Urban Poverty in Turkey

Development and Modernisation in Low-Income Communities

Burcu Sentürk

• Publisher: I.B. Tauris
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN:
  9781784536534
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9781786720566
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Business General
• Index: Social Sciences

Gecekondu settlements-or shanty towns-in large Turkish cities are mostly populated by low-income families, many of which have migrated from the villages of Central Anatolia. The rise of the Islamist party AKP in the 1990s and 2000s had a large impact on how these gecekondus are examined, and how they are perceived to reflect key issues at play in Turkish society: welfare, local identity, religious communities and the rise of civil society. Having lived in one of these neighbourhoods in Ankara, Burcu ?enturk's book sheds light on the experience of gecekondu dwelling in Turkey. By focusing on this aspect, she brings to the fore issues such as urbanisation, modernisation and development, as well as examining the impact these kinds of phenomena have on generation gaps and the role of women in Turkish society. By using the framework of the experience of three generations of gecekondu dwellers, ?enturk is able to chart the emergence, development and the gradual breakdown of social relations, and how the dynamics of these have changed during the course of the latter half of the twentieth century."

CHAPTER 1

A FEMALE RESEARCHER IN A GECEKONDU NEIGHBOURHOOD

Before starting the field research, I focused on the available literature on gecekondus in Turkey and slums and squatter settlements in other countries. Previous work on gecekondu areas in Turkey has mostly dealt with residents' political participation, criminality, urban regeneration, welfare policies, unemployment, level of education and poverty in these areas and the government's policies on gecekondus. Although these issues are closely linked to the emergence, development and integration of gecekondu communities, there is a clear gap as there has been very little research focusing on these issues throughout the lifespan of a gecekondu community. I thought that listening to the life stories of people in gecekondu districts, talking with them and seeing their living conditions and neighbourhoods might help me to get closer to my topic and reveal more about the dynamics of the lives of gecekondu dwellers. I thought that the notions of what to look for would come in part from what I learnt from the data (Ramazanoğlu and Holland 2002:160). Therefore, a fieldwork study was inevitably important to investigate the lifespan of a gecekondu community. Although the number of gecekondu neighbourhoods is larger in İstanbul, I chose Ankara since it was at the core of the new modern Turkish Republic's plan to impose a western lifestyle and it became the capital city in 1923. The appearance of gecekondu neighbourhoods, as early as the 1940s, conflicts with the modernist claims of the Turkish Republic. Existing studies about the gecekondu areas of Ankara are mostly about housing problems, legal procedures relating to gecekondus, social policies and the participation of residents in politics. Therefore, I suggest that exploring the gecekondu areas of Ankara through the narratives of gecekondu dwellers and the life story of a gecekondu neighbourhood might be a useful contribution. After a pilot study, I conducted pilot fieldwork in Ege neighbourhood, where the first settlers were contactable as well as the younger generation.

Initial Reflections on Fieldwork

For my main fieldwork, I went to Ege in August 2011 and visited Ali, muhtar of Ege, whom I already knew. I asked him to kindly help me find a gecekondu in Ege where I could live with my parents for several months. On the same day, he showed me a gecekondu just opposite the muhtar's office. The owner of this gecekondu, Mr Mahmut, had returned to his village for the summer. Ali called him and told him that ‘one of my nieces’ needed a gecekondu for some months. He also bargained about the price although I was ready to pay anything that was suggested. Finally, Mr Mahmut reduced the rent from 300 liras to 200 liras, which was less than one third of the rent for an average middle-class flat in Ankara at that time. Mr Mahmut's gecekondu, where he lived in the winter, and the empty gecekondu that I wanted to rent were next to each other. The gecekondu opposite these two also belonged to Mr Mahmut, his mother and nephew lived there. Since the empty gecekondu was very close to the others, he wanted to rent it to a trustworthy person to protect his and his relatives' safety. I was introduced as Ali's niece, which denoted Ali's trust in me rather than a blood relation, therefore Mr Mahmut did not hesitate too much in accepting me as his lodger. Ali and I visited them and Mahmut's nephew gave me the key without any contract, deposit or rent in advance. This was very different from the house renting process in middle-class areas where a deposit, a contract, one month's rent and sometimes a guarantor are a necessity. I needed a few days to organise some furniture so I told them that I would return and move in with my parents in a few days. Moreover, since I had not expected to find a gecekondu on my first visit after a year of my pilot work, I did not have enough money to pay the first month's rent in my pocket at that time. I offered to pay Onur online or to meet the next day to pay in cash. Both Onur and Ali, although Ali was neither the owner nor a relative of the owner of that gecekondu, rejected this and advised me to feel free in terms of paying the rent. In spite of their attitudes, I felt uneasy until I had paid it due to my middle-class habits. Thus, my first day in Ege enabled me to see the moral economy and the mutual trust that it created among gecekondu people.

Moving into Ege and Starting the Fieldwork

Gecekondu neighbourhoods were not areas that non-locals visited regularly. So, they were not very familiar with non-locals and easily recognised who was local and who was not. Since I was an educated, professional woman who lives alone and studies in the UK, I was an outsider to the gecekondu community from their point of view. I was quite careful with my clothes and appearance during my visits to the gecekondu areas. I wore modest clothes, which were mostly loose, long-sleeved shirts and baggy, dark-coloured trousers. I abstained from sustaining my stranger position and seeking the attention of the residents. I did not wear makeup. I did not wear accessories or fashionable clothes and high heels, which might seem ‘arrogant’. In fact, I did not dress too differently from my usual style. In daily life, I do not wear formal or fashionable clothes, high heels or makeup. So, I did not pretend to be a person that I was not; what I did was to try to eliminate the basic factors that might create more barriers between my respondents and myself and, as Letherby (2003:110) discusses, my aim was not to access the best data but to allow both myself and my respondents to feel comfortable.

Considering the patriarchal formation of this society and the high rates of violence against women, living alone in a gecekondu neighbourhood that I did not know well would create worries about my own security and these worries would be the biggest obstacles in making contact with local people. Besides, a woman who is a stranger living alone in a gecekondu neighbourhood to carry out research would be awkward for the local people and they might feel uncomfortable. Living with my parents both decreased my worries about security and normalised my existence in Ege. Since I was part of a family, we were invited for evening teas and breakfast by the other families and we could invite them to our home for similar reasons (see Figure 2). It was a big opportunity for me to develop my relations with the local people away from our interviews.

In fact, in the case of this study, it would have been possible to prepare a randomly selected sample of Ege people instead of using a snowball technique, since I could have easily obtained a list of Ege's inhabitants from the muhtar and prepared a randomly selected sample. However, this would have felt too formal for gecekondu people and I might have seemed like a state officer coming to check on them. Since this perception might be the biggest obstacle to reaching the local people, I chose informal ways of engaging with them. So, the best way to reach them seemed to be to go to the districts where they lived, approach the households and politely ask them – and also the muhtars – to introduce me to their relatives, friends and neighbours.

I explained my aim to my interviewees by saying that I was trying to understand the lifestyle of gecekondu dwellers and I would like to interview them about this. But I realised that although people were quite eager to participate in the interviews they got a bit anxious because they thought that their ‘intellectual capacity’ might not be enough for this. I answered all these hesitations by explaining that I was not going to test their knowledge and I would only try to understand their opinions, which were the most valuable thing for my study. I think their hesitation was due to my position as a person who comes from a university.

I asked their consent to participate in the research but I did not have a consent form since this would be seen as very formal and signing a consent form might induce a feeling that they were engaging in an activity that was organised by the state or a formal institution. All the interviews, except two, were recorded. Before we began, I did not directly ask for permission to record. Instead, I said, ‘Now, let's talk about your experiences and life story and let me start the recorder.’ I showed them the recorder and put it between me and the interviewee. It might sound strange but, based on my previous fieldwork experience, I knew that if I directly asked: ‘Would you mind if I record your voice?’ at the very beginning, the idea of ‘recording their voice’ would seem to them to be something very serious, they were likely to feel uncomfortable and the interview would be a very formal one.

For my fieldwork, I conducted 83 in-depth interviews with local people, some of which were in the form of informal conversations. I talked to most of the interviewees more than once since I met them regularly around the area. I conducted one prearranged focus group with seven local high school students in the classroom at the muhtar's office where they were given extra classes by volunteer left-wing activists and one spontaneous focus group with seven local women while they were both baking and chatting in a local woman's backyard. I conducted three in-depth interviews with socialist activists who were active in Ege and another one with the city planner on Mamak council. I also used participant observation techniques, I participated in a protest meeting with local people, accompanied them while they were visiting Mamak municipality and the district governorate (kaymakamlık), I joined in with local women while they prepared bread and tomato sauce for the winter and so on, I frequently visited local public places such as the muhtar's office, coffee house, local primary school and market. The data was not collected by conventional qualitative methods; what I did was to use the most appropriate way to reflect the richness and to fit into the flexible nature of gecekondu dwellers' lifestyle. Since I met the local people every day and we developed friendships, our relations were not limited to a researcher and researched relationship. Therefore, in our interviews there are moments when very personal exchanges of confidences take place. As a researcher, I respected all such information and did not reveal it. If this information was relevant to my research questions, I gave a general account and outline without mentioning any particular participant.

After each interview, I asked each of the interviewees whether they would like to conceal or reveal their names; the majority did not want to conceal their names. Especially for the men, revealing their names was a sort of pride and through letting me reveal their names they were trying to show that they were brave and proud of their life story. However, considering the fact that some of the men were engaged in illegal activities and were telling their stories frankly, using their real names might have put them in danger. Therefore, although they allowed me to use their names, I decided not to use their real names in order to protect them from any possible danger. To be consistent with the names, I used nicknames for all the interviewees except Sırrı Süreyya Önder, who is an MP, and Ali, who is the current muhtar of Ege. In addition to these considerations, there were some women who did not wish to conceal their names but who wanted to pick other names which they thought fit them better than their real names. I asked permission to take and use photos of people for this research. One of my participants generously shared her personal photo archive and allowed me to use the images.

Since I lived in the district with them, I discussed my work with my interviewees whenever I found an opportunity during my stay in Ege Mahallesi (neighbourhood). I asked all my interviewees whether they would like to read the transcript or a summary transcript of our interview. Some of the men took this question to mean that I was testing their trust in me and told me that ‘we trust that you will not change our words’. I mostly thanked them for their trust but also added that maybe we could talk more about the issues that we had discussed during the interview or that they might like to add more. Most of the people who wanted to read it preferred to read the summary since they thought the full transcript might take too long to read. When I gave the summary or the transcripts to the participants many of them, especially the women, asked me to read it slowly and loudly. Sometimes they asked me to pause and told me more about their life story. Some women cried when they saw that their life story was recorded and written down and they told me that they would keep that piece to read to their daughters or other family members. One day a local woman stopped me and said, ‘I heard that when we talked about our life, you wrote it down, would you please do the same with me?’ I feel that this lady's question, as well as the other women's attitudes about the written form of our interviews, showed that the women felt ‘important’ because their life story was recorded and written down.

Contacting Men

Contacting local men without an intermediary was not so easy. Unless my father was with me, inviting a male person to my gecekondu for an interview could have been misinterpreted. Yet, it is not unusual for feminist scholars researching in highly patriarchal societies to gain entry into privileged, male only areas through the connections of their male family members (Gupta 1979). My father, who is a very sociable person, made friends with local men, went shopping with them and visited the local coffee house and local market regularly. The coffee house was the main public place where many local men gathered daily. It was exclusive to men, so as a female researcher it was nearly impossible for me to gain access on my own. After gaining access through my father, I realised that my gender was an asset in the sense that I was harmless to the local men because I could not be a threat to the honour of local women. My outsider position and education could have aroused suspicion among the men in the local coffee shop where they usually gambled and smoked marijuana. However, since I was the daughter of an old retired teacher whom they knew, the local men accepted me there as an honorary man.

In Ege, all the men, even the older ones, called me Abla (older sister). In Turkish culture, especially in more traditional areas, it is not culturally welcomed for a man to call an unrelated woman only by her name. According to the age of a woman, men use words such as Anne (mother), Yenge (sister-in-law), Bacı (younger sister), Abla (older sister) and all these words denote a familial bond. In this way, men indirectly show that they do not consider the woman to whom they speak to be a sexual being. Being addressed as Burcu Abla indicated both distance and closeness between me and the local men. It was a sign of distance since the use of Abla does not refer to my age but to my hierarchical position. However, I was not called Hanım (Mrs/Miss/Ms), which is used among traditional communities for an unknown woman who is educated or middle class, in the way that they addressed female teachers at the local primary school as X Hanım. I lived there and all the men knew my father, therefore I was one step closer to them than other urbanite, middle-class, educated women. For me it would be culturally unacceptable to call men only by their name, except those who were obviously younger than me. My mother called the young men Oğlum (my son), but I was culturally too young to address someone as Oğlum except the kids. I had to address adult men either as Abi (older brother), Amca (uncle) or Bey (Mr), otherwise it would have been a sign of being too close and would have been misinterpreted. I did not choose to call any of them ‘Bey’ since this was too formal for the social setting of Ege. I addressed the men, except those who were obviously younger than me, as Abi (older brother) and I said Amca (uncle) to those who were around or older than my father's age, which was 60. In most of my interactions with men, the gender hierarchy overcame the hierarchy based on class and educational background. This was most obvious in the interviews conducted in the local coffee house where men gathered to gamble and to smoke joints. Group discussions in this coffee house usually turned into a verbal competition among the men. Frequently, the men started a hot debate on an irrelevant issue such as soccer matches or horse racing and it was nearly impossible for me to persuade them to return to our discussion because nobody was listening to me.

Inventing ‘Ms Useful’

Male researchers may have difficulties in accessing the world of women if ‘there is a strong division between the sexes’ (Hammersley and Atkinson 1995:93). I would not have gained any access to the local women if I had not been a woman since the local women spent most of their time either in their homes or at neighbours' houses. When I was introduced to them, either by the muhtars (the governor of a mahalle) or by their neighbours, they invited me to their houses. So I interviewed all the women either at their own or at their neighbours' houses.

Teenage girls called me Abla and I only used their names. I called older women, depending on their age, Abla or Teyze (aunt). However, most of the local women, even those who were much older than me, preferred to call me Burcu Hanım, meaning Mrs/Ms/Miss. While I aimed to minimise hierarchy, being Hanım clearly indicated a hierarchy between me and the Ege women since Hanım is used to superiors (Braun 1988:22). Sometimes I asked them not to call me Hanım. To older ladies I said: ‘Aunt, I am one of your daughters, please only say my name,’ and to the women around my age I said: ‘We are friends now, no need for Hanım.’ However, the women were not comfortable calling me Burcu and I thought this request might be another pressure placed on them and that this might deepen the hierarchy between us. Therefore, I stopped requesting them to call me just by my name. Rather, I tried to spend more time with them and gave them a hand in my visits and, in spite of their insistence I tried not to behave as a guest when I was in their homes. For example, when I was visiting, I helped them when they were serving tea, washing the dishes and so on. And, in due time, the women with whom I spent more time started to call me only Burcu, and for me this was a sign of the first step towards establishing more equal relations.

In due time, the local women discovered that I could be helpful and useful to them. For example, women who put much effort into their kids' education but did not have enough resources to provide them with additional help asked me to help their kids with their homework. Some weeks after I moved into Ege, I started to visit different households to help with children's homework. After every session, the women prepared a wide range of food to serve me. I was so embarrassed because the women worked hard to thank me with their food and there was no way to stop them. Moreover, if I requested them not to prepare anything for me, it might be understood that I was looking down on their food. So, I stopped asking them not to prepare food. Moreover, I could be useful in empowering them in terms of power relations within their family. Sometimes local women asked me to say things that they could not say to their husbands and sons. Since I was educated and not cahil (ignorant), which was how they put it, their husbands or teenage sons would listen to me. Actually, these women were challenging the men's authority ...

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Figures
• Preface
• Introduction
• 1. A Female Researcher in a Gecekondu Neighbourhood
• 2. Internal Migration and Gecekondu Communities in Turkey
• 3. Building a Gecekondu Neighbourhood, Community and Identity
• 4. Urban Reforms in Ege
• 5. Dissolving of the Community
• 6. A Society in Transition
• Conclusion
• Abbreviations
• Glossary
• Notes
• Bibliography