Commoning after Disaster: (re)Building Shared Spaces in Türkiye’s Southern Regions

The dual earthquakes that hit southern Turkiye and Northern Syria on 6th February 2023 were simultaneously a natural disaster and a (hu)man-made crisis, with poor building regulations and exploitative practices contributing greatly to both the initial destruction and the chaotic and ongoing reconstruction process. This proposal aims to address questions around the larger scope of post-disaster recovery in southern Türkiye through discussing a series of projects in the earthquake hit regions of Kahramanmaraş and Antakya, co-completed by the authors as members of Herkes için Mimarlık derneği (Architecture for All association), an organisation whose practices have been investigated previously in the context of commoning within Türkiye.

The case studies are three community spaces built with varying degrees of participation from locals and community members, as well as other organisations and groups, and their narratives of success in terms of realising commons-based systems and communities. Discussing these projects we examine the temporal commons that emerged amidst the inbetween spaces of chaos and normality following the earthquakes and the ability of various groups to come together in solidarity with common goals. Through a critical reflection on our own experiences in co-producing these three built projects, we will also discuss the real risk of common practices failing to enable a sustainable production of common space in these turbulent times; how normality, bureaucracy, and apathy can lead to shared efforts being usurped by other interests, and how the most recent case study in Antakya has endeavoured to avoid this. A project whose long term sustainability and ‘success’ is yet to be seen. By commoning with, through shared practice, shared knowledge, shared agency and various levels of contribution that allowed different parties to participate, we hope to bring fresh insights from practice-based research to this discussion in the geo-political and socio-cultural context of Türkiye.