Spatial Politics in Istanbul

Over the past decade, the AKP, under the leadership of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, has decisively turned Turkish politics in the direction of conservative Islamic national identity. A specific ideological framework undergirded the AKP’s conception of the built environment, the plans it implemented to transform it and the forms of resistance that these plans generated. This framework is termed Erdoğanian Neo-Ottomanism and describes AKP’s use of the power of the state to shape public surroundings in th