Contesting the Urban Green in Istanbul: The Case of Validebag Grove
Author: Aysegul Boyali, aysegulboyali@sakarya.edu.tr
Department: Cultural Studies
University: Yildiz Technical University, Turkey
Supervisor: Prof. Dr. Aysegul Baykan
Year of completion: 2024
Language of dissertation: English
Keywords:
Urban Political Ecology
, Urban Public Green
, Environmental Struggles
, Conservation Narratives
Areas of Research:
Environment and Society
, Regional and Urban Development
, Social Movements, Collective Action and Social Change
Abstract
This study examines the social production of Istanbul's Validebag Grove and the shifting meanings ascribed to it within evolving political and economic regimes and changing landscape dynamics of Istanbul’s urban green. It approaches groves as socially mediated environments shaped by complex power dynamics that are historically and geographically situated, applying the critical framework of urban political ecology (UPE). To avoid essentialist and normative interpretations of public green spaces, the study first contextualizes the historical development of urban gardens and parks across the world and in Istanbul, with an emphasis on their prevailing landscape ideologies, to set the stage for the analysis of Validebag’s evolution. It then examines Validebag’s transformation from an Ottoman-era pleasure garden for the ruling elite to health center for the needy, addressing population crises, economic challenges, and national identity-building in early Republican Turkey with its welfarist policies, and ultimately to a contested urban grove under neoliberal policies post-1980. The study draws on archival research—including newspapers, grey literature, and state documents—and ethnographic fieldwork, involving in-depth interviews with ordinary users and activists. Applying broader concepts of spatial and political-cultural "fixes", it reveals that the “ideology of nature” intertwined with technocratic management has featured in the neoliberalization of Validebag’s socio-nature, facilitating its commercialization, marginalizing its use-value, fragmenting its spatial integrity, and attempting to instrumentalize the Grove for urban capitalist growth through park projects proposed by the local municipality since the 1990s. It argues that these projects aim to enclose spontaneous, vernacular uses and prevent reappropriation of the public space from below to fit neoliberal ideals. Yet, these park plans encountered strong opposition from grassroots activism, reclaiming Validebag as a “grove”. Analyzing the history of struggles and exploring both the activists' and ordinary users' competing everyday experiences, sense-making processes, and conservation narratives, the study reveals the complexity of values and practices among different actors—local authorities, activists, and ordinary users—within public green spaces under neoliberalism, as sites of contest. While activists primarily view the Grove as an ecosystem, prioritizing nature protection over human use, ordinary users hold nuanced perceptions that defy a single conservation narrative, shaped by their individual experiences. These competing visions and uses are negotiated within the Validebag’s landscape, reflecting a multi-layered frame of meaning, use, and conservation of nature within Istanbul’s transforming public green.
