Minarets without Mosques: Limits to the Urban Politics of ...yoksis.bilkent.edu.tr/pdf/files/Urban Stud-2013-Batuman-1097-113.pdf · Minarets without Mosques: Limits to the Urban

Minarets without Mosques: Limits to theUrban Politics of Neo-liberal Islamism

Bulent Batuman

[Paper first received, October 2011; in final form, June 2012]

Abstract

This paper discusses urban politics in contemporary Turkey through a particulararchitectural phenomenon: that of minarets without mosques. Local administrationsunder neo-liberal Islamists propose urban regeneration projects which require exten-sive demolitions in squatter areas. Yet, their reluctance to tear down minarets createsruinscapes in which minarets seem to have miraculously survived destruction. Inthis regard, the minarets without mosques should be understood as symptoms ofurban transformation led by neo-liberal Islamism. Neo-liberal Islamists envisagethese projects as spatial forms of politics of convergence, juxtaposing slum upgrad-ing with luxurious housing within the unifying cultural codes of Islam. It is pro-posed to interpret these minarets not as bearers of religious symbolism but as nodeswithin the urban network of everyday life referring to Lefebvre’s concept of rhyth-manalysis. Viewed in this way, it becomes possible for the minarets to take on newmeanings and serve as signs of the displacement of the squatters.

Similar to other architectural types that havesymbolic power, the meanings embodiedwithin the mosque cannot be reduced to itspractical function in worship; and the min-aret bears the representative weight of thesemeanings. There is a tension between thefunctional origin of minarets as high plat-forms from which the call for prayer is voca-lised and the symbolic aspect of the minaretas a synecdoche of Islam in general.1 Viewedby both Muslims and Islamophobes asthe signifier of the discursive power ofthe mosque, the minaret becomes a

supplementary sign of religious referencesattached to the space of worship.

Moreover, the structural relationbetween the mosque and the minaret is notorganic; that is, a mosque without a min-aret is not an incomplete edifice. The struc-tural unconnectedness between the mosqueand the minaret opens room for new possi-bilities. One outcome of this dissociation isthe construction of mosques without min-arets, which is not an uncommon sight inEuropean cities with Muslim populations.The mosque without its minaret emerges as

Bulent Batuman is in the Department of Urban Design and Landscape Architecture, BilkentUniversity, 06800, Ankara, Turkey. Email: [email protected].

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a religious space that has given up its claimto public visibility and acknowledgement(Pieterse, 1997). The most recent case reviv-ing the architectural politics of the mosquewas the Swiss prohibition of minarets in2009 (Betz and Meret, 2009; Ronis, 2010). Asignificant element expressing the anti-minaret view was a famous poster showingthe Swiss flag, on which minarets wereerected—incidentally reminding one of mis-siles. The sinister shadows of the minaretscast on the flag dramatised the invasion ofthe country by Islam. The curious aspect ofthe poster, which is relevant to my discus-sion, is the depiction of the minarets as free-standing objects. The minaret is detachedfrom its mosque, which in fact is the raisond’etre for its existence. This imagery con-structs precisely what my object of analysisis: the minaret without a mosque.

How shall we interpret a minaret withoutits mosque? I will try to answer this questionthrough the case of present-day Turkey—acultural context in which Islam is currentlyan important political force. Through a dis-cussion of the minarets without mosques inurban districts undergoing redevelopmentin the Turkish capital of Ankara, I arguethat these free-standing minarets embodytwo radically different iconographies. Onthe one hand, the minaret, as I have alreadymentioned, is a ‘symbol’ of Islam; therefore,Islamist municipal administrations refrainfrom destroying them although their mos-ques are demolished together with other ele-ments of the built environment in theseneighbourhoods. On the other hand, theminarets are the ‘symptoms’ of the everydaypatterns of urban life in the demolishedsquatter neighbourhoods. Their survival asthe physical remainders of these perishedpatterns becomes a component of urbanpolitics under the conditions of a neo-liberalurban regime coupled by Islamic culturalpolitics. I will attempt to theorise the quoti-dian role of the minarets with reference to

Lefebvre’s concept of ‘rhythmanalysis’ anddiscuss the politics of the minarets withoutmosques in relation to Benjamin’s interpre-tation of ruin and history. A particular casethat I will discuss is an on-going urbanregeneration project in Ankara, since thelonely minarets standing on its site havebecome the trademark of the project in thepublic eye.

Neo-liberal Islamism and theMinaret from Symbol to Symptom

‘‘The minarets are our bayonets, the domesour helmets/ The mosques our barracks andthe faithful our army’’. These verses had costRecep Tayyip Erdogan, the current PrimeMinister of Turkey and the leader of thepro-Islamic Justice and Development Party(JDP), a short prison-term and more impor-tantly a life-long political ban in 1998. Theban was later lifted with a change in the law,and it became possible for him to run forParliament and finally be named PrimeMinister. However, the poem and its quota-tion by the Turkish Prime Minister wereoften used by his political opponents andrecently brought up in support of the cam-paign for the Swiss minaret ban (Kern, 2009;Khan, 2009).

The iconography of the mosque hasalways been a hotly debated topic in Turkey.The republican history has been marked by aradical version of secularism defined bystrict state control of the religious domain;yet the mosque has always been a site rela-tively immune from control. Since it is anactual space that has an important place inthe everyday lives of practising Muslims, atotal prohibition of the mosque was out ofthe question. Hence it has been the mostpowerful symbol for the political manifesta-tions of Islamism. Islamists have often raiseddemands such as the reconversion of HagiaSophia into a mosque, the building of

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spectacular mosques in symbolic locationssuch as Taksim in Istanbul (the largestsquare of the city) and Cxankaya in Ankara(the district where the Presidential Palaceis).2

The political iconography of the mosquerequires an historical understanding ofIslamism as political power. It has to beunderstood not as the manifestation of areligious power unchanged in time, but as acontemporary ideology compatible with his-torical circumstances. In the case of Turkey,the Islamist opposition successfully adapteditself to the dynamics of neo-liberalisationwhich gradually became dominant after the1980s. I am using the term ‘Islamism’ here torefer to a political ideology. In this respect, itis different from Islam as a religion and its‘Islamic’ cultural manifestations (Cxınar,2005; see also Gole, 2000).

Some scholars have argued that the riseof Islamic groups to power necessarily endsup in their moderation and that, in the caseof Turkey, the Islamic movement ceased tobe Islamist as the result of a compromisewith the secularist state (Yavuz, 2009, pp.5–13). Rather than essentialising the rela-tion between Islamic movements and thestate in the form of an inevitable modera-tion, I propose to consider the particularform of interaction between Islamist poli-tics and the historical dynamics that giveway to the Islamists’ rise to power. Viewedin this way, the establishment of a govern-ment by Islamist cadres does not necessarilyend up in either the existence of an (hiddenor overt) agenda to transform the statestructure into a theocratic one or the totalabandonment of Islamist political views.The issue is rather the reorganisation ofcivil society in Islamic terms to the extentthat the economic relations allow. In thisregard, I believe it is appropriate to definethe particular strand of pro-Islamic politicsof the JDP as neo-liberal Islamism, sincethis particular combination served the

consolidation of neo-liberal hegemonythrough the Islamic institutions within civilsociety (Tugal, 2009). The party’s gradualrise to power was the result of the mobilisa-tion of the masses against the deprivationcreated by neo-liberalism, yet they wereparadoxically resubjected to the samesystem afterwards.3 Although a detailed dis-cussion is beyond the scope of this paper,the 10-year JDP rule in Turkey witnessedthe utilisation of controlled mass mobilisa-tion as the engine of neo-liberalisation(Tugal, 2009, p. 4).

The Islamists’ rise to power in Turkey inthe past two decades started at the level oflocal administrations. Most of the majorTurkish cities were taken over by Islamistmayors who were then members of theWelfare Party (WP), in 1994. From thenon, the political influence of Islam graduallyincreased primarily through the municipalpolicies of the WP. It is crucial to note thatthe Islamist movement has gone through asignificant transformation in the 1990s.This was a result of, on the one hand, themilitary intervention in 1997 and, on theother, their experience in local and centralgovernments leading them to reconciliationwith the market if not with the state. Afterthe outlawing of the WP in 1998 and itssuccessor the Virtue Party (VP) in 2001, theIslamists split into two fractions. While theolder generation maintained the radicalIslamist discourse of the 1990s, the youngergeneration led by Erdogan established theJustice and Development Party (JDP). TheJDP broke away with the anti-capitalist,anti-Western discourse and embraced anagenda of democratisation in the face ofconstant threat from the military. Fromthen on, the JDP strengthened its hegemonythrough the zealous fulfillment of neo-liberal market demands and a populist wel-fare system utilising Islamic social net-works. The neo-liberalisation of urbaneconomy was balanced with a municipal

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welfare system distributing a significantamount of aid in the form of householdgoods to the urban poor (White, 2002;Bugra, 2007). I define this particular modelas the urban politics of convergence.

Here, convergence should not be under-stood as a narrowing of the income gapbetween the urban classes. On the contrary,this system brings closer different classpositions within the same hegemonic net-work by using Islamic values, particularlythe Islamic approach to poverty.4 Up untilthe 2000s, the Islamist groups interpretedthe traditional Islamic teaching of patienceas an anti-capitalist praise to poverty. Yet,under the JDP, it rapidly turned into ameans of producing consent to the existingeconomic order.5 The religious communityleaders still taught the poor to bear poverty,which now functioned as an indirect sup-port to the government’s economic policies.The most important economic mechanismto support the politics of convergence wasthe deployment of the welfare system as atool of capital accumulation. The supply ofgoods to be distributed to the urban poorfrom the local market integrates not onlythe squatters but also the petty producers,dealers, power brokers and even in-citytransport companies with this power net-work, at the centre of which rests the muni-cipality. Although I will not go into thedetails, this system has recruited a largebody of supporters for the WP-VP andeventually resulted in the JDP’s rise topower in 2002 (Batuman, 2012).

Meanwhile, urban space had become asignificant means of capital accumulationduring the same period (Unsal and Kuyucu,2010; Batuman, 2012). The role of urbandevelopment in neo-liberalism has beendiscussed extensively (Harvey, 1989;Brenner and Theodore, 2002; Hackworth,2007). In tune with these trends, urban pol-itics took a drastic step in terms of the pro-duction of space in Turkey after 2002. In

2004, urban regeneration became a legalterm in Turkish legislation. In brief terms,the municipalities and the HousingDevelopment Administration were grantedimmense powers that allowed them to co-operate in the redevelopment of old squat-ter areas. These two agents also have theauthority to determine expropriation ratesfor squatter homes. The squatters are forcedeither to leave the area with the amountthey are given or to use it as downpaymentand take loans to own a new home in thesame area. This new model meant the endof the traditional pattern of urbanisation inTurkey, which rested on the populist over-looking of squatting (Keyder, 1999). Nowmarket dynamics were extended to the per-ipheries and a total commodification ofurban space was in order (Keyder, 2010;Unsal and Kuyucu, 2010).

In this fashion, vast areas have been desig-nated as renewal zones in all of the Turkishcities in the past seven years. And it is withinthis context that the minaret emerges as anurban artifact that assumes new meaningsother than its traditional iconography. TheIslamist modernisers of the JDP proposelarge urban regeneration projects whichrequire extensive demolition in urban areas.Yet, their reluctance to tear down minaretscreates ruinscapes in which minarets seemto have miraculously survived destruction.

To begin with, a minaret surviving thedemolition of its mosque is an expression ofdeference to Islam. It is the predicament ofan urban renewal process led by an Islamistlocal administration. A particular urban areahas been the object of a renewal project; thehousing stock, together with the social andcultural facilities—including the mosques—are demolished. Yet, the minaret, preciselybecause it is seen as the bearer of religioussymbolism, is immune from destruction.This, in turn, creates a contradiction on thepart of the authorities who desire to useurban regeneration as a tool of total

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transformation. In this regard, the minaretwithout its mosque appears as the symptomof renewal. The modernist will of the munic-ipal administration instrumentalises urbanregeneration to exert power in the city. Thelimits to the immense powers invested in themunicipality are not defined by exteriorpowers restraining it (such as laws, regula-tions, etc.), but by the cultural codes inher-ent within it: the minaret as the untouchablesymbol of Islam. In other words, the urbantexture resists Islamist regeneration withIslamic representations of space. These min-arets could only be demolished when theyare replaced with newer (and larger) mos-ques (and minarets) erected on the samelocations. This means the continuity of cer-tain urban elements within the renewalprocess.

The minarets without mosques are foundin redeveloped squatter areas; they representthe spatial practices that had existed withinthe scale of a neighbourhood. The regenera-tion projects, however, propose differentliving patterns and distinct user profiles forthese areas. Being working-class neighbour-hoods, these areas are characterised by par-ticular daily routines including publictransport timetables, frequent use of com-munal spaces and the primacy of walkingwithin the neighbourhood. The result ofgentrification, in contrast, minimises inter-action among neighbours, introduces privatecars which are used not only for commutesbetween home and workplace but even forshorter distances within the neighbourhood.

For instance, the image we see in Figure 1shows the old squatter area of Cxukurambarwhich has been transformed into a wealthyIslamic quarter where some of the membersof the Parliament reside today. Within thistransformation, the humble mosque of thesquatter neighbourhood was demolished tomake room for the new boulevard passingthrough the district in 2005. The minaret ofthe mosque stood within the lawn of the

eight-floor apartment building along theboulevard for more than three years. It wastorn down only with the rising of the minar-ets of the much larger district mosque builtin an adjacent lot in 2009. Incidentally, thenew mosque was accompanied with a hous-ing unit including three high-rise residentialblocks. The juxtaposition of the traditionalarchitecture of the large mosque and themodernism of the high-rise blocks providesa fine illustration of the peculiar form ofurban regeneration under neo-liberalIslamism. Although Islamic representationsof space are reproduced as ideological sig-nifiers of power, the everyday lives in thenew housing complexes predominantlypopulated by pro-Islamic residents reveal alevel of negotiation with modern urbanpractices. What is crucial here is that thespaces of both everyday uses and ideologicaldisplay are incorporated within the politicaleconomy of redevelopment.

Similarly, there is a single minaret in theDikmen Valley regeneration area which hasbeen left in a building site for more thantwo years. The regeneration of the Valley,which runs for 13 km, was designed in fivephases. While the first two phases were fin-ished by the early 1990s, the third phase wasrealised by the Islamist local administration.The site of the third phase of the project wascleared in 2005 and the small neighbour-hood mosque was the only structure left inthe area. The mosque was demolished in2009 when the high-rise luxurious residen-tial blocks towering over it were finished.The small local mosque has been substitutedwith a new one located by the high-riseblocks. While the new mosque is a semi-private space within a gated community, theminaret of the old mosque still stands at thevalley bottom. In both Cxukurambar andDikmen, the spatial practices represented bythese minarets—that is, the role of themosque within the daily routines of thesquatters—have become obsolete.




The power of the minaret to resist urbanrenewal stems from the symbolism it embo-dies. Yet, fitting the urban meaning(s) ofthe minaret into its religious symbolismmeans pushing urban life into a narrowdomain of politico-religious representa-tions. The minaret is loaded with meaningsderiving from its role in everyday practicesbeyond its religious iconography. In orderto explore such meanings, it is necessary toanalyse the mosque as a node within thenetwork of everyday life in the city.

The Rhythmanalysis of the Minaret

Everyday life, by definition, signifies theordinary; it contains patterns born out of

practices in endless repetition. This set ofinsignificant patterns, however, is a majorcomponent of the social structure; asLefebvre (1991, p. 87) has mentioned,everyday life has ‘‘a secret life and a rich-ness of its own’’. The analysis of everydaylife helps us to uncover the ideological con-figurations of social relations, since every-day life has a multilayered character, whichis a result of the overlapping repetitivecycles. The attempt to analyse these cyclesshould begin with their rhythms, since anactivity that leads to the interaction of timeand space inevitably produces rhythm(Lefebvre, 2004, p. 15).

Lefebvre proposes a new methodology,which he defines as rhythmanalysis. This

Figure 1. The single minaret in Cxukurambar stood within the lawn of an apartment buildinguntil a large mosque was built in the adjacent lot.

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interdisciplinary field of knowledge, forLefebvre, should explore the natural/biolo-gical rhythms together with artificial/socialones. The objective of rhythmanalysis is todig out the repetitive patterns of move-ments, gestures, behaviours, situations anddifferences and to reach at a clear grasp ofthe everyday life made of linear and cyclicalrhythms. If we follow Lefebvre, it is crucialto look beyond the apparent iconography ofthe minaret and search for the everydayrhythms that it takes part in. Only then willit be possible to uncover the representationsthe minaret embodies within the context ofdaily practices. These representations arethe products of visual, physical and acousticrhythms that the minaret defines in urbanspace. Especially in residential areas, due tolower building heights, the minarets con-struct a visual rhythm that defines a scalewithin the texture of the built environment(Figure 2). The basic unit that defines thisscale is the walking distance, which also cor-responds to the size of the community shar-ing each mosque space. The mosque is usedin different cycles by different users: whilesome users visit it five times a day, othersgo to the mosque once a week for Friday

prayers and some others do so only twice ayear at the Bayram prayers.6 The minaret isalso the focus of an acoustic rhythm thatcomes out of the repetition of the call forprayer five times a day. Moreover, the callfor prayer is broadcast from many minarets,yet without synchrony. This shows us thatrhythm is not necessarily monotonous oreven harmonious; the rhythms of everydaylife display multiplicity of rhythms (poly-rhythmia), their harmony (eurhythmia) ordisharmony (arrhythmia) (Lefebvre, 2004,p. 16).

Within rhythm, space and time are expe-rienced through a particular pace, that ofspatial practice. The triviality of everydaylife expressed with repetition leads to animpression that there is no change; thevelocity of transformation is zero. The per-ception of cyclical time and the recurrenceof spatial experience conceal the rhythms ofeveryday life behind the image of monoto-nousness. The experience of urban renewal,on the contrary, is a condensation of spaceand time; the velocity of transformation ishigh. Furthermore, the municipal authorityas the agent of renewal wishes to maximisethe pace of redevelopment. It is desired to

Figure 2. A typical residential cityscape in Ankara, in which the network of minarets isclearly visible.




achieve both the physical reconstructionprocess and the socio-cultural transforma-tion that accompanies it within a shortperiod of time.

At this instance, the minaret without amosque emerges first of all as the sign ofthe erased patterns and rhythms of dailypractices. The network woven by the minar-ets in a squatter area displays the embedd-edness of religious routines in everyday life.Moreover, the minaret without a mosque isthe sign of the juxtaposition of not onlytwo different times (the past and the pres-ent) but also two different temporalitiesand two different urban velocities. Whilethe temporality of everyday life in thesquatter area rests on daily cycles, urbanrenewal and its high velocity present thetransformation from the past to the presentas a linear progress. The permanence of theminaret, in this context, terminates this lin-earity and constructs a condition of swing-ing back and forth in time. In other words,the single minaret suspends time in the eyeof its observers. The undemolished minaretconstantly refers to the past and the formerpatterns of everyday life embedded in it.Hence, the minaret creates an expandedtemporality referring simultaneously to thedemolished squatter neighbourhood andthe newly erected housing blocks. That is,the new everyday life, thanks to the minaretwithout a mosque, is defined by polytem-porality, a present time containing the pastin it.

Nevertheless, it is not only the destroyedrhythms of everyday life that the single min-aret represents. The minaret, the mosque ofwhich has been demolished, inevitablyreflects the violence that characterises urbanrenewal. The minaret without a mosque is aminaret torn off from its mosque. In thisrespect, the minaret is the remainder of avanished whole; it is the ruin of a mosque.According to Benjamin, the ruin is a symbolof ephemerality in relation to history

(Benjamin, 1990, pp. 177–182). The corro-sion of time over space materialises in theruin, which in return assumes the power torevive the past within the present. At thispoint, architecture, in addition to being acomponent of human experience at thepresent time, makes it possible to imaginethe past through the traces it carries and thecorrosion it displays. What is crucial here isthe dialectics of the ruin as remainder. Theruin simultaneously represents decay as anegative process and the positive persistencewithin this very process. It has collapsedunder the overwhelming pressure of time,but also managed to survive it. In thisrespect, the ruin is the signifier of the powerthat destroyed it. The minaret as ruin, then,is the signifier of the destructive power ofurban renewal for the former residents ofthese neighbourhoods as well as those criti-cal of the destruction caused by urbanregeneration operations.

A Field of Minarets: North AnkaraCity Entrance Project

I have already discussed the rhythm pro-duced by the minaret in areas where build-ing heights allow the minaret to be visiblefrom a distance. Although it is possible tocome across individual examples of minar-ets without mosques in different parts ofAnkara, a striking setting of single minaretsallowing for their legibility is the site of theNorth Ankara City Entrance project alongthe road connecting the airport to the citycentre. The project was the prime exampleof the urban regeneration endeavours ofthe neo-liberal Islamists and set the guide-lines for future examples. Since the road tothe airport was defined as a gateway to thecapital city, the project was presented as anational undertaking. It was argued thatthe facades of this prestigious urban axisdisplay ‘the nation’ to the ‘foreign visitors’,

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hence it had to be cleared of the squatterhouses. The project was begun in 2004 witha special law authorising the AnkaraGreater Municipality and the HousingDevelopment Administration to redevelopthe area. The evacuation of 30 000 peopleand the demolition of 6500 squatter homeswere completed in 2005 and 2006. The eva-cuation process was rather peaceful sincethe squatters were promised that they couldmove into their new homes in late 2007,although none have moved in since thebuildings are not finished as of spring 2012.It was planned to construct 8100 houses forthe squatters and 21 000 extra units to besold. A large section of the area was allo-cated as an upper-class residential zonewith a vast recreational area (Gumusx,2010). Since the area designated as a recrea-tional zone is still empty, the single minar-ets within this zone remain.

The project is a significant attempt atdeveloping a model for space productioncompatible with the ideological choices ofneo-liberal Islamism. The power of the cen-tral government was for the first time addedto the capabilities of the Islamist municipaladministrations in this project. In thisregard, the project can be compared withthe construction of a new district to shelterthe new government buildings of the youngrepublic and villas for the state elite in the1920s (Batuman, 2009). Yenisxehir, literallythe new city of Ankara, was built on theexpropriated land across the railroad, whichuntil then served as the southern border ofthe town. This new city rising on a tabularasa was seen as the site for the creation ofthe symbolic locus of the republic. In thefollowing decades, the railroad continued toact as the demarcation line separating thepoor north and the wealthy south.

Within this context, it is not surprising tosee the Islamists attempting to build a sym-bolic alternative to southern Ankara, whichrepresented not only wealth but also the

republican ideology with the PresidentialPalace located on the southern hills over-looking the city. In the 1990s, the northerndistrict of Kecxioren, which has its ownadministrative body, was treated by theIslamists as the alternative to republicanAnkara with Islamic representations of spaceand conservative daily practices (Sargın,2004). While the newly built town hall wasdecorated with designs reminiscent ofOttoman and Islamic symbolism, themunicipality enforced an alcohol ban andintroduced gender segregation in urbanspace.

In contrast to the radical Islamism of the1990s, the neo-liberal Islamism of the JDPcame up with regeneration projects in tunewith the politics of convergence.7 The mainidea was to juxtapose slum upgrading withluxurious housing. This was the dream ofneo-liberal Islamists; rich being rich andpoor being poor yet living side-by-side withthe shared identity of Islam. The poorestresidents of the district were quickly relo-cated in the low-quality housing blocksbuilt further north and the squatters whoowned title deeds were promised apart-ments within the project. These apartmentswere to be built distant from the upper-class residences and their recreationalareas.8 The aim of the project was definedas ‘‘bringing a new interpretation and a newdefinition to the city [of Ankara], which hasgrown distant to the urban image definedin 1923’’ (Ankara Greater Municipality,2005). Although there is no reference toIslam, it is clearly stated that the image ofthe city was intended to be redefined, with-out any clear indication of what the newimage would refer to. Moreover, with thewords of the mayor, this site would be ‘‘anew living environment, every corner ofwhich would be under surveillance withsmart technologies’’ (Sabah Ankara, 12March 2006). The prospect of convergenceof squatters, the loyal voters of the Islamist




parties for two decades, and the new rich ofneo-liberal Islamism requires the strict con-trol of urban space.9

If we turn to the current state of the site,it is crucial to note that the multitude oflonely minarets signifies the destruction of awhole residential district and hence pointsto the social aspect of demolition. The phys-ical marks of the vanished daily practicessuch as the distances between individualminarets constantly refer to the inexistentsocio-spatiality as spectres of past urbanexperiences in the present time. Put in thisway, the network of minarets without mos-ques resurrects a spatial pattern that previ-ously existed in the squatter district.

Interestingly, the Housing DevelopmentAdministration seems to have embraced thesingle minaret as the symbol of the project.A large signboard with the acronym of theorganisation was erected near a minaret on asmall hill close to the road. Thus, these min-arets are not seen as temporary defects to becorrected with replacment mosques andminarets. On the contrary, they are utilisedas a component of the project’s emblem,representing the Islamist power executing it.Moreover, a new mosque is located on thehilltop facing the road. The new structuredefines the silhouette together with theunfinished high-rise blocks. In other words,although the textual representations of theproject never refer to Islam(ism), the minar-ets fulfill this task through their silentpresence.

The unusual scene created by the singleminarets has led to discussions from themoment it emerged. While journalists oftenasked the authorities why the minarets wereleft on the site, vague answers generallydefined it as an attempt to avoid futureaccusations of building too many mosques(by recording the number of the mosqueswith the minarets). It was often consideredthat the minarets were not demolishedbecause it would be a ‘‘sin to do so’’ (Tempo,

2006). Oppositional media saw this as anIslamist statement suggesting that ‘‘every-thing can be demolished, except for the min-aret’’ (SOL, 2008). The phenomenon wasalso discussed by the residents of the area onInternet forums. While some forum usersasked others of their opinions and whetherthey had information regarding these min-arets, others responded with comments,speculations or rumours. Most of the com-ments referred to the holiness of the minaretand affirmed the act, while some posted theexplanations of the authorities. There wereeven posts citing rumours that the minaretswould later be maintained as landscape ele-ments in the recreational area.10

The Visual Representation of UrbanDestruction

The visual experience of the minarets alongthe Airport Road is not limited to theirobservation from the road. The spectacle ofminarets is also visually constructed viaphotographic representation and circulatedin public. The pair of photographs inFigure 3 composes the paradigmatic repre-sentation of the North Ankara CityEntrance project. This pair of images wasused for the first time in a book introdu-cing the urban regeneration projects of theHousing Development Administration(Bayraktar, 2006). After that, it was fre-quently reproduced in the publications ofthe Ankara Greater municipality. It wasreproduced from time to time in theweekly bulletin of the Municipality toreport the recent developments regardingthe project. Moreover, new photographs ofthe project site were added to this set toemphasise progress. The photographsbecome operational tools within the socialprocess of urban renewal through themeanings they produce. They work for thelegitimisation of the creative destruction

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prompted by the municipality. The use ofthese photographs as a pair tells us aboutthe differences between them, hence thetransformation of the district. The photo-graphs do not depict before and afterimages of the project, since it is not fin-ished yet. What they show is the before andafter conditions of the first phase—that is,the evacuation. The swiftness of physicaldemolition implies the peacefulness of eva-cuation as a social process. Moreover, rapiddemolition promises rapid construction;the hardest chapter of renewal is alreadycompleted as witnessed by the photo-graphs.11 The modernist agent of renewalhas finally attained its tabula rasa, thephotographs tell us; it is only a matter oftime before the project is realised.

Nevertheless, what is true for everyrepresentation is also valid here: representa-tion cannot guarantee the coherence of

meaning. There is always the possibility ofan excess of meaning failing the intentionsof the (re)producers of the images. Here,while the municipal authority uses thesephotographs as the illustration of a cleanslate, they can easily be interpreted asimages of devastation. In this regard, theycan be seen as related to a different genre ofphotographic representation—that of aerialreconnaissance photographs. The aerialviews of the project site significantly resem-ble that of a bombed area and the ruinedareas look like a scarred landscape afterdestruction.

During the Second World War, animportant task of aerial photography wasdocumentation of damage done by bomb-ing raids (Deriu, 2007). The crucial featureof this imagery is the depiction of destruc-tion from a distance, which functions torender the human tragedy invisible. The

Figure 3. The pair of photographs frequently used by the authorities to represent the NorthAnkara City Entrance project.




detached gaze of the airborne camera turnssocial catastrophe into abstract visual pat-terns. The aerial reconnaissance photo-graphs deploy various representationalstrategies which produce distinct effects.While high verticals show two-dimensionalabstract patterns, low obliques allow forperspectival vision and depict the actualityof destruction. While the former records theextent of devastation, the latter allows theviewer to differentiate between the standingstructures and the destroyed ones. If wereturn to the images of the renewal area innorthern Ankara, what we have at hand arelow oblique views intended to display thevanishing squatter houses. Yet, the destruc-tion of the houses needs to be viewed froma particular distance so that the humandetails reminding us of the fact that thedestroyed structures are actually homes arenot detectable. That is, the representationalstrategy is based on a point of view whichis distant enough to conceal the socialdimension of destruction and close enoughto show its physicality.

In any case, the constant element inthese images initially displaying change isthe minarets without mosques. Hence, thephotographs inevitably highlight thesearchitectural elements that survived demoli-tion. Their survival, as mentioned earlier, isan outcome of the municipality’s respectfor Islamic values. The public circulation ofthese images is a silent manifestation of theIslamic character of the community lifeexpected to be created via the project.Nevertheless, the minarets are also relict fea-tures of the everyday life of the squatterneighbourhood. Since the minaret is a sig-nifier of the spatial practices in the neigh-bourhood, its survival passes the traces ofpast everyday life on to the present. Theminarets pinning down the places of reli-gious practice confirm human experience.Hence, the minaret as the signifier of every-day life troubles the strategically chosen

distance which conceals the social aspect ofdestruction.

While the physical existence of the min-arets as free-standing objects will eventuallycome to an end with the completion of theproject, the photographs make it possible toregister permanently the meanings pro-duced by their solitude. Without doubt, themeanings produced by these images willmultiply in time due to the context withinwhich they are viewed. The squatters evacu-ated from the area currently live in differentdistricts in northern Ankara as (temporary)tenants. It is possible to observe their dis-content regarding the delays in the projectthrough the Internet forums they use tocommunicate. A quick tour through thepages of a nation-wide popular forum web-site (wowturkey.com) shows that the resi-dents of the area have started discussiontopics on the project. Under one of thesetopics, more than 200 users have postedaround 1700 comments about the project.12

The early messages displayed a high level ofoptimism despite the apparent delay as of2008 and 2009. The users shared digitallyproduced images of the project and photo-graphs of the construction site with excite-ment. These optimistic exchanges eventuallygave way to bitter comments and com-plaints, not only about the delays, but alsoabout the indifference of the authoritiestowards their hardship.

There is also a forum website specificallyestablished on the North Ankara CityEntrance project in 2008. The site currentlyhas 1214 users and it has been visited morethan 180 000 times in three years.13 In 2009,it was proposed for the first time in theseforums to establish an organisation topursue the legal rights of the displacedsquatters; yet this suggestion did not get apositive response. This was due on the onehand to the spatially dispersed condition ofthe squatters and on the other to theirunwillingness to confront the authorities,

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for fear of losing the rent aid they received.In December 2010, a meeting was arrangedto this end and an organisation was formallyestablished in September 2011. The firstaction of the organisation was suing themunicipality and the Housing DevelopmentAdministration, demanding compensation.The struggle of the squatters even found anecho in the Parliament: the opposition party(the Republican People’s Party) formallyrequested an explanation from the PrimeMinister regarding the delays in the project.Within this context, the photographs thatused to represent the willful co-operation ofthe squatters begins to take on a new mean-ing. The squatters’ renunciation of their ear-lier consent abolishes the optimism impliedby successful evacuation and signifies theirtemporary-yet-continuous displacementover the years.

Urban renewal—that is, the transforma-tion of the squatter area into a different typeof housing—is presented as progress via thephotographs showing the consecutive stagesof transformation. This use rests on a linearnotion of history supported by the sequen-tial order of photographs taken in time. Thephotographs present an image of urbanregeneration grasped within the linear con-tinuity (hence necessity) of history, movingfrom the old to the new. Yet, this imagerequires the consent of the squatters to besocially operational. If the attachment of thesquatters to the site through their homes(even though they are long gone) is recon-structed, the representations of the builtenvironment open up room for new ways tohistoricise the urbanisation process. In thiscontext, the minarets without mosquesimply the possibility of a different readingand a different historical conception ofurbanisation for they carry the memory of apast urban condition within the present.

This is in tune with Benjamin’s (2003, pp.391–395) call for a historical materialismsetting out ‘‘to explode the continuum of

history’’ by ‘‘tak[ing] control of a memory,as it flashes in a moment of danger’’. Theimage of the minarets stripped of their mos-ques is a ‘picture of the past’ to be experi-enced in the present, since the struggle onurban renewal is a struggle over meaning.Once the minaret is appropriated as anindex of everyday life aside from its religiousconnotations, it becomes a potential tool forhistorical consciousness regarding urbanlife; especially for those seeking ways toresist gentrification projects. This is onlypossible by viewing the minaret as a spectraltestimony to the erased urban condition andnot as the materialisation of religious ideol-ogy. The image of the minaret without amosque displays traces of the past in thepresent time; hence—to borrow Benjamin’sterm—it explodes the historical claim ofurban renewal as progress. As Benjaminwould say, the claims of linearity of timeand of historical necessity are political; theybelong to the victors. The minarets withoutmosques, in contrast, may serve to destroythe temporality of urban renewal and thecreation of a different history of urbanpolitics.

Conclusion

The North Ankara City Entrance projectpraised itself for ‘‘not aggrieving’’ the squat-ters. In this respect, the failure of the projectto be finished on time is already a testimonyto its failure. This should also be under-stood as the failure of the initial objective ofthe project to serve as a model of urbanrenewal in tune with the urban politics ofconvergence. The project was an attemptspatially to converge the urban poor andthe new Islamist elite. With the evacuationof the area, the minarets without mosquesbecame visible and soon turned into theemblematic signs of the project in publicperception. This was also in accord with the




intentions of the authorities, since it wasnot desired publicly to announce the proj-ect as an Islamist undertaking. Instead, theminarets served as silent signifiers ofIslamism, not as newly erected statementsbut as relicts of what was already there: astestimonies to the inherent Islamic charac-ter of the area. In a sense, the minarets rep-resented the authorities’ interpretation ofthe squatter district: a community heldtogether through the network of minarets.This network also represents the one andonly feature that the authorities deemed fitto be transferred to the imminent commu-nity of convergence. Shared practices (andspaces) of Islamic faith would serve as theideological apparatus to build a new urbanrealm, an alternative to the capital city ofrepublican modernism. In this regard, theminarets function as anchors to implementthe project on the actual site.

Nevertheless, the minarets are not merelyreligious signifiers but also the ruinedtraces—the remains—of the displacedsocial practices. While they are representa-tional symbols, they are also architecturalelements recalling the past. This duality isprecisely the reason why they should beunderstood as the symptom of the project’sfailure. As Islamic symbols they are expectedto provide the link between the rich and thepoor, not only metaphorically but also phy-sically with the shared spaces of a harmo-nious community. Yet this mythical visionrises over the ruins of the squatter homes aswitnessed by the minarets themselves. Theexistence of the minarets is the sign of theprolongation of the displaced lives of thesquatters. That is, while they are intended toact as tools to converge the two separatesocial groups spatially and discursively, theyturn into markers of the limits to the poli-tics of convergence. The urban strategy ofneo-liberal Islamism rests, on the one hand,on the production of space through maxi-misation of rent and, on the other, on the

framing of the social spaces with Islamicrepresentations. In the case of the NorthAnkara City Entrance project, the Islamicrepresentations—the minarets—ended upas signs of the displacement of the squattersdesperately struggling to attain their homes.

Notes

1. For an analysis on the origins and the polit-ical history of the minaret, see Bloom(1989).

2. Most recently, Prime Minister Erdogandeclared that a mosque—‘‘among the larg-est in the world and . visible from every-where in the city’’—was planned to beconstructed on a hilltop in Istanbul(Radikal, 2012).

3. For details of the neo-liberal economic poli-cies pursued by the JDP, see Cizre andYeldan (2005), Yıldırım (2006) and Sarıca(2011).

4. Obviously, the Islamic values were not thesole determinant in the JDP’s success ingaining the consent of the lower classes. Forthe political economy of the cross-class alli-ance that the JDP managed to constitute,see Onisx (2006).

5. Through his observations in Sultanbeyliwhere he conducted fieldwork, Tugal com-ments that ‘‘workers still talked frequentlyof patience in 2006, but now they patientlyaccepted the reigning economic order,rather than patiently and quietly rejecting itlike in 2001’’ (Tugal, 2009, p. 224).

6. The Bayram prayers occur during the Eidal-Fitr at the end of Ramadan and the Eidal-Adha celebrated approximately 70 daysafter the Eid al-Fitr.

7. It has to be noted that the mayor of theAnkara Greater Municipality was the mayorof Kecxioren until he won his current seat in1994. In his third term in office, which cor-responds to the period 2004–09, he clashedwith his successor in Kecxioren, althoughboth of them were elected from the JDP.The party did not renominate the mayor ofKecxioren in 2009, since he was seen as therepresentative of radical Islamism. For a

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similar clash between the neo-liberal Islamismof the JDP and the radical Islamism of the ear-lier period in Sultabeyli, one of the foremostIslamist districts in Istanbul, see Tugal (2009).

8. While they are waiting to return to the areaand move in to their new homes, the squat-ters are living as tenants in different loca-tions and are being paid monthly rent aidof approximately US$150.

9. The relocated squatters are subject to rulesand regulations rearranging the rhythms oftheir everyday practices. In the new hous-ing complexes they are introduced withwritten rules prohibiting the ‘‘misuse’’ ofthe environment such as the spread ofindoor activities (cooking, hosting guests,growing vegetables, etc.) to the outsideand the violation of the clear-cut differen-tiation of public and private spaces. Theserules conflict with the former patterns ofeveryday life for some of the squatters andresult in their being frequently warned bythe security staff. For the frustratingexperiences of the former residents of theNorth Ankara City Entrance Project area,see Erman (2011). For a similar case inBezirganbahcxe, Istanbul, see UzuncxarsxılıBaysal (2009).

10. For examples of such discussions see the‘‘North Ankara City Entrance Project’’ at:http://wowturkey.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=23823andstart=10 (last accessed 5 October2011).

11. It is interesting to note that these photo-graphs were often accompanied by photo-graphs showing the squatters happilydemolishing their own homes. For anexample, see Buyuksxehir Ankara 233, theweekly bulletin of the Ankara GreaterMunicipalty, 17–23 June 2009.

12. See: http://wowturkey.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=23823 (last accessed 5 October 2011).

13. See: http://www.kuzeyankara.net/forum/ (lastaccessed 5 October 2011).

Funding

This research received no specific grant from anyfunding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors.

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Barısx Unlu and KaanAgartan for their comments on earlier draftsof this paper.

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