Gecekondu, Factory, Municipality: Three Fields of Spatial Politics

Chapter 4 explored militants’ own production of urban space, interactively generated through the performance of a repertoire of spatial tactics in different sites across the whole city. One consequence of these “tactics of space” (de Certeau 1984) was endemic social friction as groups fought for control of the political affordances of places, resulting in increasing numbers of activists’ wounding or killing. Chapter 5 continues this exploration of activists’ constitution of the city but attends to the political and ethical engagements of militant groups in three more particular spatial arenas or political regions of Istanbul’s urban geography: in squatter settlements (5.1);