Scaling Justice in the Ruins: Housing Vulnerability and the Politics of Scale in Post-Earthquake Turkey

The "new housing crisis" gripping the Mediterranean region has exacerbated existing housing vulnerabilities, including evictions, foreclosures, and homelessness. This is particularly acute in southern Turkey, where forced recentralization, migration waves, and recent earthquakes have dramatically reshaped urban landscapes. This paper examines how a "politics of scale" shapes justice demands in this context. Drawing on Annelise Riles and Nancy Fraser's work, the research re-couples the right to housing with the anthropology of human rights to critically engage with discourses of vulnerability, exclusion, and dispossession. Focusing on a mid-sized tourism city in Turkey, the paper analyzes the discourses of Housing Rights Movements, NGOs, migrant initiatives, municipalities, and the central government. By examining their conflicting approaches to the housing crisis, the research reveals how different scales of governance define and operationalize the right to housing, shaping a new political language and agenda for addressing housing vulnerability in disaster-affected regions.