A Divided Capital: Residential Segregation in Ankara

OpenAlex İngilizce

The 2000s have certainly been a period of massive changes in Turkish society.Looking backwards, one can safely argue that nothing has remained the same in Turkey since the early 2000s, which marks probably one of the most significant turning points in near history in political, social and economic terms.In this decade, Justice and Development Party (JDP) won three successive elections starting in 2002, increasing its share of votes in each case.The success of the JDP, an Islamist-leaning party, represented a turning point in Turkish political history and was surely unimaginable as far as the political climate of the 1990s is considered.In the economic sphere, Turkey registered a remarkable growth over the ten years, to such an extent that it is expected to be one of the world's fastest growing economy between the years of 2012 and 2017 (OECD, 2012).The gross domestic product (GDP) per capita, for instance, improved in this period, jumping from 3,492$ in 2002 to 10,067$ in 2010 according to Turkish Statistical Institute (TurkStat) figures.Yet in this term, not only the macro economy, but also the social and institutional infrastructure have been subjected to structural transformations with neoliberal policies being implemented in all aspects.First and foremost, regulatory state interventions in social and economic sphere have reached such levels that were unthinkable in previous periods.The relations with the European Union during this period also provided an important context for the implementation of a neoliberal agenda with explicit social and regulatory components (Öniş, 2012).The health and social security systems were adjusted in line with these new reforms.Public expenditures, for instance, especially in the realms of health and education have considerably grown.In terms of percentages, health spending that accounted for 3.7 % of GDP in 2002 increased to 4.4 % in 2011.