Pardoning Kaçak: politics of building amnesties and the making of the (im)moral urban economy in Istanbul

Like many metropolises in the global South, unregulated/informal (kaçak) construction is not an exception in Istanbul, but rather the norm. Most recently, in a 2018 building amnesty dubbed as ‘the Building Peace’ (İmar Barışı), 1.8 million kaçak structures in Istanbul were pardoned by the government. Given the ubiquity of building amnesties of this sort and their failure to prevent unregulated construction, this article questions what role the concept of kaçak plays if it fails to mark a boundary between formal and informal. By tracing the long history of building amnesties and examining how Istanbulites have partook in the 2018 Building Peace, I suggest that kaçak is an ongoing conversation on value in the city. Contrary to mainstream accounts that reduce building amnesties to mere populism, I understand kaçak, a la Ayşe Buğra (1998), as an important component of a larger urban moral economy through which conceptions of justice, reciprocity, public amenity, and good life are constantly negotiated. Thinking through the negotiations over kaçak allows us to see a multi-valent urban moral economy, illustrated in the article through the example of Kuzguncuk neighborhood where ultimate legalization of kaçak housing is contingent upon resident’s consent to an urban renewal project.