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Sulukule - Tasoluk

i was invited to istanbul by dutch "noordkaap artspace" for their istanbul program to develop a fieldtour linked with ongoing city politics:

Sulukule once was a roma settlement on the old byzantine walls.
it was founded long before the turkish settlers arrived and thus was older then the city of Istanbul itsself.
In the year of 2008 people were evicted and their houses were demolished by the local government.
Officially the people from Sulukule were offered to buy houses from the government Organisation TOKI in remote Tasoluk.
In reality nonone could ever afford to buy those, esp to manage their lives in Tasoluk as it is 40Km meaning 4hrs by public transport from the city centre.
In former Sulukule the government's own housing company TOKI is actually constructing a gated community with houses in ottoman style, who should refer to the history of the area, which was devloped into a building site by speculators, whiping out the existence of the people that lived there for centuries.

We will start the fieldtrip at the Construction site of former Sulukule, where we will get a brief introduction by local artists, about the past events. By doing the fieldtrip to Tasoluk with public transport, we will experience the distance and how the plan to reestablish the people from Sulukue in this remote area was in the end nothing else but a planned whipeout to Sulukule Community. In Tasoluk we will meet some of the locals, who are mainly middle class people working close by or being senior citizens spending their retirement there, out of the hectic from the inner city.
Please don’t expect a this tour to be a finished product. The idea was to get a short view into two worlds coliiding that are typical fort he latest development in istanbul. Also i wanted to bring together local people who are very aware of this process and visitors, who might not have heard about these developments. In the best way this tour can start a discussion, and increase the perception of your local surroundings.

The tour is bascially bringing together the two areas, that were both representing a typical istanbul, but two totally different population and interest groups, linked to the actual development in the city.

Date: Saturday 24 September 2011

The fieldtrip starts at 12.00h
at Mimar Sinan University on the Meclis-i Mebusan Caddesi, nr. 24

We will use public transport, so be prepared this trip taking about 8 hours,
Please make sure to bring enough to drink and eat.

Costs of public transport are somewhere between 10 and 25 Turkish Lira.

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