"Pressure on the neighbourhood" in Tophane

They want to bring the events in Tophane within the scope of the injury time of the referendum struggle. From there they hope to blur the indisputably clear message given by the referendum and to render futile the clear message of democratization that emerges from it. The very first reactions given the minute the incident hit the television screens plainly tried to make people say "this was bound to happen." An attack reported with "because alcohol is being drunk" as its justification... Who announced the "official justification" of the attack in the very heat of the incident, and how did reporters relay this justification to the televisions at that speed? It is quite clear that a stock reflex awaiting extra time kicked in quickly.

Yet the referendum is over. From this hour on, there is no longer any possibility of a strike that could change the result out of eagerness for extra time. The people of Turkey, having voted on the constitutional amendment package, with a 58 percent majority gave their decision and instruction that Turkey's course will irreversibly be democratization and the principle of the rule of law.

Let us set this aside.

On the other hand, the process that took place in Tophane must be understood in its historical context, beyond today's narrow time context. The incident is too complex to be reduced simply to a quarrel over alcohol. Tophane is in fact under the influence of a very typical wave in the urban development that Istanbul has experienced over the last sixty years. The wave of migration after the fifties changed the demographic fabric of the area considerably. The district, which had earlier become a "crime zone" peculiar to historic city centers with its "dark streets," was, through the settlement strategies of these newly arrived waves of migrants and through patient work, cleansed of this criminal environment and became a complete family neighborhood. At the end of this process, which hardly fits classic models of urban development, Tophane moved away from an environment that in the seventies and eighties produced only drug addicts and thugs, and substituted a family environment that prepares its young people for school and a better-quality future. A warm neighborhood environment in which, owing to the intensely socialized nature of the migrant population and the district, social norms and control, but also solidarity and concern for others, made themselves felt to a relative degree...

We can say that this neighborhood is now exposed to another wave of urbanization, one also related to a global trend. When Eyüp Güzel, the successful journalist of the district and editor of the site Tophanehaber.com, says while explaining his views on the latest events, "In Tophane there is no pressure by the neighborhood; on the contrary, there is pressure on the neighborhood," he is most probably speaking while feeling this historical trend to the marrow.

This pressure that Tophane feels is a reaction displayed against a process that increasingly transforms and alters its own living space. The apartment units and unlicensed entertainment venues sprouting like mushrooms in the very narrow streets of the district, where houses are cheek by jowl and vague codes of privacy work more or less well, reveal a serious mismatch of fabric with the neighborhood structure of the district. Interestingly, Tophane has never been far from this kind of lifestyle either. Despite its whole family environment and neighborhood structure, it has always been intertwined with restaurants serving alcohol and entertainment venues too. It is also a place where Roma citizens, with all their different lifestyles, add color to the same neighborhood culture.

Pressure on the neighborhood is not a process experienced only in Tophane; within the framework of urban transformation, similar processes were experienced in Sulukule and Ortaköy too, with similar scenes of scuffle.

Underneath this lies a strange urban discourse eager to make whole cities resemble one another, and different parts of the city resemble one another. In Istanbul, where every district was once incomparable, one could once go from one district to another, in Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar's exquisite description, as if going from one planet to another. Every district had a separate, quite different beauty.

Yet now, let alone leaving districts in their own difference and beauty, a strange outlook prevails that tries to make cities too resemble each other exactly.

The wish to go to Konya and live Istanbul there is like an imperial fantasy of this trend. Wanting to be served alcohol in every restaurant one enters in Konya, or wanting to experience in every district of Konya everything one can experience in Istanbul's Nişantaşı, sets in motion the typical process of pressure on the neighborhood. Then there are those who, having arrived in Konya and not finding İzmir, raise an uproar with "neighborhood pressure in Konya." Why does no one try to find Konya in İzmir, while everyone does the opposite? Or why should Tophane these days surrender to İstiklal Avenue its beauties that came out of the midst of Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar's Five Cities?

When we answer this question, I think we will be able to understand better what has happened and what will happen in Tophane.

Meanwhile, however much of all this we may understand, we cannot justify the attack on art galleries, some of which, I think, exhibit very beautiful art. Get-well wishes to everyone whose body or spirit was wounded during this attack.