Bağlı, Mazhar and Binici, Abdulkadir. Kentleşme Tarihi ve Diyarbakır Kentsel Gelişimi. Ankara: Bilimadamı Yayınları, 2005, 183pp.
ABSTRACT
History of Urbanisation and Diyarbakir’s Urban Development
Kentleşme Tarihi ve Diyarbakır Kentsel Gelişimi
This 183 page-long book engages with the problems of urbanisation and migration in Diyarbakir. The writers of the book claim to trace Diyarbakir’s social problems to its urban development. They believe that their study is unique as it attempts to analyse the materially tangible city together with its population. The book refers to the sources of various disciplines such as sociology, anthropology, architecture, and history. In addition to “Preface,” “Introduction,” and “Conclusion,” it comprises five basic chapters and two appendices, which include “The European Declaration of Urban Rights” and several poems on urban life.
Bağlı and Binici designate Diyarbakir as a crossroad where the nationalist ideology of the Republican period, and an antagonist local identity regarded as an “other” by the Republican ideology met. According to them, this meeting resulted in poverty, desire to earn a living without working, and the emergence of illegal organisations.
Thus, they maintain, while Diyarbakir was one of the most important cities in producing culture during the Ottoman period, it has now become a city infamous for its political inclinations. They argue that due to this fact the state ideology has been merely concerned with security in the city, whereas the local administrations, which have emphasised the city’s local culture, have transformed the city to a “mega-village”. In order to defend this thesis, Bağlı and Binici present an area study, which deals with the population of rural origin that migrated to Diyarbakir between 1990 and 2000.
Hivren Demir-Atay
Demir-Atay, Hivren. '" History of Urbanisation and Diyarbakir’s Urban Development'". Translated by Hivren Demir-Atay. In Cities as Built and Lived Environments: Scholarship from Muslim Contexts, 1875 to 2011, by Aptin Khanbaghi. 73. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2014.
Muslim Civilisations Abstracts - The Aga Khan University
