Around the same time violence broke out in Israel and Palestine after tensions boiled over due to planned evictions of Palestinians from the East Jerusalem quarter of Sheikh Jarrah, a documentary was released depicting the displacement in a small area on the fringes of Istanbul called the Palestine neighborhood.
Located in the suburb of Başakşehir on a wooded hillside between a metro line and a block of modern apartments, Palestine is home to around 220 mostly informally-built, shanty-style homes and 1000 residents. Officially known as Güvercintepe, the Palestine neighborhood derives its name from a 2009 struggle in which residents protested planned demolitions, forcing the municipality and contractors to withdraw, according to Yasin Serindere, co-director of Filistin Mahallesi (Palestine Neighborhood).
“But the urban transformation projects in the area were never shelved, because the neighborhood is located in a region with increasing rents due to Kanal Istanbul,” Serindere said, referring to the controversial pet project of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan that involves slicing through the outer European side of Istanbul and creating an artificial shipping canal linking the Black and Marmara Seas. Critics have blasted the project as environmentally disastrous as well as a scheme to boost real estate development in the area.
The Başakşehir Municipality demolished five homes in the lower part of the Palestine neighborhood in November 2020, on the grounds that they needed to make the way for connecting roads to a main highway. Notices were sent to the residents saying that they needed to empty out their homes within seven days. In the 38-minute documentary, which features interviews with a number of residents, one man is filmed unable to hold back tears as he describes how a demolition crew abruptly arrived to tear down his home, forcing him to erect a forlorn makeshift tent over his bed and a table with a tea kettle.
While the construction of Israeli settlements in the West Bank and the evictions of Palestinians from East Jerusalem is a project of gradual ethnic cleansing, the destruction of a few homes at a time in Istanbul's Palestine neighborhood appears to be a gradual erasure of the neighborhood. The Başakşehir municipality informed another small handful of residents in April that they were required to leave their homes.
Most of the residents hold deeds to their, but this doesn't prevent their homes from being expropriated. The sums of 30,000 TL that the municipality has offered in exchange are insufficient, barely enough to cover rent for a year much less a down payment on a new apartment. The inhabitants of Palestine are primarily poor and working class Anatolian immigrants, some of whom eke out a living raising animals.
With rapid growth and transformation that has plunged forward full speed ahead in Istanbul over the past decade, the city is home to many Palestine neighborhoods. In the historic Roma quarter of Sulukule, which was completely demolished in 2009, residents compared their fate to that of the Palestinians, as people unwanted and ultimately forced off the land they lived on for centuries.
For decades, Istanbul was a city that saw the arrival of millions of migrants from Anatolia and grew massively in the process. In recent years, many of the neighborhoods established by these migrants have been torn down in the name of development and higher rents, turning Istanbul to a city of displacement for thousands of people.