The Imaginations of Streets in the Istanbul 2010 European Capital of Culture (Ecoc) Event: Inclusion and Cultural Diversity in the Production of Urban Space
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The Imaginations of Streets in the Istanbul 2010 European Capital of Culture (ECoC) Event: Inclusion and Cultural Diversity in the Production of Urban Space Inauguraldissertation zur Erlangung des Doktorgrades der Philosophie an der Ludwig‐Maximilians‐Universität München vorgelegt von Vildan Seçkiner aus Ankara 2019 Erstgutachter: Prof. Dr. Johannes Moser Zweitgutachter: Prof. Dr. Moritz Ege Datum der mündlichen Prüfung: 25 Januar 2016 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Writing this dissertation have been a very though process in many ways, yet it also transformed me painfully and luckily, I wasn`t lonely. I want to thank first the de facto supervisor of this dissertation, Dr. Derya Özkan for the strong support and meticulous labour and time they put on my work. I also want to thank Prof. Dr. Johannes Moser for supporting me and providing the best conditions for me to complete my dissertation. I also want to thank Begüm Özden Fırat for calling me one day randomly to inform me about this doctoral position and for keeping their support throughout this process. my parents Ayşe Karakaya and Çetin Se çkiner for accompanying me in this personal transformation, caring about this transformation more than my carrier or title and especially to my mom Ayşe for surprizing with her power and courage for transforming herself together with me and opening her mind to totally new ideas, and speaking out against the nation-state hegemony in casual situation in public without any fears Lisa Meinecke for proofreading the entire text, and encouraging me together with Angelika Buchenberger to keep writing Fuat Karagüney for helping me with the illustrations on the maps Gülden Arsal for running from work to Tarlabaşı one evening just to bring me a good camera for taking pictures for my research when I wasn`t prepared well, and my former colleagues in Istanbul for supporting me all the way long. Gökay Yildiz, for taking all my criticism very serious although I have been very harsh on the event that they organized, and keeping an interest for understanding gentrification process together with me My dear friends Pelin Özay and Sibel Hökelek who made their homes mone, and have been my family in Istanbul during the research I want to thank my dear friends Olga Reznikova and Dominik Lehmann, who read my text several times, didn`t escape from long discussion on my ideas and dealt with my stress and bad times since the beginning of this research. Last, but not least, I want to thank all my interviewees, and other individuals that contributed to this dissertation in many ways. Table of Contents 1 Introduction ............................................................................................................. 1 2 Imaginations of Istanbul as a European Capital of Culture ............................. 18 2.1 Identification of Cultural Diversity through the European Capital of Culture Event ....................................................................................................................... ... 18 2.2 Intro duction and Production of Istanbul as a Capital of Culture ..................... 30 2.2.1 Publicity and Introduction to Istanbul 2010 ECoC ................................... 46 2.2.1.1 The Opening Event of Istanbul 2010 ECoC ...................................... 48 2.2.1.2 Publicity Posters and Films ............................................................... 50 2.2.2 Participation in the Event through the Volunteers Project ....................... 65 2.2.3 Social Inclusion in Neighborhoods through Festivals .............................. 73 3 Officialization of Street Arts in Istanbul: From Canvas to the Walls of the Urban Transformation Area in Tarlabaşı .................................................................. 78 3.1 Officialization of the Street Arts ...................................................................... 79 3.2 Becoming Tarlabaşı: Urban Transformation and Displacement ...................... 83 3.3 Knowing Tarlabaşı: Discourse of Urban Transformation in Tarlabaşı ............ 88 3.4 Resistance in Tarlabaşı ................................................................................... 10 3 3.5 Celebrating Destruction ................................................................................. 10 8 4 Ahırkapı Hıdrellez Festival: Assigning Culture through Festivalizing Otherness ..................................................................................................................... 126 4.1 Institutionalization of Ethnic Identit y under Nationalist Discourse ............... 130 4.2 Imagining the Roma, Festivalizing Hıdrellez ................................................ 150 4.2.1 Festivalizing Hıdrellez ............................................................................ 15 3 4.2.2 Performing ‘the Roma’ ........................................................................... 166 4.3 Expansion of the Festival in Everyday Life: Gentrification in Ahırkapı ....... 17 5 5 Imagining the Streets through Resistance in the Aftermath of the Istanbul 2010 ECoC Event ........................................................................................................ 189 5.1 Producing Spaces of Resistance and Struggle in Istanbul ............................. 19 3 5.2 Street as an Urban Common ...................................................................... 210 6 Conclusion ............................................................................................................ 217 7 Bibliography ......................................................................................................... 221 1 Introduction This dissertation is part of the ‘From Oriental to the Cool City. Changing Imaginations of Istanbul, Cultural Production and the Production of Urban Space’ Project funded by Emmy Noether of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft. It was hosted by the Depart- ment of European Ethnology at LMU. Principal investigator of the project Derya Özkan (2008) focuses on the imagination of ‘cool Istanbul’ as the latest imagination of the city that followed the former imaginations which our project analyzed in three periods: the imagination in the 19th century as an Oriental city; imaginations of Istanbul as a ‘Third World city’ and ‘crude urbanization’ in national developmentalist discourse; and the ‘global city’ discourse in post-Fordist globalization. As part of the project, my task was to investigate the Istanbul 2010 European Capital of Culture Event (Istanbul 2010 ECoC) in terms of the imaginations of Istanbul that are produced, introduced and/or reinforced through this event. Meanwhile, I moved to Mu- nich, a city to which I had never been before, from Istanbul, a city where I had lived almost for 3 years having worked at the Ministry of Culture, at the Second Preservation Board of Cultural and Natural Heritage of Istanbul as assistant specialist of culture and tourism. Before I left my job in Istanbul for coming to Munich, I was preparing a thesis to become a specialist in the ministry. In this thesis, I was expected to focus on space in terms of the physical and legal aspects of prevention of cultural assets. I wanted to ana- lyze Tarlabaşı area, in which many inhabitants were displaced through a pilot urban transformation project. My purpose was finding out the ways and arguments that would call the rights of inhabitants that are renters or squatters in terms of their involvement with the maintenance of the buildings. Although I had this humble, yet naïve approach, I had a hard time to find a supervisor in the ministry due to my reference to the contested politics of urban transformation. Therefore, I initially perceived this 1 dissertation as an opportunity to analyze the process of urban gentrification in a broader sense. However, the imaginations that produced and supported the post-Fordist urban trans- formation policies in Turkey were more complex than a mere physical transformation of the city and the legal terms of property. As soon as I started to work on the Istanbul 2010 ECoC event program, I realized that the transformation of the city was connected to an agenda for promoting the city as a ‘global city’ or a ‘cool city’ which includes the global city discourse too. Sasskia Sassen introduced the concept of the global city in terms of the flow of information and capital after the market-oriented role of the nation- state in the post-Fordist era “as a result of privatization, deregulation, the opening up of national economies to foreign firms, and the growing participation of national economic actors in global markets” (2005, p.27). The global city discourse was already on the urban agenda in Istanbul since the aftermath of the Military Coup in 1980. The period after the coup was a turning point in terms of a shift to post-Fordist policies. According- ly, Istanbul began to be imagined as a global city that would be a financial hub within the order of cities in the global economy. Together with the discovery of the concept of ‘cool’ as a marketing tool (see Frank, 1997; Pountain and Robins, 2000; McGuigan, 2009), cities that compete in the global city market started to be branded as ‘the cool city’ to attract visitors and investment. In the “From Oriental to the Cool City. Changing Imaginations of Istanbul” project, Derya Özkan refers to article in Newsweek Magazine on 29 th September 2005 as the initial demonstration of the ‘Cool Istanbul’ imagination (Newsweek, 29 September 2005). The cover of the magazine read: “Cool Istanbul: Europe’s hippest city might not