The Political Economy of Urban Public Spaces in Turkey in-between Rent and Ideology: The Case of Millet Bahçeleri [Nation’s Gardens]

This paper examines the political economy of urban space through the case of urban projects implemented in Turkey. Urban public spaces are intended to be open and accessible to “all,” enabling social encounters. From the production of space to spatial practices, urban public spaces, where various forces, interests, and ideologies intersect, resemble a palimpsest and manifest as sites of territorialization and contestation. Millet Bahçeleri [Nation’s Gardens], reintroduced to the political agenda by President Erdoğan before the 2018 presidential elections, illustrates this complexity. The implementation of these gardens, portrayed as recreational green spaces opening up space for family leisure in all cities and alleviating the rapid and excessive urbanization that ended up with “a betrayal to cities,” involves economic, ideological, and hegemonic dimensions. This study aims to explore how Nation’s Gardens, as urban projects initiated by the AK Party government, function beyond their proposed roles to serve broader agendas of creating new rent opportunities, ideological propagation, and revanchism. They have been projected to replace particular places that are already integral parts of everyday life, altering the built environment, collective memory and, eventually, spatial practices. The theoretical framework of this paper critically reviews David Harvey’s overemphasis on economic forces on the reconfiguration of space through the concept of spatial fix, which suggests that continuous devaluation and construction over the built environment is a strategy to resolve the inner contradictions of capitalism, namely capital accumulation, thereby ensuring its survival. This paper affirms that Nation’s Gardens are specific instruments of this strategy. However, due to its emphasis on the interplay of rent and ideology, and the roles of several actors, including the state and professional chambers, it does not consider economic forces as the sole dynamic in the (re)production of space. Instead, it aims to offer a comprehensive discussion.