Sulukule, Forced from their homes
Young mother and her child take a stroll in the ruins
By Iason Athanasiadis - GlobalPost - March 2, 2009
ISTANBUL — They lived for almost 1,000 years around the remains of Istanbul's Byzantine walls. But when they were forced to leave, the gypsies of Sulukule only found out about their eviction from the journalists flocking to their shantytowns to cover the story.
"We heard from the media that the neighborhood would be destroyed to make way for luxury residential developments," Mehmet Asim Hallaq, 55, a spokesman for the ongoing campaign opposing the removal, told me in the summer of 2007. "This is a kind of aesthetic assimilation they're trying to impose on us."
It is all part of what locals call the "Dubaification of Istanbul." Kemal Ataturk’s secular Turkish republic has strived to put water between its Ottoman Empire precursor and the European vision it harbors of itself. With Turkey’s beaches beating Spain to second place as the holiday choice of Britons for the first time last summer, a real estate boom has swept across the country.
Istanbul's gypsies say they have inhabited Sulukule ever since the 11th century, when their Roma ancestors arrived in Constantinople, the capital of Byzantium.
Iason Athanasiadis is reporting from Turkey on a grant from the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting.
Photo Gallery:
Young mother and her child take a stroll in the ruins
Young boys watch with fascination as the demolition vehicles wreak destruction from behind wire fences.
A young gipsy girl strikes a dance pose next to the rubble of homes as a woman walks past, carting her belongings behind her.
A crane batters the rubble next to the ancient Byzantine walls on the edges of historical Constantinople.
A view of devastation from a derelict building.
Two dogs nestle in a sofa left behind by families fleeing the bulldozers.
A little boy creates his own private demolition as he frantically batters a brick wall.
The fresh ruins of a house stand alongside decidedly more antique remains of the Byzantine walls surrounding the city formerly known as Constantinople, the capital of Byzantium.
A young child smiles against a backdrop of ruins.
A woman pokes her head out of a window of the single remaining house in a rubble-strewn street
A boy carries a little girl for on one their last journeys through their old neighbourhood.
Three Roma ladies pose outside their houses a few days before abandoning them forever.
Stencils, graffiti and chipped plaster cover the surface of a ramshackle wall in Sulukule.
Sulukule Platform activists hold a last press conference to a background of demolition, demanding a halt to the destruction of properties.
In the summer of 2007, a Roma band strikes up a season of protest concerts in opposition to the planned demolition of Sulukule.
A young Roma boy twirls on his head during a break-dancing demonstration in the summer of 2007.
A homeless man fashions a makeshift shelter for himself in the ruins of the Byzantine walls surrounding Istanbul next to the new headquarters of Istanbul’s national gas company.
A woman walks to her local grocer, one of the few businesses that will make the transition into the new neighbourhood.
A scrap-metal collector rummages among the rubble and twisted wires left behind by the demolition teams.
A man climbs down from the roof of his semi-demolished house as a wrecking vehicle batters a building across the road.
A semi-finished new development stands in the background of a Ottoman charitable fountain in the Nesleshan neighbourhood adjoining Sulukule.