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Becoming “Urban” or Remaining “Rural”: The Views of Turkish Rural-to-Urban Migrants on the “Integration” Question
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 29 January 2009
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The mass migration from rural areas to larger cities in the Third World and the rapid social changes entailed by this transformation have attracted the attention of social and political scientists since the 1950s. The problematic issue of the “integration” of rural migrants into the urban society and the changes this transformation has brought about have long been among the most studied questions. Yet they still call for more research to increase our understanding of the phenomenon, particularly in our era, which is witnessing radical shifts from earlier times in terms of social, economic, and technological characteristics. The question of “integration to what?” becomes important in political and practical terms. In the 1950s, when mass migration to cities started, the answer to this question seemed quite clear. The cities were the places of the modernizing elites, especially in the case of Ankara, the capital of the modern Turkish Republic. As in other Third World countries, the modernizing bureaucratic and military elites of the early republic, who had assumed the role of transforming the society into a modern, Western one, regarded the city as an effective means for the acculturation of its inhabitants to modern–Western values and ways of life. The modernization theory, which maintains a dichotomy between rural and urban, supported this idea.
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References
Notes
Author's note: I thank Professor Paul Stirling and Professor Ahmet Evin for their invaluable comments.
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9 The “apartmentization” of BağÇlar gained momentum after the master plan for the area was completed in 1980.
10 Alevism (Anatolian Shiis) is a sect in Islam that prescribes more egalitarian relations than mainstream Sunnism. Recent research in Turkey in which the data have been analyzed in terms of different religious sects demonstrates that Sunni gecekondu residents are more conservative, supporting traditional gender roles more often than do the Alevis: Birsen Gökçe, ed., Gecekondularda Ailelerarasi Geleneksel Dayamsmamn Çağdaş Organizasyonlara Donusumu (The Transformation of the Interfamilial Traditional Solidarity in Gecekondu Settlements to Modern Organizations) (Ankara: Undersecretariat of Women and Social Services, 1993), 201. Kemal Karpat (The Gecekondu: Rural Migration and Urbanization [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976], 119–21) found that Alevis formed an egalitarian society which was open to new ideas while preserving the sense of village solidarity and community.
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15 In her empirical research carried out in a gecekondu district in Ankara mainly inhabited by people from the cities of Erzurum and Kars, Ayata (”Gecekondularda Kimlik Sorunu,” 97) found the other requirements of membership in the hemsehri network of those from Erzurum to be belonging to the same Islamic sect (Sunni), speaking the same language (Kurdish), and being from the same region of the country (Eastern Anatolia). In the author's own research, the focus was not on these categories. Yet the exploratory nature of the research enabled these categories to emerge. The relatively large number of people in the research who identified themselves as Alevis (about 46.5%), which the author found as she became more embedded in the gecekondu community, revealed the significance of “Alevism versus Sunnism” as an identity category among rural migrants. But in contrast to Ayata's findings, which pointed to the cleavage of different ethnic and religious groups in different parts of the settlement and the tension among them, this author observed the efforts of many women to play down these differences. This may be due to the relatively heterogeneous nature of the settlement. As some people who once lived in the same community with their relatives and fellow villagers moved to apartments, new people from various parts of the country moved in. The Kurd-versus-Turk issue emerged only in one case: a woman from Sivas mentioned being a Kurd, and thus having Kurdish (not Turkish) as her native language, as preventing her from considering herself an urbanite.
16 Ibid., 97.
17 For example, a woman who moved to the city in her late thirties told her sister-in-law, who had moved to the city right after she got married, where her family had become better off, that she was now an urbanite because her family had sold the land in the village and owned two apartments in the city. The sister-in-law immediately objected, saying that she still considered herself a villager.
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26 Heper, Metin, Turkiye'de Kent Göçmeni ve Bürokratik Örğütler (Urban Migrants and Bureaucratic Organizations in Turkey) (Istanbul: Ucdal, 1983), 57.Google Scholar
27 The following is what the relatives said about the family: “they are conceited”; “they look down on gecekondu residents”; “they say villagers are backward”; “they are ashamed of their elderly parents who wear shalvars”; “they do not want to share their home and friends with us.”
28 Kandiyoti, Deniz, “Bargaining with Patriarchy,” Gender and Society 2 (1988): 274–90.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
29 Stirling, “Cause, Knowledge, and Change,” 213.
30 When the author visited one of these women in the gecekondu that she rented, she found her in a run-down room with a little old furniture around, blow-drying her hair in front of a broken mirror. The contrast between the well-dressed young woman with well-groomed looks and the poverty of the place was striking. It reflected the efforts that the woman made to dress well and look good, despite her severe financial problems.
31 For example, when the author met one of these women in a neighbor's house, the woman insisted that the author stop by her house on her way back. She insisted that she would bake a cake (this is not common in the gecekondu settlement, because the ingredients are rather costly, and an oven is required). She did, but they could not eat it, because there was a power failure while the cake was baking.
32 Traditional full pants gathered at the ankles.
33 Sencer Ayata, “Toplumsal Cevre Olarak Gecekondu ve Apartman” (The Squatter House and the Apartment as Social Environments), Toplum ve Bilim 46/47 (summer 1989-fall 1989): 101–27; Mubeccel Kiray, “Apartmanlaşma ve Modern Orta Tabakalar” (Apartmentization and Modern Middle Strata), Cevre 4 (1979): 78.
34 Ayata, “Toplumsal Cevre Olarak,” 114–18.
35 Ibid., 104.
36 Erman, Tahire, “Women and the Housing Environment: The Experiences of Turkish Migrant Women Squatter (Gecekondu) and Apartment Housing,” Environment and Behavior 28 (1996): 764–98.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
37 Ibid., 786.
38 In the research, there were a couple of women in apartments whose families were very conservative. They were not even allowed to go to the local grocery store by themselves, though it was only a few buildings away.
39 Exchanging votes for title deeds in squatter neighborhoods and sometimes selling their houses to contractors in return for several apartments has made some squatters quite wealthy in a brief period of time.
40 The unemployment rate in cities reached 13 percent in April 1994; in October 1995, it was 10 percent: State Institute of Statistics, Statistical Yearbook of Turkey 1996 (Ankara: SIS Publication, 1997), 280; many of the unemployed live in squatter settlements. In metropolitan cities, the wealthiest one-fifth of the population receives 57.2 percent of the national revenue, whereas the poorest one-fifth of the population receives only 4.8 percent of the national revenue: State Institute of Statistics, Statistical Yearbook of Turkey 1996, 629.Google Scholar
41 Some of them have become quite popular in the music industry through their songs addressing these issues.
42 Sencer Ayata, “Varoşlar, Catişma ve Şiddet” (Slums, Conflict and Violence), Gorus (June 1996): 18–22.
43 Erder, Istanbul'a bir Kent Kondu: Umraniye, 291.
44 Erder, Sema, Kentsel Gerilim (Urban Tension) (Ankara: Ugur Mumcu Vakfi, 1997), 172.Google Scholar
45 Ayata, “Varojlar, Catişma ve Şiddet,” 18–22.
46 Erder, Kentsel Gerilim, 173.
47 Tansi Senyapili, “Economic Change and the Gecekondu Family,” in Sex Roles, 237–48.
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