Send message to Author

Paper short abstract:

This paper explores long-lasting uncertainties of urban policies leading to political tensions among policymakers, ruination, abandonment, and depopulation of a landscape, and various forms of dispossession of its residents – both older residents and migrant newcomers – in Eskisehir, Turkey.

Paper long abstract:

This paper explores long-lasting uncertainties of urban policies which have led to multiple forms of abandonment and dispossession in an urban zone and its residents – both older residents and migrant newcomers – in Eskisehir, Turkey. Karapınar zone in Eskişehir has been subject to urban renewal initiatives of municipal governments since 2011 which have been repeatedly disrupted due to political and financial conflicts among various stakeholders of the renewal projects leading to an uneven restructuring of urban space and abandonment of massive landscape, buildings, as well as its residents. The ongoing process of abandonment and the future uncertainties resulted in the depopulation of the zone that cause not only spatial ruination but also social decay.

On the other hand, designated to be one of the satellite cities in Turkey, Eskişehir has been a city where refugees under International Protection, mainly from Afghanistan, have been emplaced. During the process of abandonment and depopulation, therefore, Karapınar has become a place where refugees have settled. The paper ethnographically investigates the process of uncertainties in this abandoned urban zone which has been entangled with multiple forms of socioeconomic and political displacement of both older residents and newcomers, as well as affective discourses, conflicts, and also emerging sociabilities among them.