Producing force and consent: Urban transformation and corporatism in Turkey

Attempts to explain the electoral and economic success of the Justice and Development Party (AKP) in Turkey usually refer to its integration of neoliberalism and a 'protestant ethic' into its ideology. This argument, however, is incomplete in two ways. Firstly, a factor equally as important as the AKP's 'passive revolution' is its continuation of a corporatist tradition deeply rooted both in the Republic and in Islam. Secondly, the AKP's hegemonic model is based on the construction sector as the dominant sector to promote economic growth and progress in the country. With the invention of governance models to commodify space and to allocate its surplus to its own budgets, the AKP's political and economic strategy to become and stay hegemonic is inherently spatial. It satisfies many members of society via the redistribution of non-commodified space, interconnects individuals via property relations and is used to avert economic and political crises. This paper will conclude with a discussion of the relation between the AKP's politics of space and the recent Gezi Park protests, and examine to what degree the demonstrators threatened the party's hegemony.