Continuities in policy change: The case of squatter housing redevelopment strategies in Türkiye

Abstract

The introduction of the neoliberal agenda in the 1980s marked a milestone for urban studies, where the neoliberal framework became widely accepted as both given and explanatory for understanding urban phenomena. This tendency often obscured policy continuities rooted in the historical and social contexts of specific geographies. Squatter housing policies in Türkiye were no exception, and redevelopment of squatter houses has increasingly been associated with neoliberal restructuring. Although new mechanisms were introduced in squatter housing policies in the 1980s, this study posits that these policies evolved incrementally and in an ad hoc manner, shaped by path dependency and extensions of earlier approaches. From a historical institutionalist perspective, two key continuities were detected through an analysis of legislative changes and policy documents in the squatter housing transformation. First, urban policy has consistently relied on past policy failures rather than radical reforms, as seen in the extension and refinement of amnesty laws and redevelopment regulations. Second, these policies have institutionalized practices that blur the boundaries between legal and illegal redevelopment, reinforcing a concession-driven urbanization model that has persisted since the mid-1940s. Above all, the underlying principle has consistently been the promotion of private property ownership and the expansion of the housing supply since the first attempt to remedy the squatter housing problem. Based on these observations, this study challenges perspectives that rely on the neoliberal conceptualization of urban redevelopment; instead, it positions neoliberalism as a contextual framework that reinforces existing policy paths, while highlighting the enduring continuities in policymaking.