I spent about a year and a half living in the Tarlabasi neighborhood in Istanbul. When my husband-to-be had moved into the area several years before, it was a lively, mostly Romany neighborhood with colorful street life, and a bad reputation. By the time I moved there, it contained a strange mix of African refugees, Romany and Kurdish families, students, and a few arty foreign expat types (that would be me). Each group seemed to keep to itself. I do remember the night Galatasaray won the Eurocup 2000 and sent the neighborhood into an all night frenzy of celebration which united all the different ethnic groups into a mass of cheering, dancing, and drumming best friends. Tarlabasi did have its dark side from which its bad reputation had come. Thieves would pickpocket people in the trendy neighboring Taksim Square and Istiklal then quickly disapear down the steep maze of Tarlabasi streets, or run into a building and make an escape leaping across the roofs of the area. There was a street full of brothels and we'd often hear fights. However, both my husband and I have a certain fondness of the area and remember the weekends where the neighborhood would resound with music as a couple held a wedding ceremony in the street. The buildings were run down but some were old and very pretty though much in need of restoration. Clothing hung in garlands across the streets fastened on lines between the buildings. Street vendors would walk the streets pushing their carts or calling out their wares. We could practically tell the time depending on whose call we heard.

In 2004 we considered buying a building but ran out of time before we found anything. I do have to admit, aside from our fond memories, we thought a building would be a good investment because the cost of real estate in the Taksim and Galatasaray area had skyrocketed leaving buildings in Tarlabasi extremely inexpensive in comparison. One sad thing we did notice was the lack of Romany (and African) people. We later learned there had been a battle between the Kurds and Romany and the Romany lost. I don't know what happened to the Africans. Maybe they moved on to other countries. After all, Istanbul is a place where a lot of people just end up on their way from one place to another.

4 years later we returned to Istanbul for a couple months and found buildings that were $25000 in 2004 had grown in value and were selling for $100000 or more. We sighed at another missed chance.

Then as we were walking down Istiklal I noticed in the city gallery space an exhibit entitled Tarlabasi. Tarlabasi was written with a trendy typeface. The exhibit was on a new development project set to transform the Tarlabasi neighborhood into a trendy modern development full of cobblestone streets, pastel painted buildings, business suit clad residents talking on cellphones and attractive fit young women jogging down the streets. I found the whole thing a little sinister, especially after seeing what is happening with the redevelopment of Sulukule, where practically the whole population is being forced to leave and most of the buildings are being torn down.

Yesterday I asked a friend of mine who owns a couple buildings in Tarlabasi what she thought of the whole thing. She gave me some interesting details. Essentially, the redevelopment plan gave one developer (a friend of the president or someone else in power, most likely) the right to buy up any building he wanted to at a percentage of its value through eminent domain. I had heard a similar thing about Sulukule, where residents, especially with the skyrocketing real estate prices, have no chance of finding a house for what they are being paid. Those who do sell, are granted a small share in the profits from the building but are not allowed to live in the building, thereby creating a new mass of homeless people. "Where will they go?" my friend asked. "These are 80 year old prostitutes who survive by selling tissues in the street." I asked my friend if she knew what happened to the Romany people. She said they had set up a tent city somewhere and that last winter a baby had frozen to death there.

It makes me livid when I see development occuring with complete disregard to the people who live there and the people whose lives are being damaged for the sake of one person's (or a small group's) profit. As I see places modernizing, it seems there are more things that are damaging people's lives instead of offering them the benefits of modern technology, additional prosperity, etc. If they are going to redevelop someplace, shouldn't it be an opportunity to benefit as many people as possible? Why can't they look at the area as a community and address the problems affecting that community instead of chasing them out and trying to sweep them out of site to somewhere they can just die unnoticed? As someone from the US, a prosperous country which, though many people insist is an evil place they insist on wanting to have the same things they protest against: The McDonalds all over the world aren't packed with Americans, they are packed with natives of those countries. I don't drink soft drinks and many times walking into a restaurant, Coke or Pepsi products are practically the only choice. In the 9 years that have passed since my first visit to Istanbul, I've seen credit cards, home mortgages and personal debt appear. Though there are still lots of small independent businesses, it seems there are getting to be more international chains which fill the multitudes of new shopping malls as well as trendy streets.

I've also seen the loss of delicious produce. I used to rave about Turkish tomatoes. They were so full of flavor and delicious. To my dismay, many of the fruit and vegetable stands I used to see (in fact, a whole covered vegetable market) have disappeared. It seems this has wiped out the population of fresh local fruits and vegetables and replaced them with flavorless hothouse varieties, pumped full of hormones and probably trucked in from far off locations.

Peoples' lives seem to have become more hectic too. Though I still see [people drinking tea in serene Turkish chai bahces, sometimes just a few chairs and tables in a park, it seems these are slowly disapearing as well. It makes me sad but I'm just an outsider looking in. I see the things we've lost in the US, the gradual transformation from neighborhoods and towns to suburban developments with strip malls and no individual character. I'm sorry to see this happening in the rest of the world as well.