Gecekondu

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Gecekondu settlement in Ankara

Gecekondu (plural: Gecekondular ) is the Turkish name for an informal settlement , i.e. an unplanned area with primitive accommodation on the edge of a big city , but not for a slum . Translated it means something like "put down at night" (Turkish gece : night).

history

The term was first mentioned in the Turkish Dil Kurumu dictionary from 1945. It is often said that the construction of the Gecekondular arises from the old (Ottoman-Islamic) customary law , according to which a house that has been built "overnight" on public land may no longer be demolished.

However, this is questionable or is called modern saga . Recent Turkish research denies that there is such a common law. In 1947 a demolition law was passed for the Gecekondular in Zeytinburnu / Istanbul. The Turkish writer Orhan Pamuk deals with this problem in his novel This Strangeness in Me .

In order to actually be able to build a house in one night, many people usually work together. As soon as the initially provisional building is in place, it will usually be gradually expanded. So the building is actually not built in one night, but suddenly it is there quickly.

Although the Gecekondular are not officially legal and therefore illegal, the establishment of these settlements is often condoned by the government, probably due to economic growth. The Gecekondu Act of 1966 first allowed these settlements to be legalized. The Gecekondular are among other things a reason why there has been an enormous population growth , especially in the regions around Ankara , Istanbul and Izmir in the last decades .

In the past, evictions have repeatedly resulted in rioting by residents. On Turkish private television, violent clashes between the police and residents of entire Gecekondu districts were shown. Because the authorities intended to have houses and settlements causing infrastructural problems evacuated and demolished without prior notice, the police arrived with water cannons and tear gas. This sometimes led to confrontations that lasted for days, which were often bloody.

With the mostly large-scale police operations, however, the Gecekondu's problem could not be brought under control.

In the course of a more peaceful modernization, the Ankara city administration has now reached a compromise to turn the former occupiers into owners. Many of the families living there received an entry in the land register, which strengthened the social position of the people living there.

In many cases Gecekondular were connected to the public supply over time. In recent years, for example in Ankara, new residential areas have often been built on the site of the former Gecekondular. This often happens according to the so-called Yapsat principle (Turkish yap: construction; sat: sale), in which building contractors negotiate a contract with the mostly poor property owners to build a new building (mostly multi - storey earthquake - proof apartment buildings), but the owners in return left some of the apartments. For many former Gecekondu residents, this enables social advancement into the middle class.

Romanticization

In Ankara and in other major Turkish cities, a romanticization of the traditional Gecekondu district can be observed. For example, the ultra-movement around the soccer club MKE Ankaragücü calls itself Gecekondu today and reports with pride in its battle cries and slogans about the supposedly hard life in the slums.

See also

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ So z. B. in "Turkey - Scientific Regional Geography", Darmstadt, 2002, p. 310
  2. ↑ Türkiye Araştırmaları Literatur Dergisi, Cilt 3, Sayı 6, 2005; Türk Şehir Tarihi
  3. ↑ Nephan Saran in İstanbul'da Gecekondu Problemi (Türkiye coğrafi ve Sosyal Araştırmalar, Istanbul, 1971)
  4. ↑ Orhan Pamuk: This strangeness in me. The Hörverlag, Munich 2016, ISBN 978-3-8445-2109-2 .

literature

  • Helene Gartmann: On the situation of women in the Gecekondu: A study of the living conditions of women in an outskirts of Ankara that was created by immigration from the interior of the country. Schwarz Verlag, Berlin 1981, ISBN 3-922968-07-4 ( digitized version ).

Web links

Commons : Gecekondu  - collection of images, videos and audio files