Go Smart, Go Entrepreneurial: Municipal Responses to Simultaneous Urban Crises in Turkey

There are dozens of mid-size, or “secondary,” cities spread in all over Turkey. These cities are in constant competition with each other as well as the three largest metropolitan areas of the country—Istanbul, Ankara, and Izmir. This inter-urban competition takes place in many fields for cultivating and maintaining various forms of urban capital. In addition to this competitive framework of neoliberal urbanism that underlines public-private partnerships and profit-maximizing spatial re-orientation, the increasing levels of awareness and public opinion regarding climate change, ecological limits as well as the frequent natural disasters put additional pressure to the local administrations for making their cities more “sustainable,” “green,” and “resilient.” However, this somewhat linear and ubiquitous story of inter-urban competition, socio-spatial transformation, and recurring attempts for local growth gets complicated by a number of extra-urban factors. Turkey has long been in an economic turmoil and the socioeconomic outcomes of the stagnation. Extreme political polarization between the Islamist-neoliberal AKP (Justice and Development Party) governments that have been in power for the last quarter century, and the social democratic-liberal CHP (Republican People’s Party), which has been the main opposition party while holding many important municipalities including the five biggest cities, also affects the relations with the state institutions and public funds, and hence differentiates the city’s relative positioning vis-à-vis the others. Turkey has also received millions of immigrants in the last decades. These immigrants are distributed across cities unevenly and each city’s own conditions and ability to absorb, integrate, or regularize them differ. Hence, troubling economic circumstances, the country’s internal political dynamics, and the uncontrollable migratory flows have further complicated the urban scene in the last decade. In response to these divergent influences and demands, some local government authorities and municipalities in different cities have developed certain strategies, including innovative digitalization and smart urbanization actions, attempts for incorporating youth and immigrant minorities’ political voices to become more inclusive, and fostering entrepreneurial spirit among residents to encourage a more economically active urban context. Using data from two empirical research projects on the politics of new, manifold aspects of contemporary urbanization in Turkey, this paper explores three cases in which urban political actors, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and experts imagined, discussed, and implemented one or more of these strategies. It also examines how these strategies were received by local publics and the resulting outcomes. The paper underscores the capacity of municipalities and local agencies to reticulate and manage the increasingly pressing economic, social, and spatial changes.