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By Root 1710 0

interviewed 1,492 people across Turkey in 1999 and again in 2006. Those who supported the idea of Islamic sharia law declined from 21 percent of Turks in 1999 to only 9 percent in 2006. Those who felt that there should be Islamic political parties dropped from 41 percent to 25 percent. And the number who said that they would never want to live in an Islamic state increased from 58 percent to 76 percent. The proportion of women who were wearing Islamic headscarves, contrary to expectation, had dropped from 16 percent of the population to 11 percent. (The number who wore the more concealing chador had dropped even more sharply, from 3 percent to 1 percent.) But in one area, tellingly, there was an increase in religious sentiment: those Turks who identified themselves as “Muslim first and Turkish second” had increased noticeably, from 36 percent of the population in 1999 to 45 percent in 2006.24 What seemed to be happening could be described as a privatization of religious belief. As in much of Europe and North America, religion had become a matter of personal identity and pride, a self-affirming membership in an order that transcended the troubled realm of the nation, rather than a totalizing ideology of omnipotent social control.

It is abundantly clear that these changes were a direct product of the arrival cultures of the gecekondu. It was here, in these hybrid sites of village attachment and urban adjustment, that, after 80 years, the personal display of Islamic identity became part of Turkish life again, and the Islamic identity became part of Turkish politics. But it was also here that Turkey opened up to Europe, to trade, to an individualistic form of life that was not governed by any overarching ideology. It was, in a way, a victory of the arrival city not just over the politics and the demographics of the nation as a whole but over its mind. As one Turkish observer wrote, the acceptance of the arrivals had “turned the gecekondu, as an ersatz city erected in self-help, into the actual metropolis—initially in terms of urban development, then culturally, later politically, and since recently economically as well.”25

THE ARRIVAL CITY ABSORBS THE OLD CITY

If you’re standing in Bitterwater and you try to look toward the center of Istanbul, your view will be blocked by an anomalous sight: 10 apartment buildings, spaced close together in a tight circle. These are not the poured-concrete public-housing monoliths that are peppered across the outskirts but elegant, glass-curtain buildings with handsome glass balconies, condominium towers that would look familiar in Rotterdam or Santa Monica. They sit, like a strange glimmering mirage, in the center of a welter of ragged gecekondu neighborhoods and light-industrial back streets, as if a perfectly round crater has been blasted out of the poor housing and a residential rhinestone inserted in its center. A high wall separates this enclave from the surrounding houses; the only way in is by car, through a security gate where visitors must leave their ID cards before entering the underground parking facility. Above the gate is a sign identifying the complex, in English, as Sinpas Central Life.

Once inside this walled-off space, a very different sort of neighborhood reveals itself. The streets are cobblestoned and immaculately clean. Security guards, wearing sheriff-style badges, are visible everywhere. The central circle is filled with greenery and features a large fountain-spurting pond with a children’s island at the center. There is a gym (its sign reads, in English, “Wellness Club”), a Turkish bath, a medical center and a large and well-staffed day-care facility, all for the exclusive use of the residents of the 386 condominium apartments. The people who live here, according to sales manager Habip Perk, are almost entirely young couples who grew up in central Istanbul, born to families who had lived in the city for generations. They move here because the old city has become crowded and expensive, its infrastructure crumbling. It has become home to Istanbul’s real poor (far