Making winners: Urban transformation and neoliberal populism in Turkey

Abstract

This study focuses on the distribution of the costs and benefits of Turkey's urban policy. Since 2002, the Justice and Development Party (AKP) government has embraced an ambitious form of capitalism that privatized the benefits of urban transformation while socializing its costs. The government has also adopted populist strategies that enhanced its political support among upper- and lower-income groups and left urban transformation's costs to fall disproportionally on the middle class.