Özet:

Urban transformation projects (UTP) have become a common practice in our cities under transformation by neoliberal urban politics. This article aims to examine the everyday lives and practices in their new environment of the ex-gecekondu residents, who were displaced when their gecekondus were demolished in UTPs and were relocated in TOKI’s social housing estates. It is based upon a field study carried out in the Karacaören-TOKI housing estate where the families without title deeds to their gecekondu land in the Northern Ankara Urban Transformation Project were located.  Sixty in-depth interviews were conducted, complemented by the information obtained through participant observation and from the analyses of field notes. The everyday life in the housing estate is presented under the titles of neighborliness, rules of the housing estate, housing estate/block management, monthly apartment installments, interaction with the city, institutions and establishments in the housing estate, and identity and status concerns. As the conclusion, we can say that many of the families are put into a difficult situation when they were displaced from their gecekondus and were relocated in a housing environment designed to fit middle-class life when they lack the material and cultural resources to sustain it, and especially when their monthly installments increase twice a year, indexed to the raise in the salaries of civil servants. On the other hand, the new developments in the housing estate, such as the shopping mall and the Altındağ Municipality’s ‘Ladies Club’ and ‘Youth Center’ tend to bring personal and social transformations in the ex-gecekondu people.The question of what kind of a community will emerge will clarify in the course of time. What is clear now is the determination of the ex-gecekondu population to keep their rural identities and habits.

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