Date

2006

Author

Türkmen, Hade

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Urban space is an arena of conficting interests. Seldomly dominated has the opportunity to express its identity on and through urban space as the exploited and oppressed groups lose their voice within the insitititonalised channels of representation. On the other hand, the localised voices do not have the chance to change the urban meaning and the power structure. In the 1970s, urban social movements were seen as an alternative form of interest representation which could challenge the dominant power relations and create a new urban meaning. Yet, such movements were largely failed to mount such a challenge to the dominant urban system partly due to their localised forms. In Turkey, 1970s witnessed to a radicalisation of political life including the urban areas. The mobilisations such as the New Municipalism and Squatter Movements supported by radical youth movements were the examples of emerging radicalism of that period. In the late 1970s, a relatively small Black Sea town, namely, Fatsa underwent a radical transformation when one of the radical left wing movement took control of the municipality in the byelections. After a long period of domination of mainstream parties upon the municipality, a self decleared revolutionary movement won the local elections with their independent candidate and came to power in Fatsa Municipality. If this was possible it was largely due to active involvement of the prestigous local actors in this process. In other words, a sucessful articulation of a national revolutionary group with influencial local actors created a unique situation by bringing them to power in this particular municipality. This change was followed by the rise of new and novel forms of municipal policies and of participatory mechanisms. In the identification of problems and their solutions the participation of local population is seen as the key element by the new administration. This thesis examines the rise and decline of Fatsa experience as one of the example of radicalisation of urban politics by linking the experience to the contextual features of local politics. It is claimed that to explain the Fatsa experience it is not enough to look at either to the (national) contextual features or the local specificities such as the status of those local actors etc. A satisfactory approach has to take both local specificities and national contextual features into account within a syntetic framework.

Subject Keywords

Urban Groups., Urban Sociology., The City.

URI

http://etd.lib.metu.edu.tr/upload/12608106/index.pdf
https://hdl.handle.net/11511/16598

Collections

Graduate School of Social Sciences, Thesis