an homogenous social unity20 through the assimilation of “marginal” identities into a secular, modern, middle class Turkish identity, to a neoliberal type of governance that is more concerned with exclusion. This new process can be read as the end of a certain kind of social contract which assumes equality among citizens. Now, as a result of discourses that highlight the differences between the imaginary “real and/or normal” Turkey and the “Other Turkey”, the gecekondu people are being excluded from this social contract. Accordingly, in the following section, after briefly discussing my methodology, I will focus on the gecekondu youth’s experience of this exclusion. Methodology My research on Zeytinburnu does not have an exact schedule. Since I, myself, am from Zeytinburnu, in addition to the 27 “formal” interviews that I conducted during summer 2003 and winter 2004 for my MA thesis project at Boğaziçi University, the research draws on my own experiences as a person from Zeytinburnu and the experience of my relatives, friends and neighbors. Hence, the main arguments and research questions are formed according to my own experiences that intersect with the “stories” of others from Zeytinburnu. In order to gain a comparative perspective, and to see the neoliberal shift more clearly, I interviewed 8 elderly women,21 between the ages of 70 and 80, who were among the first migrants to Zeytinburnu. Among these women three worked in local factories and five were housewives. The interviews with these women focused on their settlement experiences, their encounters with the middle classes, their responses to the dominant degrading representations of the gecekondu people and their relation to working class identity. In addition to the older generation, I conducted in-depth interviews with 19 young people between the ages of 15 and 26. Among the young interviewees, 10 were male and nine were female. I also conducted two focus group interviews with the younger generation. All of the interviews were recorded and nobody hesitated to speak to a recorder, even while they were talking about their own “criminal activities”. In the interviews with the young generation, I tried to find out how the young people of Zeytinburnu experience being a member of a marginalized community and tried to elaborate on the ways in which they deal with their marginalized position. Accordingly, my questions focused on their encounters with the middle classes, their desires for a better life, their hopes for the future, their anger against the middle classes, and the motivation behind their criminal activities. Moreover, since my family still lives in Zeytinburnu, thanks to these personal relations I had the opportunity to talk to many people in depth and to observe their daily lives closely.
20
As has been argued, the goal of the Kemalist Republicans was to create a universal citizenship that is based on a social integration formulated by a Rousseauian General Will (see Baban 2004). 21 Unfortunately, I could not find any men alive who are among the first migrants to Zeytinburnu.
Zeytinburnu: From a working class district to a place of exclusion and danger As I have briefly mentioned in the introduction part, Zeytinburnu, as a residential area, was constructed by rural migrants who came to the city in search of jobs in the large industrial factories in the vicinity. When the rural migrants first arrived in Zeytinburnu it was empty land surrounded by textile and leather factories.22 Apart from the factories and a hospital nearby there were no other buildings. Due to the industrialization policies of the 1940s, Zeytinburnu was designed as one of the new industrial centers of Istanbul. And, the rural migrants who settled in Zeytinburnu became workers soon after their arrival in the city. Hence, Zeytinburnu shortly became one of the most important working class districts of Istanbul. According to the 1965 census, 80% of Zeytinburnu inhabitants were wageworkers. And, among these workers, 50 % were industrial workers (Akçay 1974:306). I argue that Zeytinburnu offers an example of the effects of neoliberal policy on Turkey. Since the mid 1980s, Zeytinburnu has no longer been place of production, as most of the factories in Zeytinburnu were either closed or moved elsewhere. The factories have been replaced by hundreds of small scale workshops that operate in the basements of apartment buildings. Generally, these workshops employ less than twenty workers and the majority of the workers lack social security and labor rights.23 As production is hidden in the basements, now, consumption spaces became more and more visible in Zeytinburnu. The opening of the glamorous shopping mall, Olivium, in 2000 on the place of an old yarn factory significantly marks the transformation of the area. In a short time Olivium became the meeting place in Zeytinburnu. Strolling and shopping in Olivium has become a new leisure time activity for the people of Zeytinburnu. It, also, brought vivacity to its surrounding area. Many new shops opened on the street of Olivium and some other streets were renovated and were designed as shopping streets. Now, some of the major Zeytinburnu streets resemble middle class shopping streets, though there are still less prestigious shops in Zeytinburnu. With the opening of the shopping mall, Olivium24, people from middle class districts began to pour into Zeytinburnu. For the first time in their lives, Zeytinburnu people encountered middle class urbanites in their own district. Zeytinburnu residents have always been aware of the symbolic and material distance between themselves and the middle class. As most of my interviewees argued, they have always been conscious about the “not yet modernized” representations of themselves. The shopping mall marks an important shift, since clothing styles have always 22
75% of the leather factories in the country were in Zeytinburnu (Akçay 1974:305). 23
Neither the municipality office nor the trade union of textile workers (Tekstil-İş) have any records on the Zeytinburnu workshops. I can only make this claim according to my observations, interviews and conversations with my acquaintances who work in the Zeytinburnu workshops and regularly search for jobs for years. 24 Olivium opened in April 2000. The construction of Olivium began in 1998 on the lot that became available after the demolition of the yarn factory in the early 1990s. The mall covers 66,000 square meters; there are more than 140 stores, 16 fast food restaurants and six cinema halls in it. According to the security guards who work at Olivium, the people who shop there are mostly from outside of Zeytinburnu. My observations and interviews, too, confirm this. Moreover, sometimes the guards do not let Zeytinburnu youth in due to “security” reasons.
been an important boundary marker between the gecekondu people and urban middle classes - or the modernized citizens of the modern republic. In the initial years of their settlement, Zeytinburnu people who encountered the middle and upper class urbanites experienced degradation as a result of their attire, which denoted their rural background.25 However, thanks to their investment in working class identity, the first and second-generation residents of Zeytinburnu did not seek to imitate the middle class urbanites through dress. Instead, they created their own style which connoted the class identity through which they gained respect. Today, dress is an important issue among the youth of Zeytinburnu. They not only imitate the attire of the “modern” and wealthy urbanites, but also look down upon the ones who cannot afford to dress like the middle class. For instance, a seventeen-year-old young woman says, If I have to go outside with unbranded [generic brand] clothes I always look at the ground while walking. Because, if people see me in these clothes they will ridicule me…To be honest, if I see someone in unbranded clothes I will look down upon her/him too. For example, I never go to Olivium with unbranded clothes; people should know what kind of clothes to wear in such places.26
And a 20 year-old man explains, with a great enthusiasm, how he began to look like the people from the middle class districts and “learned how to dress” after the opening of Olivium: Before Olivium opened, we used to go to Galleria and Carousel27 during the weekends. I used to dress a bit like, how do you say it…I used to put on cloth pants28 . I wasn’t like brand addicts, but now it is different… I looked at them [the middle class people in Galleria and Carousel] and I wondered how it would be if I dressed that way…You see the guy with Puma, and with a name brand nice sweater, you like it and you say ‘I should have the same’. I mean you see, you look at the guy, he is well dressed and then, slowly, you start dressing like that. But, if you don’t dress like them [middle classes], then you feel it from the ways in which people look at you. Once, I remember, a boy came…Back then my clothing wasn’t that good… The boy had name brands on, you know all these classy brands…As he was passing by he did something like that [raised his hand, made a gesture of pointing] I didn’t do anything. I was so ashamed, but I also felt like beating him. After all, I am so backwards compared to them [the middle class people in Galleria and Carousel], I feel like a stranger there. But now, I learned how to dress. Now, when I go to Olivium, they [middle classses] can’t figure out that I am from Zeytinburnu. Like I said, it wasn’t like this back then. But now I have learned how to dress up. Now they don’t understand whether I am from Zeytinburnu or Bakırköy29 .30
As a center of consumption and a symbol of consumerist values, Olivium produces the desire of Zeytinburnu youth to become like middle class urbanites. By performing and appropriating middle class norms, the youth experience the fantasy of being similar to them. Going to Olivium, shopping there and dressing like those who can afford to buy name brand and expensive clothes, makes the young people of Zeytinburnu feel closer 25
Growing up in Zeytinburnu, I often heard stories from my grandparents about the degradation they experienced as a result of their “not yet fully urban” style of dress. 26
Interview on April 16, 2004 with Derya (female, 17). Galleria and Caraousel are two shopping malls in a middle class district close to Zeytinburnu. 28 In Turkey, while jeans have Western connotations, wearing cloth pants is regarded as being “rural”, which implies being traditional and “backward” among the young people who do not have to wear suit to work. 29 Bakırköy is a middle class district close to Zeytinburnu. 30 Interview on May 25, 2004 with Osman (male, 20). 27
to the “normal Turkey” from which they have been excluded. However, they usually do not have enough money to buy expensive clothes, and some of them engage in petty crime in order to obtain them. A young woman explains the Zeytinburnu youth’s engagement in crime as follows: Thievery is very common in Zeytinburnu. The fact that people can’t afford to buy nice, name brand clothes is a crucial factor, though. When I talk to young people, they tell me: ‘we usually find a job with a salary of around 300 Liras.31 We have to give 200 Liras to our families. So, what shall we do with the remaining amount? Shall we buy cigarettes or clothes with that? A pair of jeans costs 50-60 Liras.’ Those who work from time to time, I mean us, we say among each other that we can’t afford it even when we are working…. Yet there are those guys who come to Olivium to do shopping. They can buy 5 or 6 pairs of jeans that cost around 100 Liras each. So, the young people of Zeytinburnu think like this: ‘I cannot afford even the one that costs 20 Liras. And, look at this guy; he gets jeans for 100 Liras!’ Then, he gets mad. He asks: ‘Some people, like me, work hard like a donkey, yet cannot even afford to buy a pair of jeans. But, some others spend their money so easily! How come these people spend their money so easily? Whose money is this? Whose system is this?’ Nobody knew about brands in Zeytinburnu before the opening of Olivium. You are young, and you envy these people, even if you do not want to. If she/he has it, if she/he can buy all these nice clothes, why can’t I? She/he thinks like that. You see your friends talking about who got what, for what price, which brand. I have a number of friends who steal just to put on name brands. Recently a friend came, showing me his coat; he says ‘you like it? I just stole it’. 32
So paradoxically, the very strength of Zeytinburnu youth’s desire to be part of the “normal Turkey” that is defined according to middle class norms, contributes to their exclusion and marginalization. In a similar fashion, Zeytinburnu youth’s recent engagement in drug use and trade must also be understood in relation to their desire to be part of the “normal Turkey”. Zeytinburnu has recently become one of the centers of drug trade, and the youth of Zeytinburnu, especially the young men, have begun to use illegal drugs. The most widespread drug is ecstasy, a stimulant-like pill that is associated with electronic music, clubs and dancing. Ecstasy culture also introduces specific styles of clothing. For instance, almost all of my young interviewees argued that, like Olivium, ecstasy culture also leads the youth of Zeytinburnu to desire name brand, expensive clothes. With the availability of ecstasy trade, the young men of Zeytinburnu have begun to frequent expensive clubs in the middle class districts, to dance and get high, just like the people who have money. When they “break loose” with the ecstasy high and lose themselves, they not only escape from their own “social condition,” but they also try to detach themselves from the history and geography of Zeytinburnu. For instance, a 22 year-old man, in a focus group interview, describes his experience with the drug: When you take an ecstasy you become someone else. It gives you a fake feeling of happiness. Whoever uses it, his eyes pop out, the brain pumps too much blood to every part of the body, and you think you are very fast, but that is not the case. Your hand moves here and there (he moves his hand slowly), you think you became matrix [ he refers to the movie Matrix], and shook the earth and the sky. It also gives you confidence. You can do things that you wouldn’t normally do. 33
And he continues:
31 32
33
1 Turkish Lira is around $1.20. Interview on May 1, 2004 with Aysun (female, 17). Interview on June 15, 2004 with Kerem (male, 22).
When someone uses ecstasy he considers himself in the category of ‘kopkopçu’.34 He thinks that he is one of these rich people, you know. They dance, they go to clubs... Now there are also videocassettes with images from clubs of Holland… These guys [referring to his friends who go to clubs], they dance in clubs and they envy those European people, they try to dress like them. Why do you think the number of those dying their hair blonde rose recently? They dye their hair because they envy the people that they see in the clubs. When they take ecstasy they feel as if they are one of these European people in that videocassettes. Or, they feel as if they are the same with those rich kids. There [at the club] these people [again referring to his friends who frequent clubs] lives in a dream-world.35
Although drug dealing could be considered as a means of upward mobility, in actuality we cannot talk of such a possibility for the drug dealers of Zeytinburnu. The drug dealers of Zeytinburnu spend their money in expensive clubs, which they frequent both as drug dealers and drug users. Yet there are no stories about people who became rich through drug dealing. On the contrary, drug dealers usually spend their money immediately at the clubs, as the main motivation behind their participation in drug dealing is to provide drugs for themselves. For instance, one of the drug dealers, who is 26 years old, explained to me how people began to sell ecstasy in Zeytinburnu: There are some rules in this business, if you’re a user, one day you have to be a dealer. When you begin to use drugs, you pay for one and take one. Then you begin to think ‘if I become a dealer, I’ll sell three and one will be mine’. So you say to yourself ‘if I become a dealer I can benefit from this business’. This way it spreads. Now, one of the every five users is a dealer here, to provide for his own need.36
Hence, it is not a coincidence that when the police raided the houses of the two chief drug dealers of Zeytinburnu in March 2005, their families could not even find the money to hire lawyers. Their friends told me that these young men were spending significant amounts of money each night at clubs. As Bauman (2004) argues, today’s youth, “take the waiting out of wanting.” In this consumption oriented society, “[w]aiting is something to be ashamed of because it may be noted and taken as evidence of indolence and low status, seen as a symptom of rejection and a signal to exclusion” (109). Zeytinburnu youth, as the ones stigmatized as the members of the “Other Turkey”, want to be transformed into the respected members of “normal Turkey” immediately, without any delays. Accordingly, Zeytinburnu youth’s engagement in ecstasy and club culture is related to their desire to be part of the “normal Turkey”, or “normal” society. We can consider their engagement in club culture, thanks to the money they are making through drug dealing, as an attempt to “destroy” the borders between themselves and the middle class youth who go to the clubs. In this way, at least for a limited amount of time, they are experiencing the fantasy of being a “normal” member of the society. For their brief participation in this life style, however, Zeytinburnu youth experience even further marginalization and exclusion by risking incarceration, health problems, and etc. In spite of the desire to cross the boundaries into “normal Turkey”, however, Zeytinburnu youth also carry a noteworthy anger against the system that excludes them. While they are, as “varoş” youth, being represented as “dangerous” people, they themselves invest in this subject position as well. Some of the petty criminals of Zeytinburnu told 34
The term “kopkopçu” describes people who are “breaking loose” under the influence of ecstasy. 35 Although, he speaks as an observer, he also dyed his hair and he also goes to the clubs. 36 Interview on 27 April, 2004 with Ali (male, 26).
me in a very proud manner that they really enjoy being a threat against the middle classes. They were very proud of their power to enter middle class homes, inflict damage and steal their stuff. For instance, a 25-yearold male, recounts in the following manner the “success” of the Zeytinburnu youth in petty crime: Zeytinburnu, Karagümrük, Gaziosmanpaşa, Kocamustafapaşa, these four districts are in the blacklist of the police. These are the places with the highest number of police. These are the places with the highest rates of murder. Nonetheless a Zeytinburnu youth would not create too much work for the police. I mean a Zeytinburnu youth is trustworthy. He is known everywhere. Pick pocketing, stealing cars, house burglary… Zeytinburnu youth frequent every district of Istanbul! Bakırköy, Ataköy37 … He sneaks through the windows… I mean, through any hole he finds available. People even go from here to Tekirdağ38 for thievery; you know, there are shuttles used for this purpose, to go stealing. 39
Another young male, with animated anger towards the middle class, compares Zeytinburnu youth with the young people who are living in the nearby middle class districts: Since we are a poor district, they [the middle class people] look down upon us. Yet we see them the same way. A Zeytinburnu boy can survive struggling with 50 monsters, a Bakırköy boy would drown in a glass of water. Nothing would scare a Zeytinburnu boy, yet a Bakırköy boy screams like ‘ohh mummy help!’ even when the power goes off. Sun or moon, it doesn’t make any difference for us. Take Ataköy, you can’t see anybody around when it is 8 or 9 p.m. Because, they are scared of going out when it gets dark. But, I can walk around in Ataköy even at 3 in the morning. Imagine a guy from Bakırköy; imagine that he is the most dangerous guy in the world. For me, he is nothing. He is from Bakırköy, and that’s it, he is isolated, excluded, brought up in a rich secluded district, and has that kind of mentality. Kasımpaşa, Kulaksız, Beyoğlu, Tarlabaşı, Dolapdere, Sarıgöl, Gaziosmanpaşa40 are the districts that are close to us. Surely they have to be smeared by illegality, because they have the same mentality.41
While both the first generation and the last generation of gecekondu people have been excluded from “normal Turkey”, and both of them have harbored anger against the system that excludes them, there has been a shift. The first and second generation squatters directed their anger against the system and class society, organizing in labor movements and investing in distinctly working class identities and culture. However, what we observe in this younger generation is that their anger and violence is not directed against the structures of class society but against middle class people. They do not aim to abolish class society but want to be respectable members of that society. Furthermore, they know that they can be respectable members of this capitalist society only if they become middle or upper class. However, Zeytinburnu youth are very well aware of the strength of the boundaries between themselves and the middle classes. They feel that no matter how hard they try, they cannot be a member of “normal” society. Hence, they do not invest in their futures. When they “take the waiting out of wanting” and try to be like the middle classes immediately, they also take aspirations out of their lives. As such, neither the young women nor the young men could tell me anything about their future plans. When I asked how they saw the future of the Zeytinburnu youth, almost all of them told me that half of them will be in prison and the other will be in buried in their graves because of drug addiction. So, while the young people of Zeytinburnu try hard to be 37
Bakırköy and Ataköy are middle class districts close to Zeytinburnu. Tekirdağ is a city nearby Istanbul. Interview on 27 May, 2004 with Berat (male, 25). 40 These neighborhoods are also stigmatized as varos and known as “dangerous” neighborhoods. 41 Interview on 23 June, 2004 with Ali (male,26). 38 39
seen as a middle class, they indeed do not carry any hope for “passing” into that desired “privileged space”. Hence, it is not a coincidence that as opposed to the revolutionary slogans of the 1960s and 1970s which aimed at changing the world, the most repeated slogan on the walls of Zeytinburnu buildings today is: “If it is my destiny I will endure it.” Ironically, the youth endure the hopelessness of their futures by refusing to endure the reality of the present, seeking at all cost to control their own images. Conclusion What is happening, today, in this old working class district and “new dangerous place” of Istanbul is not independent of the recent transformation of capitalism. Throughout this paper, I argued that the gecekondu people, who were formerly the object of a paternalistic civilizing discourse aimed at transforming them into disciplined labor, are now being progressively criminalized; revealing a model of civility and urbanity based less on an ideal of inclusion than on security and exclusion. However, as I have tried to point out, exclusion goes hand in hand with the production of a desire within the society to be in the privileged places, or to be included. While Zeytinburnu youth, as the ones who “do not fit” into a society of consumption, are constantly being excluded from “normal society”, the consumer society also produces a desire in them to be a respectful member of that society. Hence, Zeytinburnu youth, who are never allowed to come “anywhere near” (cf. Bauman 2004), are, indeed, always around the middle class. They are the “specters” of the middle classes that haunt them secretly. They are in the middle class districts at nights, threatening middle class people. They sneak into middle class houses and steal their stuff. Their hands secretly reach into the pockets of the middle class and take their money. However, due to their exclusion from the wage and work process, Zeytinburnu youth now can only “haunt” the “normal” people and places but cannot find a way to deal with their own marginalization. The subject position that contemporary capitalist society opens up for Zeytinburnu youth as consumers does not have the capacity to incorporate the history of Zeytinburnu as a working class district with its older meanings. Their personal and familial stories as well as their current experiences of exclusion are redefined as obstacles one has to escape in the game of consumerism. When Zeytinburnu youth try to fill this consumer subject position with the social and material condition inscribed on their bodies and when they try to bring their life experiences into the new subjectivity that consumerism promises, their experiences become “excesses” of the dominant representations of the consumer society (cf. de Lauretis: 1987). A significant lack emerges in their performance of middle class norms that translates into violence in their lives, and their social and material conditions as well as the history of Zeytinburnu are turned into a worthless excess, disrupting the subject position promised. Hence, the impossibility of fulfilling this subject position “properly” turns their lives into “wasted lives” (cf. Bauman 2004). It is not a coincidence that after I told them that I am doing a research about Zeytinburnu youth almost all of the people that I have talked to said: “On Zeytinburnu youth? There is no youth of Zeytinburnu; the youth of Zeytinburnu is finished.”
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