Urban Neoliberalism with Islamic Characteristics

International audienceThis paper discusses the changing urban policy framework in Turkey through a detailed analysis of a unique coupling of neoliberalism and Islamism. In this, rather than political projects with clear ultimate ends, both neoliberalism and Islamism are approached as distinct political rationalities aiming to reconfigure all aspects of social life. Turkey’s Justice and Development Party has successfully established networks of economic and political interdependence (or has tapped into existing networks) by appeasing both the emergent Islamic capitalist class through lucrative contracts and business-friendly reforms, and the urban poor through gracious gestures ingrained in traditional Islamic community values and morality. The working of this co-articulation is examined in the case of an urban renewal project in a peripheral neighbourhood in Istanbul