Why we didn’t apply for the Deutsch Bank Urban Age Award?
Sulukule, the day after (Najla Osseiran, 2009)
As the Sulukule Studio, we didn’t apply for the Urban Age Award, both due to Deutsche Bank’s role in the mortgage crisis, which triggered the current global crisis, and also for its practices of forced evictions in the USA, after the break-out of the crises.
One of the major actors of global financial capitalism, Deutche Bank, like all the likes of it, has been in the business of sub-prime mortgage bonds - bonds that were dished out to people with limited purchasing power. It was obvious that this balloon would burst one day, price to be paid by the mortgage owners. Finance opportunists like Deutsch Bank, despite knowing what was ahead, carried on with the business in a short-sighted way, a practice that is harshly criticised today even in G20 meetings. Such fecklessness cannot be allowed to hide behind “social responsibility” projects like the Deutsche Bank Urban Age Award.
Since 2006, in the United States, nearly 1 million families have lost their homes as a result of the mortgage crisis - this number is expected to rise up to 5 million in the coming few years 1 (Business Week). According to Deutsch Bank’s own reports, by the year 2011, more than 25 million family’s credit debt will exceed the worth of their homes’ actual value 2 . Deutsch Bank and other banks, leading actors of the mortgage crisis, are not giving consideration for the demands to delay or restructure these debts that surpass the actual house prices 3 . According to the report of Reality Trac, these banks were mobilized to foreclose more than 360 thousand real estate, only within the single month of July 2009. During this process, even tenants living houses with mortgage debt who pay their rents regularly are forced out of their tenements.
We, as Sulukule Studio whose struggle is against forced evictions, find it hypocritical for a company causing tens and thousands of families to lose their homes, and thousands to live in tents or cars, to be giving awards to social urban projects within corporate-social-responsibility schemes, despite showing no signs of backing down from these fatal financial business strategies. We know for a fact how people in İstanbul and other regions are being pushed into cycles of poverty when they lose their homes and their neighbourhoods, in the name of urban renewal projects. We know also that it is impossible for Deutsch Bank not to foresee the impact of their financial business games on millions of families, how millions eventually are impoverished as they lose their homes.
We hear and pay attention to the voices of Americans who loose their homes, and the civic initiatives that struggle with them. True, we have just the perfect project for the Urban Age Award – a unique “social project that aims to improve the quality of urban life and the environment in İstanbul, to be realized through cooperation and association”. But we did not apply to the award –because of the above mentioned reasons. We invite Deutsche Bank – the funder of this award – to be genuinely socially responsible, and urge it to stop this dirty game and help in reversing the processes that leave people homeless. We invite Deutsch Bank to comply with the stated aims of the Award itself - “bring to attention the nature of the problems experienced by the populations living in the city, and support creative solutions”. We expect, urgently, new and creative settlements that address the problems experienced in the US cities. When they do this, next year the jury from the United States may consider giving the Deutsch Bank Urban Age Award to Deutche Bank itself.
Best regards,
Sulukule Studio*
*Within the scope of an urban renewal project, people have been forcefully evicted from Sulukule one of the oldest areas of Istanbul’s settled Roma community a neighbourhood of 5000 people, situated within the city’s ancient walls. The renewal project led to the demolishing of the homes of the residents, and the renewal plan involve a totally new residential quarter with car parks and shopping centres. The processes of displacement of the local population in Sulukule took place through a series of legal arrangements, deteriorations in daily life and living conditions, various speculations, demolitions and forced evictions. Currently, the remaining 70 people are the gravest victims, consisting of either those who have resisted until now, or those who have no other place to go to. However, since the implementation of the new project has not yet started, there is still hope for an alternative approach where the residents of Sulukule are able to come back to their neighbourhood and where their living conditions are improved. Sulukule Studio brought together many concerned individuals and civic organisations, such as the Sulukule Platform, Sulukule Roma Culture Association and Autonomous Planners Without Borders (STOP) and prepared precisely what all of these organisations have been arguing for all a long: a socially-focused rehabilitation and neighbourhood development plan.