The Excess of Istanbul’s Urban Transformation: Çıkmacılar (Removers) in-between Informal Urbanization and Mass-Demolition

Çıkmacıs refer to people who salvage abandoned buildings for their removable and recyclable parts in Istanbul. Mapping demolition sites in the current situation that are subject to urban transformation reveals where Çıkmacıs operate. These sites pop out constantly all-around Istanbul as the urban remaking projects take over. Çıkmacıs accumulate secondhand elements that they remove from these sites in their peripheral yards and trade them informally to geographies out of Istanbul. The trading of salvaged building elements is particularly dependent on social networks that distribute them not only within Turkey but also to neighboring countries such as Georgia. Social and solidarity networks which are formed through migration from rural to the city in form of kinship and compatriot relations. The story of a window frame from a demolished housing block in Istanbul, going through neoliberal remaking, travelling to a Georgian post-soviet flat in Tbilisi, a city trying to open up to global investment, is important to understand the ramifications of these processes. During the research, a scrapper family’s journey starting from Istanbul back to their village in central Anatolia where they migrated from 20 years ago was being monitored for two years. Along with participant observations and field notes, all the members of the family were investigated with a focus on their halftime profession; farmer and waste collector. Çıkmacıs create a knowledge through their activities; finding their own ways for their livelihood. Eventually, they turn disadvantages of lacking infrastructure into an advantage while proposing a sustainable solution for recycling and reuse.