"Göçmen Konutları": The wealthy ghettos of the metropolis

During Zhivkov regime, the assimilation policy of Bulgaria resulted in the expulsion of about 360.000 Turks from the country in 1989. Those people of Turkish origin were welcome by the republic, being offered residence in different parts of the country or being allowed to settle down with relatives who had immigrated before 1989 and witnessing the construction of satellite towns in metropolitan cities like İstanbul. But this was not the case for their Turkish neighbours, which forced them to dwell in those satellite towns or turn back to Bulgaria immediately after the fall of Zhivkov regime and the policy change of the government. As the metropolitan cities keep growing immensely in population, new satellite towns have been built around those immigrant towns and the satellite towns of the Turkish immigrants from Bulgaria have turned out to be ghettos for the residents of the surrounding satellite towns. How have the immigrants adapted and been adapting themselves to the Turkish republican way of life? How did they come together once more in those satellite towns and how did this gathering affect their experiences of Turkey? How do they cope with the experience a ghetto life in satellite towns? The answers to these questions are to be found in an ethnographic field research among the immigrants residing in the "Göçmen Konutları" site in Başakşehir-İstanbul and the data to be presented in this paper has been collected among both the immigrant groups and the "indigenous" groups, as the immigrant groups call them, residing in this area.