Earthquake Risk and the Politics of the Maybe in Istanbul, Türkiye

Türkiye’s largest city Istanbul, with a population of 16 million that spreads across two continents, is also located on one of the world’s most dangerous earthquake fault lines. In the last 25 years following the 7.4 magnitude earthquake in neighboring Izmit in 1999, Istanbul has been converted to a massive (re)construction site. While this paper questions the premise that development inevitably leads to urban resilience and social justice it demonstrates how disaster capitalism quickly converted the earthquake risk in Istanbul to an opportunity for construction-led economic growth. The subsequent urban transformation and housing development projects affect communities unevenly while the perpetuating disaster capitalism that triggered a construction boom and resulted in a 60% population increase paradoxically made the mega-city more fragile and disaster prone.

Whereas earthquake risk becomes an excuse to create wealth through construction on valuable land and makes those who reside in high-income neighbourhoods live, large numbers of low-income residents who live in risky buildings on low-value land are ignored and let die. Thus, urban renewal projects have increased inequalities and vulnerabilities and resulted in the displacement and dispossession of the urban poor. This research also shows the power of political decisions taken and not taken over life and death, by disclosing the possibility of ‘the politics of the maybe’ that might work for life's interest, yet are not implemented. The politics of the maybe refers to the non-market-oriented alternative political options to overcome the disaster risk such as using thousands of newly constructed vacant apartments in Istanbul to settle low-income residents who live in risky buildings. Thus, this paper introduces ‘the politics of the maybe’ as a challenge to disaster capitalism’s construction and development projects by making visible that the imposed solution is just one single political choice among a wide range of other available possibilities.