be farmers or livestock5 breeders. One of them explained that he migrated to Istanbul in the 1980s to seek a better livelihood because of unemployment in his village. With the help of a relative, he started working as a waste picker and scrap collector when he migrated to Istanbul. He stated: "I found this job through a contact at the municipality. I am lucky to find this job; however, we have a short contract.Our job security is weak, but it is better than to go around all day scavenging waste". By and large, the informal pickers were hired by facilities like Esenler or licensed private companies to collect and recycle waste.

*Figure 5.2: A recycling worker is collecting paper boxes on the street in Istanbul. They rummage through Istanbul with their pushcarts called "çekçek".*

Source: Ali Saltan Archive

Close to the Esenler municipal recycling facility, there were several private plastic recycling depots in Topkapı industrial zone, among other small industrial production establishments. They granulate plastic waste and sell it to large-scale factories. One of the depots' owners stated that he was buying PVC window frames from scrap collectors who salvaged demolition sites. Some self-employed workers were working with him regularly.The owner was buying these frames by the kilogram and then separated the metal profiles and

5 The livestock was killed by the Turkish Military in the 1980s and breeding is banned in the pastures located in south-east Turkey (Zeybek 2020).

sold them to another metal recycling depot in the area. In the depot, the plastic granulating machine was breaking the frames into small pieces. After being traded as raw material, he explained: "PVC window frames become drainage pipes in a factory". After analyzing the exchange at this kind of depot, one realizes that a scrap collector is no different than a waste recycling worker (Figure 5.2) who, as a self-employed individual, sells waste as a commodity; by means of collecting, dismantling, salvaging, or "putting the waste into the carrier, segregating and classifying, all constitute both physical and social labor spent to make waste ready for recycling" (Dinler 2016, 38).

*Figure 5.3: Salvaging an apartment building in Kadıköy6*

Source: Author's own

The municipalities and their privatized companies *wantto* adhere to EU recycling standards. In the absence of succeeding that, waste pickers, scrap collectors, and *çıkmacıs* (Figure 5.3) continue to recycle and repurpose waste. The

6 At this instant, Engin, Jabir, and Hayatullah are taking down a window frame that faces the Marmara Sea. Engin is hanging out the window (dangerously) to retrieve one last piece. The room is full of debris such as the long PVC profiles lying on the floor. Walking inside the large living room is almost impossible because of all the broken things, especially the broken glass. At the back, the edge of Kınalı Island can be seen, which is an expensive view and reveals this as an expensive neighborhood.

functioning of waste management systems depends on the symbiosis between formal and informal actors. Here, informality should be defined as a heuristic device that helps us think about the blurry border between formal and informal (Roy 2011, 223). It should not be regarded as an economic or social problem but rather as a social existence that can help us understand adaptation, practicality and negotiation practices of street labor (Bayat 2004). Because of this, 'unrecognized' rather than 'informal' is a more fitting definition of their legal and social status.

#### 5.2.2 Unrecognized Actors: Çıkmacıs

Unrecognized laborers in the recycling sector are mostly rural migrants who were able to move to Istanbul in the 1970s and, more recently, refugees. There are two prominent actors in street collection work: waste pickers and scrap collectors. Prior to the daily collection of the municipal waste, which ends up in separation facilities or landfills, the waste bins are visited by the waste pickers who separate and collect recyclable materials and objects. As unregistered and unlicensed laborers in the recycling industry, they sell their waste to metal and plastic warehouses (Dinler 2016; Tuçaltan 2018). Day and night, they roam around the city with their pull carts from one garbage bin to another.

Unlike waste pickers, scrap collectors do not sort out solid waste. They roam around the neighborhoods collecting metal scrap, unused or damaged electronic equipment, old furniture, and household objects of any kind. While shouting "*eskici"* (ragman) from behind their pushcarts, they call out for old stuff and discards to buy from residents. Either they get the objects for free or haggle down to a very low amount of money. Later, they sell collected household items from their stall, pushcarts or flea markets. Sometimes they deal with second-hand shops where second-hand furniture and electronic appliances are sold. Additionally, they trade metal scraps to recycling warehouses or factories. Scrap collectors operate in a zone between street refuse and building salvage because of their mobility and adaptability to secondhand commodities.

Waste pickers are perceived as competitors by the private sector and municipalities. Such competition by the latter is unfair because state-supported bodies have the legislative power to marginalize waste pickers. Unfortunately, waste pickers have limited resources to organize themselves against this competition or related conflicts. Because they are self-employed, they are not represented by any recognized professional body. In South America, waste picker organizations and cooperatives (e.g, OPDS in Argentina and Coopcent ABC in Brazil) contribute to making policy frameworks (Gutberlet et al. 2017). It also shows that the circular economy is not only bound to technical modernization and formal governance issues.

*Figure 5.4: Moving salvaged building components7*

Source: Author's own

Architectural salvage relates to the restoration and conservation of old building parts with historical and aesthetic significance (Addis 2006). During the fieldwork, I encountered a few architectural salvagers who sell secondhand parts of buildings because of their antique or vintage value. In contrast to this, the *çıkmacıs* mainly dismantle modern concrete apartment buildings from the 1960s that were renovated or remodeled with new building parts. Being in good condition, those parts have the potential to become part of the circular economy.

7 A scrap collector is bringing a window frame of a gecekondu to a supply yard. The frame weighs between 30 and 40 kilos, depending on the metal profiles inside. The gecekondu was demolished a few hours before. Other items (a washing machine and a satellite TV antenna) in the truck are taken to another second-hand shop. This is a typical size and type of truck for Çıkmacıs.

The *çıkmacıs* are the main actors in building salvage. The city is repaired and renewed by such labor, "continuously re-creating the conditions of possibility for urban life and capitalist enterprise" (Gidwani 2015, 576). When urban renewal via demolitions accelerated in all districts of Istanbul, the workload created job opportunities for the recycling market. Abandoned buildings became a resource (Figure 5.4) and demolition contractors, scrap collectors, and other entrepreneurs were able to benefit. After the intensification of demolitions, the scrap collectors expanded their business with their family-oriented workforce.They brought their relatives from their home villages. If the number of workers was insufficient, they employed Syrian and Afghan refugee workers for cheap labor. Through these strategies, they have adapted to the dynamics of neoliberal urbanization.

Source: Author's own

8 The truck belongs to Engin.  The pieces are stacked nicely to organize the load's volume. They will take them to a scrap dealer in the industrial zone. The fences of the demolition site are poorly placed and without a proper door. They have to sleep on the premises to protect their reclaimed materials.

*Çıkmacıs* generate income from two areas: the recycling sector and the second-hand market. First, they sell recyclable materials to municipality depots or private recycling factories. In this sort of exchange, they are like paper collectors: they act as middlemen between waste and recycling factories, sell their labor, and trade sorted waste as a commodity. For example, the recycled metal prices depend on global exchange prices (Corwin 2018; Dinler 2016). Second, they are part of an unregulated second-hand network of component reuse. Often, they reclaim, collect and repair second-hand building elements in their depots which are visited by a range of customers or whole-sellers locally or from afar (Figure 5.5). Their prices are regulated according to the cost of new products and labor expenses.

Through kinship and village fellowship relations, recycling labor and construction work are distributed among migrants dispossessed from their rural livelihoods (Erman 2001). For instance, most waste pickers come from Kurdish towns; scrap collectors are usually from Nevşehir; scrap dealers come from Niğde;Malatyais the origin city ofmost building demolishers; the workers who dismantle come from Bingöl; and so forth. After migrating to highly populated cities, the people who take theseinformal professions use their entrepreneurial abilities and relational strategies to survive and adapt (Simone 2015).More importantly, these relational mechanisms enable *çıkmacıs*to find different jobs via subcontracting and customer referrals.

As described above, their supply yards, warehouses and depots are established in former *gecekondu* neighborhoods. Although stationed at a fixed base, their labor system is very flexible and mobile: they can move their business from one neighborhood to another, from one demolition to the next.

#### **5.3 Building Demolition in Istanbul**

Three actors take part in building demolition and recycle-reuse processes in Istanbul: the construction company, the building demolisher, and the *çıkmacıs*. The company is responsible for financing and coordinating the demolition of the old building and the construction of a new building. First, they hire demolishers and sometimes *çıkmacıs* to clear the property. Second, the demolishers tear down the building and discard the concrete rubble at official debris dumping sites. Third, the *çıkmacıs* dismantle the salvageable and recyclable components and materials, which they will store and trade on the second-hand market. Before the intensification of the urban transformation projects, all material reclamation was carried out by demolishers with their own salvage yards. Currently, salvaging of buildings in Istanbul is generally undertaken by *çıkmacıs* with scrap collector backgrounds but, in the other parts of Turkey, demolishers still handle the reclamation part.

These demolitions demand cheap manual labor with official and unofficial subcontracting agreements between actors. Most of the contracts are off-therecord and the labor conditions precarious. Subcontracting without job security allows the demolition and construction companies to end agreements at any time and cut payments. A *çıkmacı* commented on this situation:

The company hires me as day labor, but they do not pay it daily. If we are lucky, we get the whole amount at the end of the month. But sometimes, they give less. Also, sometimes they pay for our health insurance, sometimes they don't.

In urban transformation projects, the demolition process starts with the property owners applying to state institutions for a seismic risk inspection. If the inspectors deem that the structure is insufficient to withstand a strong earthquake, the building is declared uninhabitable. The owners then arrange with a construction company to begin the renewal process. At that point, the condemned building, including all its materials and components, belongs to the contractor at no cost. After the municipality grants a demolition permit, the contractor hires a demolition company that, in turn, signs an official contract with the contractor. Generally, the demolisher estimates the service costs according to the height of the building. The total cost of demolition is calculated by summing up the costs or wages of equipment rental, machine operators, day laborers, and debris removal.

The workers start the demolition by placing a small excavator on the roof level.Then, they identify columns and beams and make holes in the floor.These holes channel the falling rubble to lower levels. To make the premises secure, they build a construction safety slide that internally lets down the debris to the lower floors. The wooden roof structure is generally reused to make this net (Figure 5.6).

In a large-scale demolition, for example, a housing project with several blocks, the contractor sells the building wreckage to the demolition company who then sells the salvageable building parts to the *çıkmacıs,* who then reclaim the materials. Retrieved from concrete by an excavator, reinforcement bars are sold to scrap metal dealers or recycling factories. *Çıkmacıs* reclaim plastic

window frames, doors, radiators, kitchen counters and sanitary equipment. They also pull out lighting hardware, plumbing fixtures, copper electrical cables, taps, and metal pipes; dismantle elevators and central heating systems for metal recycling; and break oversized window frames for plastic recycling. They even reclaim furniture and household items (books, pictures, chairs, sofas, and antique objects) from the previous tenants to sell at flea markets.

*Figure 5.6: Installing the debris slide 9*

Source: Author's own

9 The workers create a debris slide to control the rubble falling from the upper floors. The beams holding the surface go through the floor slab. If they don't have enough wood, they sometimes use parts of wooden cupboards left by the old tenants. The man without work clothes climbs over to nail down one last piece of wood while others watch him to see if he needs help. Since the apartment is on a busy narrow street, they have to tear most of it down by hand.

#### 5.3.1 Reclamation Processes

After visiting çıkmacıs in Altınşehir, where there are many of them, I started observing the construction sites around my neighborhood in Kadıköy. The urban transformation and never ending construction trend, which intensified since the2012law changes,wasatmy doorstep.IfirstmetEngin, the youngest brother of the Coruk family, in an abandoned apartment building behind where I lived. The façade of the building facing my room was ten meters away from me. After all the tenants moved out, I started to observe the demolition site. Sometimes working alone, Engin appeared through the adjacent windows. Sometimes others were helping him. The building was eroding more each day by his salvaging actions. At various parts of the building, he was dismantling and removing things as if they were special treasures. After days of observation, I decided to visit the site for documentation andmeet him.WhenI passed themetal security barrier surrounding the demolition site, I realized the apartment building was named Uzay Apartmanı [Space Apartments].

The entrance and main stairs were filled with furniture that looked a little warped. There were also some potted plants there. Later I realized that they were the objects left by the tenants when they moved. As I wandered around the building, the first thing I noticed was that the front doors of the flats were removed. Their interiors were severely broken up by salvagers. Bits and pieces of small rubble were lying on the floor. The stair railing had been removed with a blowtorch (Figure 5.7). I shouted out to see if somebody was there. A response in an eastern dialect came a little later from an upper flat. Hesitantly I walked up towards the construction sounds coming from upstairs. As I stepped on glass shards, I realized the vertical air circulation felt larger because all the entrance doors were removed. I found Engin dismantling a window frame. He kept working while talking to me. He was looking for the bolts connecting the window frames to the concrete by making test holes. Then he removed them by pulling the frame out of the window gap like a dentist pulls a tooth. He was in kind of a hurry, almost asif hewas runningoutof time.Hewasloudly smashing the frame he had just removed, the glass particles were spreading around the frames and lifting dust up from the ground.

—from my fieldnotes, entry on 08.10.2016.

With three to four workers, it takes a week to dismantle an 8-floor apartment block. The reclaimed materials and components are relatively new and high-quality because most owners replaced old ones with the latest components when remodeling their flats. However, there was more glue, spray foam sealant, and other adhesives used in construction as well, which makes it more challenging to take down new buildings. Because the fieldwork was held in middle-class neighborhoods, apartment interiors are in good condition.Modern facades equipped with PVC window frames and shutters are particularly sought after. The window frames, which have narrow dimensions (between 1 and 3 meters) are carefully dismantled to be sold secondhand. When I asked why small sizes are preferred, Engin explained:

The customers demand narrow window frames. In the villages where we sell the most components, they prefer small dimensions. The houses are smaller, and the climate is cold. Also, they are lighter to carry and transport. We can fit many in the truck since we sell every piece.

*Figure 5.7: Cutting metal pipes10*

Source: Author's own

10 A blowtorch is efficient for cutting old pipes although it creates an industrial smell at the site and leaves burn marks on the wall. The buildings in the area were built in the 1970s and have central heating systems made of metal parts. After dismantling, the çıkmacıs will send these parts to a metal depot and sell them by the kilo.

Since Istanbul apartments have wide openings due to the warm climate, the rest of the frames are broken up for recycling. *Çıkmacıs* can sell the reclaimed materials at the spot where the demolition is located; otherwise, they transport the materials to their yards. During our conversation about storage, he said:

Sometimes a man who sees us working comes in [to our demolition workplace] and asks for the price of the components. We immediately bargain and sell them. In this way, we do not have to transport them to our depots.

The demolition site is not a safe place for *çıkmacıs* (Figure 5.8). It is extremely dangerous, and they have to work in precarious conditions; however, they do not wear proper work clothes. Ali, brother of Engin, protested about this safety issue: "The [heavy] work clothes do not allow me to move freely to do my job. So, I often do not wear them. If you are scared of accidents, you should not work at construction sites." Dismantling activities take place without any labor safety include hammering, torching, breaking, and crushing. They are also all activities that produce dust emissions. When *çıkmacıs* work on roofs or boiler rooms where asbestos has commonly been used, they potentially breathe the hazardous air, but they do not consider this to be a danger to their health. As I mentioned the harms of asbestos and asked his opinion, Engin answered:

They say asbestos is dangerous, but who listens? Demolishers do not pay attention. They just spray water over the dust. And I have not seen anyone controlling it. We encounter some of these materials in the basements. I know it is a fibrous element. We treat it like any other element. Invisible to the eye, invisible to the attention.

The municipal authorities barely inform the workers about the dangers of asbestos. They also never inspect the demolition sites for safety. The neighborhood itself is even at risk due to the asbestos dust spreading from unsealed buildings (Odman 2019). The dangerous aspects of these materials may affect the health of the workers in the future (See Ch. 7.2).

As self-employed workers,*çıkmacıs* are supposed to pay for their own social security and health insurance. These payments were not very regularly paid by the workers since their incomes were not regular. Ali complained about such precarity: "I could not pay my health insurance last month because I could not work. During the construction, I had a hand injury. A loose metal profile fell

while I was pulling out a window frame.When such injuries happen, we cannot continue working so, there is no income".

*Figure 5.8: Dismantling PVC frames11*

Engin was earning slightly more from PVC recycling of window frames than his second-hand trade. However, he declared: "There is a big demand for cheap frames. Everything is getting expensive. Especially for those who build summer and village houses". They could quickly sell them at the construction site.That's why a supply yard was unnecessary.They sold salvaged parts to Anatolian traders whoin turn distributed the same components to Anatolian cities: Sivas, Tokat, Erbağ, Kayseri, Nevşehir, Niğde and Balıkesir. Once, trom one 5 floor apartment in Kadıköy-Moda, Engin sold 40 pieces of window frames, ten metal entrance doors, 200 m2 parquet flooring, ten interior doors, and five kitchen cupboards to a contractor from Kayseri.They were regularly working with a wholesaler from the Black Sea who was running a warehouse in

Source: Author's own

11 The work requires a lot of strength because the frames are attached to the gap with many screws. First, the glass is broken since it does not have any use. Then the profiles are pulled out, sometimes with a crowbar. After this process, the joint marks on the walls become revealed. Mishaps may release asbestos from the insulation layer.

Fikirtepe. According to Engin, this wholesaler, whose name was Ali, had legal and illegal business connections. He owned a truck and transported goods of all sorts. Ali's connections were expanding to Batumi in Georgia.

In the next section, I will focus on Engin's family, who make their livelihood by scrap collecting and building salvage. Such informal jobs are called 'arrival occupations' (Michael, Deshpande, and Ziervogel 2019, 667). The highlight of the encounter with this family was its valuable empirical contribution that shed light on processes and dynamics observed during the fieldwork.

#### 5.3.2 A *Çıkmacı* Family

The Coruk family originates from a village called Yazıhüyük in Nevşehir. The region is famous for its geographic wonders: the underground cities of the Cappadocians, its fairy chimneys, and its volcanic valleys. The village is named after a 'prehistoric tell', an archeological mound or artificial hill created by the remains of many generations living and rebuilding on the same spot. The tells are made of ancient debris and discarded items. It is interesting that this hill has ancient conceptual connections to the Coruk's present livelihood in Istanbul, where they earn their living from building salvage.

This family is a patriarchal family consisting of three brothers and their parents, wives, and children of 'Yörük' origin—Turkmen nomad ancestors from the Taurusmountains in the same region. Their nomadic story continues: Their dual lives are split between Istanbul and Yazıhüyük. Their migration started when the elder brother escaped to Istanbul at the age of 18. Ali did not want to work on the farm and help his father. 25 years ago, he ran to Istanbul and lived with a former fellow from the village. He left without the consent of his father. Bored of village life, he was a young misfit. Firstly, he worked in a supermarket as a bagger who helped pack groceries. Later with the help of another friend from his village, he started scrap collecting with his pushcart, traveling from street to street. For him, his job gives him a sense of freedom: "Collecting scrap means being free; one can wander around the neighborhoods of Istanbul". The family has been farming for at least two generations, and the father disapproved of his son's choice at first. Later though, after seeing his son maintain a steady income from scrap dealing, and because hewaslivingon the edgeof poverty, he decided to send his two other sons to Istanbul. This did not stop them from farming, and

they also didn't stop salvagingand scrap collecting.During plantingand harvest, the brothers travel back and forth.

—from my fieldnotes, entry on 27.05.2018.

The youngest of the family, Engin, aged 35, has been a scrap collector for the last 15 years. As more and more apartment buildings became discarded commodities, he adjusted by hunting for abandoned buildings and traveling from one neighborhood to another. At his first job, he was getting paid with building scrapin exchange for a cash debt.They buy the scrapmaterial from the contractor. Their status at the construction site is relatively ambiguous, he explained:

We are not providing a service for the contractor. We work for ourselves. We are self-employed individuals that mine materials from buildings. When the municipality comes for inspection, we say that we work for the construction company. It's easier. If we explain we are scrap collectors, they ask for safety permits and insurance. We try to avoid that.

During my visit to their village in 2018, he said that building salvage tripled last year since there was high demand for rebuilding apartments in the area because of seismic risk. I asked him if the buildings that he salvaged really needed to be demolished because of this risk and he responded: "Some seem strong enough to survive an earthquake. I would say sixty percent of the buildings were fine. But demolition is good for vitalizing our economy". He further explained that construction quality was better in a middle-class district like Kadıköy. He added that the buildings should be abandoned immediately in Fikirtepe since they were poorly upgraded from *gecekondus* in the 1990s (See Ch. 4.5.1). He made this observation when he was working in Fikirtepe, which was a former squatter district. Moreover, he observed that the buildings were built using wet sea sand that caused corrosion in the reinforcement bars in the concrete.

They rotated their tasks in the buildings where they worked. Dismantling continued in different stages, but their tasks remained the same. At the first deconstruction location, one dismantled the window frames. In the second location, the other retrieved the copper electric wires. At the third place, another cut out the metal parts of the building. Meanwhile, Ali, the older brother, was hunting for demolitions: scouting in Kadıköy and giving offers to contractors.

To secure the abandoned building and its scrap, they had to guard it day and night during their operation.  As a result, Engin had to sleep on the ground floor of apartments to protect the building from others. Like the zoning hierarchy between waste collectors (Altay and Altay 2008), he said that fights sometimes broke out over discarded material and territorial competition between salvagers. Because of these reasons, cooperation seemed impossible.

Engin and his family were not inspected for labor safety. However, sometimes they were being reported to the municipality because of noise and the complaints from the neighbors. They threw weighty materials out of the upper floors. For that reason, their activities were very loud for a densely populated residential area. When they were dismantling façade elements, it was dangerous for all the workers on the ground floor. Sometimes these materials fall outside the security barriers surrounding the site. It was even threatening to passersby. At the Uzay apartment block, they had to stop for a few days after a complaint. Then, it turned out that demolition permission had not yet been approved by the municipality.They had to stop until the contractor got the permit. For good reason, they generally try not avoid damage the surroundings of the demolition:

If we do not destroy any surrounding assets like cars or other neighboring buildings, I count ourselves successful. Otherwise, the contractor will not work with us if we are not careful. If there is an accident, we have to pay for our damage. We cannot afford to buy insurance that can cover the damage done by work accidents.

When the construction sector was thriving, Engin and his family members were competing with other salvagers toincrease theirincome from the demolition market.They also increased their income capacity by working on multiple demolition sites at the same time. In July 2018, their team had twelve workers and were simultaneously salvaging six buildings in Kadıköy. These locations were in Caferağa (Moda), Acıbadem, Kozyatağı, Maltepe and Bostancı. Engin complained about how the state did not recognize them as a profession.Without an official tax registration for salvage and scrap collection, they had to pay their own social security insurance as self-employed workers.

*Figure 5.9: Guarding reclaimed materials12*

Source: Author's own

12 Çıkmacıs permanently live in empty apartments because they have to guard the reclaimed materials there. They make a temporary environment using the items they find during the salvage process. Above, we see an electric heater converted into a tea cooker. The writings on the wall were made by the seismic structural inspectors.

At the demolition site, they dismantled elevator parts, security bars, old boilers, and handrails to be sold to the metal recycling factory. They pulled out copper and brass electric wiring, which were precious elements for trading. Generally,it took one week to salvage a building.There was not a single nail left after they finished their work.They also collected kitchen cupboards, radiators, conduit boxes, electrical sockets and left-behind furniture. Sometimes, if they were lucky, they found antique objects in the basements. On Fridays, they sold whatever was appropriate to a flea market13 in the Historic Tuesday Bazaar in Kadıköy.

The flea market duty was given to Engin's elder brother, Murat. He inspected the evicted buildings for left-behind objects while others were busy dismantling the building parts. He used the ground floor of the empty building to store the furniture and household items: chairs, tables, mirrors, carpets, books, framed pictures, household ornaments, knickknacks, toys, stereos, shoes, flags, sports equipment, and etc. Every Friday, he went to sell things at the flea market. The flea market was a small part of the large bazaar where all sorts of things could be found, from food to clothing. The flea market in Kadıköy was central and very popular. That makes it an exception to those in Seale's analysis that are socially and geographically peripheral (2015).

#### 5.3.3 Engin's Depot, a Family Business

When the fieldwork started, Engin and his brothers were running a metal and plastic scrap collection depot on the ground floor of a three-floor building in the Fikirtepe neighborhood of Kadıköy.The depot looked like a garage: it had a ramp at the entrance that enabled pushcarts to enter and exit easily. It had been made into one large room by demolishing the inner non-load bearing walls. It was a relatively small space with a low ceiling, which was a bit unexpected for what was primarily a storage space. The walls were stained because of their salvaged materials' dusty, greasy, and rusty content.

There was a small office for one person made from leftover material. In one corner, they piled electric cables; in the other, they put metal bars. There were

13 Dinler (2016, 59) makes reference to the economy of gift-exchange (Mauss 2002) when she observes the way waste paper collectors sell the valuable objects that they find in waste bins at the flea market. See also Chris Birkbeck who makes a similar case for garbage pickers in Cali, Columbia, who sell valuable objects to second-hand dealers (Birkbeck 1979).

all sorts of junk lying around everywhere. All over the interior space, there were signs of overuse and damage. There was a sizable digital scale in the middle of the room used for weighing and pricing their recyclable materials. For smaller materials, they were still using an old rusted balance scale. They did not store components here long term.

*Figure 5.10: Engin's first depot in Fikirtepe14*

Source: Author's own

In the morning, they met with other family members before going to the demolitions in their truck. In the daytime, the depot was not busy; however, in the evening, when they all returned to the depot, it became occupied by members of the family bringing the day's scrap collection(Figure 5.10).The ones who worked at the demolitions were unloading the materials like cables and metal parts from the truck. Some of the family members with the pushcarts were carrying the scrap collected during a day's work in the streets of Kadıköy. Sometimes there were others there: refugees, waste pickers, or co-villagers selling scrap to them. Most of the members who worked through kinship relations

14 Family members are gathered to weigh their scrap. On the left side of the picture, a scrap collector pushcart is parked. It is a typical three-wheeled barrow that one can often spot in the streets. They are either used by scrap collectors or street vendors.

were getting paid a daily salary; other outsiders were paid for the quantity of materials they brought.

The area functioned as the backbone of small-scale industrial workshops and waste collection in Kadıköy. Because a recent urban redevelopment project resulted in an eviction report in 2016 (See Ch. 4.6.3), Their depot was demolished, after which they moved to another store in the same district. Engin described the situation:

Since the beginning of the development in Fikirtepe, all the businesses have been forced to leave. We might have to move again in five years. The transformation follows us in the way the demolitions do. So far, we have survived in Fikirtepe. If there is no work here, we will go to Avcılar on the Asian side where urban transformation is progressing faster.

The new depot was larger than the previous one. It had two floors: the ground floor was used as a workshop for dismantling and storing the scrap; the second floor was used as a dormitory. Engin explained how they used the space:

We are sleeping upstairs. It is very convenient. We reduced our cost of living. Plus, someone should be watching the depot; we have to protect our materials. They are like gold to us; otherwise, the Gypsies could steal them.

While he was breaking an elevator cogwheel for its brass composite, he explained the exchange value of the materials:

The most expensive one is the yellow (brass) inside the elevator parts. The prices are indexed to dollar currency in the market. Yellow is very valuable: copper comes next. PVC is not comparable. It is the cheapest but there's more of it. (Figure 5.11)

They no longer accepted materials from outside sources. They were only trading their scrap to recycling warehouses and factories because the building salvage was supplying enough resources.

They managed to survive Fikirtepe's gentrification even though they had to move their small depot twice. Like most rural migrants in general, they were part of the precariat. However, by staying mobile through the salvaging of several buildings in several different parts of Istanbul, they remained adaptable. Their activities were not costly, and they could adjust their labor power. Since their field was proceeding along with unregulated, uncontrolled, undocumented, and unregistered mechanisms, refugees were able to find job opportunities in this sector.

*Figure 5.11: Dismantling elevator parts15*

Source: Author's own

#### 5.3.4 Working with Refugees

According to the European Social Policy Network work report, only roughly 21 thousand Turkish work permits were issued in all of 2017 while, at the same time, 1.5 million Syrians were engaged in informal work there (Adaman and Erus 2019). Two refugee workers,Hayatullah and Jabir, used to work with Engin (without a permit) between 2016 and 2018. Our conversations were limited to a primitive level, however, because we could not understand each other without

15 In Engin's second depot, all the family members are dismantling the brass parts of an elevator. The two young kids are his nephews. At the back, the boy's father, Ali (Engin's brother), is smoking a cigarette. Ali wants his children to learn their profession instead of going to high school. Ali was not keen on returning back to their village. He likes Istanbul.

the help of Engin, who knew Arabic.They lived in Fikirtepe in a bachelor room16 with eight other workers, who were either in construction or some other kind of labor-intensive job.The older worker, Jabir, came to Turkey as a refugee from Afghanistan in 2016. After three years of fighting against the Taliban, he escaped from war and joined his relatives in Istanbul. Back in Afghanistan, he used to live in a village and work as a shepherd. Due to the shortage of fulltime jobs, he mainly worked in construction, which needed intensive manual labor. With his thin and short features, he could very quickly climb the façade of the buildings from the outside. I learned that his physical skills came from his military training.

Due to the challenging work conditions and Turkey's economy, he clarified that salvaging was only a temporary job for him. His goal was to go to France where some relatives had been relocated to a refugee center. His relatives received money as support from the French government. Plus, he claimed that there were better-paid illicit jobs there.Then, he clarified that his relatives reached France with the help of human traffickers. He was saving money to pay for this dangerous trip. Unfortunately, he was getting paid less than a Turkish worker. Engin paid the refugees a fair wage and took care of them when they were sick. Since having a work permit was complicated and required waiting time, Jabir could only find an unregistered job in the recycling and construction sector. In Turkey, a foreigner under temporary protection can apply for a temporary work permit that takes six months to obtain. Although there were opportunities for seasonal agricultural work in the east of Turkey (Kavak 2016), he preferred to look for temporary work in Istanbul.

Another refugee worker called Hayatullah, aged 18, worked with Engin for almost a year. During the Syrian Civil War, his home was destroyed in Kobane. Later, he fled from Syria with his family in 2016. Before the war, he was a high school student. After his arrival, he lived in a refugee camp on the Syria-Turkey border. The remaining family members were scattered around Anatolia trying to find seasonal work, but he came to Istanbul because it has more possibilities and opportunities. He worked as a waste picker for a while. It was very difficult for him, not so much because of the long hours of walking and carting of material, but rather due to the territorial conflicts with Kurdish pickers and some racist attacks. Six months after the interview with them, Engin informed me that they left Istanbul permanently to find refuge in France.These outcasts

16 Bachelor rooms (Bekar odası in Turkish) are shared dormitories for seasonal workers and refugees.

were once again forced to leave in the hope of finding better living conditions (Bauman, 2011). Nevertheless, Engin would not employ them on a regular basis because the number of demolitions had decreased due to recessions in the construction sector. Because of these recessions, Engin was more often in his native village taking care of their family farm. In the following section, I will report on these nomadic circular transitions and dual lives and introduce Engin's farming activities in Yazıhüyük.

#### **5.4 The Circular Mobility of the** *Çıkmacıs*

Istanbul is connected to its hinterland via the economic and social mobility of its dwellers who migrated from villages in search of better living conditions and work opportunities. Within an extended network of relationships, informal laborers retain their ties between village and city through their engagement with farming activities, a sense of home and social attachments.  Villages accommodate the second part of the migrant's livelihood and become retirement places in Turkey (Öztürk et al. 2018, 513). Transportation and communication infrastructure enables the commuter labor to navigate both zones (Echanove and Srivastava 2014). This is the case even despite the corporatization of the agriculture sector. For instance, forty percent of industrial labor in China comes from rural parts of the country; the workers are firmly attached to the countryside because it provides land to plant and homes to inhabit (Standing 2014).

To better observe the *çıkmacıs*' dual lives, I visited the village of Yazıhüyük in Nevşehir province, where Engin and his family live and engage in the agricultural activities on their family-owned land. As an economic reserve or backup that remains unpossessed by industrial agriculture, their land provides their primary livelihood and safety ground; even still, their financial and social resources there were not enough. In the end, the story of this family is a unique example of a substantial workforce divided between informal waste work and farming: "youngsters are not needed on the farm and, rather than act as a drain on the family resources, are better off going away to support themselves—and, indeed, contribute to the family budget where possible to help maintain the farm" (Öztürk et al. 2018, 522).

*Figure 5.12: The house belongs to Engin's father. The washbasin was salvaged from a flat in Istanbul. On summer nights, they live on the terrace.*

Source: Author's own

#### 5.4.1 Village Livelihood in Yazıhüyük

After waiting for the public bus, which only ran very seldomly, I arrived at Yazıhüyük village in the Derinkuyu district of Nevşehir city to meet with Engin in late May, 2018. Derinkuyu is famous for its underground city from Ancient Cappadocia that is carved out from the soft volcanic rock of the region, which is also evidence of the fertile earth for agriculture. For generations, the fields surrounded by the mountains were very generous to the people. On the way, I saw a small hill in the middle of the flat plane, which was the archeological tell from which the village took its name.I found Engin in a coffee shop close to the village square, decorated with Justice AK Party flags.  Although there was rampant unemployment there, the village seemed wealthy since the houses were fairly large and well-built and had farm fields in front.

—from my fieldnotes, entry on 27.05.2018.

Before Engin showed me his house and land (Figure 5.12), we sat a while at the coffee shop. He was with a relative whose name was Mehmet. Mehmet related that, after 30 years of doing it, he finally retired from scrap collecting in Istanbul. He explained that most people from the region who migrated to Istanbul in the 1970s found jobs almost exclusively as scrap collectors because the scrap was easy to access as a resource for income generation. The job did not need education or special qualifications. The village solidarity networks in the city provided particular forms of manual labor opportunities through their connection to earlier generations of the same kind of workers. For instance, Engin told me that in the neighboring village, most of the men worked as construction plasterers in Istanbul.

Mehmet chose to move back to the village after his retirement. He explained that after the marriage of his children, there was no reason to stay in the city. In addition, he could not work any longer because of back pain caused by having to carry heavy things in the salvage work. After he sold his *gecekondu* in Fikirtepe to a real estate developer17, he started to live in a flat far away from the city center in the peripheral neighborhoods.

Mehmet and Engin were curious about my interest in scrap dealing that brought me to their village.They believed that the public image of scrap dealing was associated with dirt and not pleasant,and the village was a peripheral place of seclusion. They explained that the recycling work represented unhygienic conditions. I told them that their unrecognized participation in construction and recycling sectors created an inspirational model that should be supported. All in all, they were sustainably creating value from scrap. However, Mehmet was pessimistic about the future of their profession in Istanbul because of its privatized recycling sector and street collection. Since then, he has wanted to return to the village because he could not obtain better living conditions. Nevertheless, Engin had a different opinion because he found an opportunity in an urban center close to their village. He believed that building salvage work could keep their farm running for a little longer until an economic crisis created unemployment in the cities. He commented on this unpredictable situation:

The village is a stronghold for me. In Istanbul, I am far from my homeland. The land is home for me. Demolitions could slow down. That is why our scale is small. And we are mobile. But there will always be scrap to collect and deal with in the city. For example, recently, I took my crew to Konya [close to Nevsehir] for salvaging materials and demolition.

17 The *gecekondus* were replaced by high- rise residential blocks and their owners had to move to the peripheral areas.

Engin worked for a construction contractor in Konya. He and his team demolished and reclaimed materials from a condemned hospital. He was content with the location and scale of the project in central Anatolia. The work took them 25 days with ten other workers. For technical reasons, the old state hospital had to be demolished by hand. There were eight Afghan workers, also Jabir, without proper permission to work and travel inside Turkey. These refugee workers traveled to Istanbul from Konya in the back of a truck and slept at the construction site. Inside the hospital, there used to be a publishing department in which Engin found 15 thousand books. Later, he sold them to a paper recycling warehouse in Konya.

From the deconstruction, they reclaimed five hundred building pieces which he traded to a local second-hand wholesaler. Then, Engin sold the rest of the scrap salvaged from the hospital to a local recycling factory. When I asked him how he got the job, he explained that it would be impossible for him to get the job if he did not already know the people who hired them in Konya. Otherwise, a local person would have taken the job. He knew the contractor from Istanbul, whom he worked with on several projects. Meanwhile, the rest of the family started working in the European part of Istanbul because the demolitions had nearly stopped in their district. After all, the construction companies went bankrupt after the coup attempt in 2016. Simultaneously they were working in two blocks with 50 flats in Büyükçekmece and one block with 20 apartments in Bakırköy.

The labor network of Engin's family proved that urban transformation via demolitions was spreading to different parts of Turkey, and their business that started as a local reclamation was expanding its limits as well. Their mobility enables them to keep the connection to their village and also to find demolition-related jobs in cities across Turkey.

#### 5.4.2 Agricultural Activities

Engin's family land encompassed nearly 1.5 hectares. There were four small single-floor houses in the four corners of the land.The one-story houses,made of stone bricks, were self-built and had flat roofs. Most of the original components of the houses had been replaced by reclaimed materials from Istanbul. His father and three brothers and their families were living individually in those houses. There was a ramshackle barn at the farm entrance where they kept all the animals: a watchdog, cow, ten chickens, quails used as bait for hunting, and fighting cocks. They owned a tractor with several attachments, but it looked old. According to Engin, farming demanded more attention, special skills, and knowledge than salvage work:

I learned everything from my father. First of all, you have to know what to plant when. He showed me how to plow the field before spreading the seeds. Then I apply the pesticides. And then, I do the harvest. Apart from that, I have to take care of the animals, like milking the cows. Making cheese from the cow's milk.

*Figure 5.13: Engin's inherited farmland18*

Source: Author's own

Occasionally he came back every two months to check their crops, but in the planting season, which was mid-October for barley, he had to stay for two to three weeks at least. Engin explained to me that the barley crop had to be rotated. If it were planted too often, the soil would lose its quality. So, after barley harvesting, he had to plant vegetables to ventilate the soil.When he was away, his father and his wife looked after their fields, but he was getting too old to do it. In 2017, he harvested nearly two tons of green beans, barley, potatoes,

18 Engin's land stands in the middle of their houses. It waits for harvesting after a long fallow period. They planted some fruit trees next to his brother's house in the background. On the edge of the land, they have planted poplar trees, which can be seen at the back.

and zucchini (Figure 5.13). He sold these to a wholesale market in Mersin, a hub for the distribution of agricultural products in the area.The farm and its fields are fertile living entities that have a crucial effect on the human actors. Such multiple agency lies in the aliveness of the more-than-human world (Bennet 2010).

Engin never fully migrated to Istanbul, but his older brothers did. He was the only one who left his wife and two kids behind to help their mother. Unlike his brothers, Engin seemed very fond of village life and appreciated nature, and loved working with the earth. After a very intense day of work in the farm, he liked to go hunting, participating in cockfights with his own birds, or spending time with his wife and kids. His fondness for his village was substantial:

Farming is a better occupation than salvaging. It is a lot cheaper in the village. We have our vegetables and animals. I feel freer and happier away from the construction dust. The time in the village feels like a holiday even though I have to work harder. However, we do not earn much from agriculture.

It was impossible for Engin to purchase a house with a garden in Istanbul. He decided to build a new larger house in the village with materials he salvaged from demolition sites. It was also a way of investing in his retirement; he did not want to live in Istanbul anymore, which he saw as getting very expensive and harder to live in. He was expecting that the backbreaking manual labor would lead him to retire early. He saw his village property as providing an economic safety net because the construction and recycling industry was unstable in Istanbul. For example, sometimes they did not work for months, especially during a financial crisis that shrank the construction sector.

In sum, his farmland has given them a feeling of social, cultural, and economic stability. The village is their primary home where they left their family and Istanbul seems like a temporary place. Since they are attached to their land and agriculture, they have work opportunities with limitedincome. Since some of the older brothers are doing the scrap collection and building salvage in the city all year long, the younger brother can keep the farm running. Eventually, it will become a place for retirement, and they prefer to invest and upgrade their homes in the village.

#### **5.5 Conclusion**

In order to join the EU, Turkey intends to formalize its waste and scrap collecting according to European waste management standards (Izci 2016).Without taking into consideration the livelihoods of waste pickers, they attempt to adopt management models from industrially developed countries. However, such a transition is problematic since there is already an existing heterogeneous structure. Regrettably, the contribution of informal labor is overlooked by the state, which prioritizes building formal business models based on a circular economy in the recycling industry. Local governments denounce waste collectors as illegal workers, attempt to eliminate them from the street, and try to impose a privatized system. In this new system, the local government supports household sorting, develops waste processing facilities, and supports private recycling companies.

*Çıkmacıs* can stay out of these conflicts, for the time being at least, because they buy the building scrap from private owners and contractors. In the future, if the municipalities or companies take over demolition salvage, their sector may become privatized. Additionally, they suffer from precarious work conditions similar to those of waste collectors. Workplace safety is often bypassed and ignored in the construction sector (Kolektif 2018). The same is true of material reclamation. A lack of occupational safety and the presence of asbestos threatens their lives (Odman, 2019) but the state apparatus does not inform salvagers about the health danger or do anything to create safe workplace conditions.

*Çıkmacıs* relationship to economic markets are twofold: recycling industry and second-hand trade. On the one hand, the recycling industry depends on the prices determined by the London Metal Exchange (Corwin 2018; Dinler 2016), on the other hand, second-hand trade is a field free from market regulations.

Adaptation to formal markets and solidarity networks is an important feature of relational infrastructures (Simone 2015). *Çıkmacıs* use the opportunity to extend their field of operation and secure their livelihood within neoliberal urbanization.With the recent developments in the construction sector, demolitions generate an excess of scrap materials and other leftovers that the private owners and contractors undervalue.The *çıkmacıs* anticipated this situation and adapted to changing situations. For instance, they hired new family members and refugee workers. They are flexible in sharing work responsibilities in the family. By establishing a second market, they became suppliers of affordable components.Using their know-how in the street collection, they use their contacts to trade sorted refuse to recycling companies. Yet, they did not entirely cut their relationship with their homeland. Such long-distance commuter urbanity identified as circulatory urbanism creates a continuum between rural and urban areas (Echanove and Srivastava 2014). What is more, the agency of their farmland impacts their movement because it creates reciprocal relationships based on time in terms of seasonal plantation.

By following in the footsteps of others, scrap salvaging becomes an inherited profession. And this relationality provides substantial networking opportunities. Plus, their farmland gives them security if they cannot maintain building salvage and scrap collecting. It provides a place for family members while the others are temporarily in the city. In the village, they can have breaks from precarious labor even though they have to take care of the farm. Plus, it is a safe retirement destination.

# **6. Second- hand Trade Network**

#### **6.1 Introduction**

The construction industry in Istanbul has several kinds of formal and informal businesses that facilitate the urbanization process. With the recently intensifying urban renewal projects focused on creating newer safer housing, some of the infrastructural needs gave birth to small entrepreneurs. Such infrastructural 'reuse and repair' economies are always intertwined with the formal sector in emerging countries (Corwin 2018). For instance, because of urban renewal, the number of excavation companies that transport demolition rubble and excavated earth have increased in Istanbul over the last decade (D. Öztürk 2019). As discussed in the context chapter,*çıkmacıs* have been one of the essential suppliers of construction material and informal credit for *gecekondu* squatters. In the face of the municipal authorities' failure to manage CDW, the *çıkmacıs* provide a functioning socio-economic network that can actually fulfill the demand for affordable materials. Their second-hand trade infrastructure, with its relational attributes, acts as part of an assemblage-network.

Their trade infrastructure consists of flea markets, scrap yards, roads, and online marketplaces. These function as stopgaps where the second-life of an object is determined based on its 'residual value' (Hetherington 2004, 157). Their supply yards are filled with all kinds of reclaimed construction materials and components: plastic window frames, sanitation equipment, metal doors, wooden interior doors,old heating systems, parquet flooring, window security bars, wrought-iron railings, garden fences, garage doors, and kitchen cupboards. Originating mainly from the supply yards in Istanbul, these materials flow to Anatolian cities and neighboring Georgia by road transport (Figure 6.1). In major cities like Ankara and Kayseri, where urban renewal projects are intensively progressing, structured demolisher cooperatives have opened second-hand supply yards. To emphasize the role of worker collectives, demolition cooperatives enhance working conditions and create recognition while serving as policy interfaces that acknowledge informal waste management contributions (Dias 2016; Gutberlet et al. 2017).

*Figure 6.1: The trade flow of second-hand components1*

*Çıkmacıs* trade activities and their supply yards function as links between center and periphery, urban and rural, local and international. First, I will describe supply yards where reclaimed materials are accumulated in the peripheral urban areas close to the industrial areas in Istanbul, Ankara, Kayseri, Nevşehir, and Niğde. Because of its importance in terms of international trade, I will also describe a supply yard in Tbilisi, Georgia. I will use field notes, mappings, and satellite images to analyze where these places are located in the periphery of cities.

#### **6.2 Places of Accumulation:** *Çıkmacı* **Supply Yards in Istanbul**

*Çıkmacı* supply yards are located in former *gecekondu* neighborhoods, mainly peripheral to the center and close to organized industrial zones and recycling

Source: Author's own

1 Istanbul, Ankara and Kayseri (marked red) are the main cities where building materials are reclaimed. Other cities marked in green indicate the places where retailers bring second-hand materials.

warehouses in Istanbul. Since Istanbul is divided by the Bosporus, each side functions independently from the other. Further, Istanbul is growing linearly towards the east and west axis. As a result, the east and west borders (peripheries) of the city are not only geographically but alsoinfrastructurally separated from each other. That's why the empirical findings regarding supply yards are grouped into two parts: the European and Asian2 Sides of Istanbul (Figure 6.2). The fieldwork shows that some supply yards and depots are clustered together in specific neighborhoods. Independent of these clusters, some of the yards are distributed randomly within urban areas.

*Figure 6.2: Map of the Çıkmacıs in Istanbul: White pins indicate places of çıkmacıs*

Source: Author's own based on Google Earth

#### 6.2.1 Asian Side

The *çıkmacıs* are located in the Umraniye, Sancaktepe, Sultanbeyli, and Beykoz districts in the Asian part of Istanbul. *Gecekondu* dwellers urbanized these districts with their own resources. During the apartmentalization of housing stock, the single-floor *gecekondus* became apartment blocks with four to five

2 Geographically, Istanbul is divided by the Bosphorus strait: One part lies on the Asian continent, the other one on the European continent.

floors. Some of the yards remained in between these buildings. In the following, each section is dedicated to the descriptions of second-hand supply yards.

#### Ümraniye: Alemdağ Street (Ataşehir) – A Supplier Hub for the Second-hand

Some supply yards, warehouses, and retail outlets are located in the Ümraniye3 district close to the Istanbul Dudullu Organized Industrial Zone on the Asian side. Among the other types of construction material suppliers, one can easily spot the *çıkmacı* outlets accumulated around the Altinşehir metro station4 and along Alemdağ Street, which goes towards the industrial zone. Like many other shops, they display their second-hand goods on the sidewalk. Due to their proximity to the industrial zone, the yards form part of a larger supply area in the Asian part. In this area, building demolition contractors were the suppliers of cheap construction components for decades in Istanbul. Each business was demolishing nearly 80 to 100 residential buildings per year when the first interviews were conducted in 2016.

Second-hand elements are stacked and put on display in a makeshift style. Customers are going around the yards with tape measures to find the right window frame or a radiator that matches the dimensions of their home. The old frames are processed and reframed to standard sizes in some supply yards that have production workshops. Aside from selling, these places are affiliated with a demolition practice. In their logos, there is generally some kind of construction machinery: an excavator or a dump truck (Figure 6.3).

Supply yards and retail outlets are concentrated on Alemdağ street, forming a supplier hub for those who want to access second-hand goods for construction (Figure 6.4). Close to this area in the neighboring Sancaktepe and Sultanbeyli districts, the yards are distributed randomly and individually. When I first visited the area in March 2016, there were eight businesses. In 2019, there were ten. Some owners have retained their businesses, some have handed them over, some got bigger, and some went out of business due to instability in the construction sector. Well-established *çıkmacıs* in the market like Rıfat maintained their positions because they are experienced and have a large clientele in the construction sector. After migrating to Istanbul at an

3 For the urban development of Ümraniye as a gecekondu neighborhood, please see (Erder 1996).

4 The stop is on the M5 Üsküdar-Çekmeköy Metro line.

early age, Rıfat started working in construction and eventually became a wellknown demolisher. His story takes place between the informal housing of the past and the current neoliberal urbanization dynamics.

*Figure 6.3: Business cards of çıkmacıs*

Source: Author's own

*Figure 6.4: Çıkmacıs in Altınşehir*

Source: Author's own based on Google Earth

#### Rıfat, the Master of Demolition

When I first met him in April of 2016, Rıfat's office was located in a makeshift structure assembled with salvaged metal bars that were probably part of an old warehouse. Below his office, there was a yard where building parts were stored and repaired in a workshop (Figure 6.5). In the corner of the stairs leading me to the office, a pickaxe and a shovel reminded me that they were ready to be used in a demolition or excavation. Hesitantly I entered an office decorated with 1990s furniture. There was a painting of a landscape depicting rural Turkey. It was difficult to get an appointment with Rıfat; his secretary did not understand why an interview request would be coming from a university student like myself. It was unusual for them to be interviewed because their work dealt with unwanted things. Due to unregulated market dynamics in the demolition market, I was aware of the illegal power relationships within the fields of waste collection, scrap dealing, and *gecekondu* construction (Beyond Istanbul 2017).

Source: Author's own

Rıfat, 62 years old, sat at his desk, dressed in a suit and sporting a typical mustache. In this setting, he looked like a kingpin, like a lord of demolition. He migrated years ago from his village, Arapgir, in Malatya. Like many construction and service-related professions, he proudly stated that, since the Ottoman period, the most successful demolishers in Anatolia were from his village. According to him, the modern demolishers inherited their discipline from "a Bozuculuk" [a 'breaker'] in the Ottoman period. He said he had worked in the construction sector for 40 years. Since he began, he has taught his profession to more than 200 professionals. He complained that everyone involved in construction, from unskilled workers to scrap collectors, has begun doing demolitions nowadays because of the renewal of housing stock intensifying since 2013.

*Figure 6.6: The entrance of the Rıfat's supply yard*

Source: Author's own

In the 1970s, he demolished municipal buildings, road infrastructures, cinemas, factories. Additionally, they tore down Ottoman mansions and traditional houses during apartmentalization. In the 1980s, he worked on the Tarlabaşı boulevard demolitions (see Ch. 4.5.2). Back then, he was trading reclaimed materials from the old buildings to squatters; wood floor beams, wooden roof structures, clay bricks, masonry blocks, window frames, doors, and parquets. The materials he traded were traditional when he started but, as time went on, they got industrialized. From the concrete factories that he demolished in the late 1990s, he cleared reinforcement bars out of the rubble. Using a machine that straightened twisted or bent bars, he was selling the

bars to squatters. Such materials were scarce for cheap constructions. Once they got affordable, he got rid of the straightening machine. More recently, he took part in clearing the wreckage of buildings after the 1999 Düzce (see Ch. 4.6.2) and 2011 Van earthquakes. It is significant to observe that the peak points in his business success were paralleled with the turning points in the urbanization developments in Istanbul.Those experiences made him the most experienced demolisher of all in the area.

At the current time, like the rest of the shops in Altınşehir, he confirmed that they were selling second-hand components to suppliers who ordered them in advance and then resold the items in Anatolian cities in the Marmara, Black Sea, and Aegean regions. In contrast to the *gecekondu* period, they were now selling to people living in rural parts of Turkey. Each shipment to Anatolia with a truck transported 600 to 700 hundred component pieces. He handed over the second-hand trade of the business to an old employee. Since there was a high demand for demolitions, he focused more on managing them than the supply yard (Figure 6.6). In the following quote, he describes the demolition process in detail:

The contractor is responsible for getting a demolition permit from the municipality. For that, there should be an earthquake damage report from the experts. All the utilities like water and electricity should be cut. There needs to be an inspection that confirms that nobody is living in the building, and finally, a controlled asbestos removal should be conducted. But that is not generally taken care of by the authorities. We do not have the proper asbestos protection gear. For years, we did not control it. As a first step, I make an agreement with the contractor who manages the overall rebuilding process. In this contract, I agree to a subcontractor fee determined by my expenditures. The rent of the demolition machines, gasoline, labor wages, and debris damping are the major costs. After determining the fee, the scrap value of the materials that I buy from the contractor is deducted from the overall cost of the operation. Then I start hiring construction workers depending on the scale of the building. I generally hire workers from Bingöl to remove the components. They have been doing a similar line of work on the construction sites since they migrated. The workers who sledgehammer the walls are less experienced and qualified. I do not prefer Syrian and Afghans because their work is lousy. We put a small compact excavator on the top of the building, which is 3 tons, that demolishes the floors to a certain level. We use a small one for buildings that are higher than five floors. Then, an excavator with a jackhammer continues the demolition from the ground level. During this process, we water the broken concrete to control the dust.

In 2016, they were demolishing four or six buildings on average per month.The month I visited them in March 2016, they demolished 18 buildings. And, on average, they removed 1800 building parts from each building. They chose standard dimensions of PVC window frames for reclamation: between 150x150 and 100x100.The larger frames were broken and sold to plastic recycling collectors. He was concerned about the wasting of double-glazing glass, but there was no way to recycle them.They removed the rebar steel from the concrete with excavators,making them into massive and heavy metal balls.They sold the balls to a metal scrap dealer who would then sell them to a metal factory. He complained that scrap steel prices decreased because the factories imported cheaper metal scrap from Russia. After all, the rates of recycling materials were dependent on international exchange rates, but second-hand components have their own independent valuation based on labor and infrastructural costs.

Rıfat represents an experienced actor in the market. Due to his long history in the demolisher profession rooted in his family and village, his business actively adapted to decades of urbanization processes. When industrial construction materials were scarce during informal urbanization, he supplied reclaimed materials to *gecekondus*. These types of supply yards were previously known as ardiyes (Duyar-Kienast 2005; Payne 1982; Şenyapılı 1981). More recently, he has been selling salvaged materials to entities outside Istanbul. Besides him, there were other new actors in the market such as Serhat, a recently established entrepreneur who I will focus on in the next section.

#### Serhat, the Entrepreneur

Serhat, age 56,is a demolisher and a second-hand trader of Kurdish origin that I met in 2016 at his shop. In 1975, at the age of 16, he migrated to Istanbul from Ağrı, an eastern region in Anatolia. He immediately began working on apartment construction projects as an unregistered and unskilled laborer. He and his partner opened their demolition business three years ago at a time when the demolitions were increasing.

Their business had three divisions: demolition, material reclamation, and trade. He started his outlet in the Altindağ district six months ago because that district was known for its second-hand markets. Serhat said that the market in Altınşehir was very competitive, and the relationship of sellers was not organized enough to form a uniform institutional identity that could represent their rights.The cluster of 10 shops was well known in the area since the beginning of informal development in the area. His business partner mainly organizes the demolitions, while he manages the shop and deals with customers. They sometimes host workshops on repairing and resizing old PVC frames,and sometimes they produce new frames through a manufacturer in Habibler in the European part of Istanbul (Figure 6.7).

*Figure 6.7: The pop-up workshop area inside Serhat's shop*

Source: Author's own

In the last three years, they demolished nearly 80 apartment blocks along Bağdat Street, which is the busiest transportation axis that cuts through the Asian districts along the Marmara shore: Kadıköy, Kartal, and Ümraniye. Beyond that, they worked in neighboring districts: Ümraniye, Dudullu, and Çekmeköy. From each demolition of an average apartment block with four floors, they reclaimed 120–140 component pieces; this added up to 960–1120 pieces on a monthly basis.

Individual customers, primarily from Istanbul, were buying secondhand components for small-scale remodeling projects. They sold in bulk to customers from the Black Sea region, especially ones from cities like Düzce, İzmit, Balıkesir, Giresun, Ordu, and Trabzon. These customers filled their trucks with large shipments while visiting several shops. Most of them owned

shops back in their cities. Serhat stated that most of the components sold to the Black Sea were used to repair summer or village houses. The transactions were in cash and some earnings remained unregistered. He also mentioned that some Romanian traders came and bought many second-hand goods five years ago.

Before starting, they hired unskilled construction workers from an informal day labor hiring site [*amele pazari*]. He mentioned the neighborhood Küçüksu5 as a place for hiring Afghan workers. For a demolition, he hired 4 to 5 workers. He also rented two demolition excavators with an operator.The size and cost of demolition excavators change according to the size of the building. They demolish a 6-floor apartment block within five workdays if there are no delays due to an accident or complaint.

When I last revisited the area in 2018, Serhat had moved to a larger space across from his old shop, where he had an open yard and an enclosed shop area. His partner left, but he kept the business going with his family members. He retained the second-hand items and began trading new cheap components because the demolitions had slowed down and material reclamation was at a minimal level. However, he clarified that the situation was temporary because there was still a high amount of housing stock in Istanbul that had to be renewed.

Serhat worked as a construction worker for a long time. Having a lot of experience as a construction worker, he could adapt his entrepreneurial skills and sector relationships to new dynamics in the market. As a result of managing fewer demolitions after the decreasing demand, second-hand components remained in short supply. However, the other shops were not as flourishing as Serhat's outlet. For example, Mazlum, discussed in the next subchapter, could not keep his business.

5 Küçüksu is a neighborhood in the Beykoz district on the Asian side of Istanbul. It is a hiring hub for Afghan workers who live in crowded circumstances in neighboring Yenimahalle. Early in the morning, hundreds of Afghans gather on the main street, expecting to be employed as a day laborer by Turkish foremen like Serhat. After agreements for a 'day rate', the foremen loads them in their vehicles and brings them to construction sites, production stores, sweatshops, gardening, and waste collecting sites (Karadag 2021).

#### Mazlum's Bankruptcy

IinterviewedMazluminMarch 2016(before the coup attempt).He was displaying his reclaimed components on the sidewalk. He was 42 years old and had migrated from Tunceli. He had worked in the construction sector for over 30 years. Before that he installed electrical and ventilation systems in new buildings in Russia, where international Turkish construction companies were doing large-scale projects. Then, he was leading demolition workers for several businesses in Altışehir. When he first migrated in the 1970s, he used to live in a *gecekondu*. He stated that there were *Çıkmacıs* who were financing the construction of the squatter houses and added; "Rıfat was one of them. They were refurbishing wooden parts of old traditional houses that they demolished".

After gaining enough experience from Rıfat, he decided to develop his own business. He mentioned that the demolition business was at its peak after the earthquake legislation. Seeing this opportunity as a result of urban renewal, he took over the shop from a sanitary appliance wholesaler and started to sell second-hand components from his shops.The rest of reclaimed materials was traded to scrap collectors with pushcarts. In a workshop not far from their retail outlet, they repaired old PVC window frames. As he explained:

We sell second-hand items at nearly one- third or one- fourth the price of a new one. The price is determined by bargaining. Often, we repair a frame with some other frame's hardware. Cheap frames have to be fixed anyway. The fixtures or the insulation become broken down in time. The average lifespan of a PVC frame is 20 years. In the old times, wood frames could last longer if one looked after them with proper wood treatment. But everyone wants to change them out with a PVC frame because it's cheaper and needs less maintenance. Nowadays, cheap goods are preferred by people who remodel their storage spaces like old coal basements or attics and old *gecekondus* for renting to refugees. These refugees are from Syria, Afghanistan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, and Senegal. As a solution to this problem, the government housing agency (TOKİ) should supply dwellings for refugees, especially for Syrians because of the war".

The construction sector, which was already showing signs of decline, was impacted negatively by the failed 2016 coup attempt in Istanbul. As a result, the booming situation changed, and some new actors were not able to avoid bankruptcy. When I visited the area in 2019, Mazlum's retail sign had been removed and replaced by that of another retail seller.

Altınşehir has been a second-hand supplier market since the beginning of informal urbanization.The second-hand market is located near a construction supplier area and industrial zone, unofficially making it a well-known hub for low-budget customers and Anatolian and Georgian wholesalers. It regulates its own dynamics, but the sellers do not have unity and are very competitive with each other. With its long history, the place itself has become a local resource for self-sustainable residents. One of the pioneers, Rıfat, has enabled the existence of such a market locality. Based on my observations, this market survived many fluctuations in a construction sector with frequently changing actors. Apart from this hub, there are other suppliers on the Asian side. These are individually located in newly developed districts that were squatter neighborhoods 30 years ago. In the following subsection, I will examine these supply yards.

#### Sancaktepe, Kartal, Pendik, Sultanbeyli – Scattered Locations

On the one hand, Sancaktepe and Sultanbeyli districts were developed by informal urbanization, and they became residential areas where working-class residents have dwelled (Işık and Pınarcıoğlu 2001). On the other hand, Kartal and Pendik, which share a shoreline with the Marmara Sea, are industrialized districts that accommodate small and large factories and retail businesses in between residential areas.These districts accommodate several recycling companies, metal and plastic warehouses and *çıkmacıs*.

#### Ulaş: From Newspaper Work to Demolitions

Ulaş, who is from Çanakkale, is 36 years old. He studied business management at the Eastern Mediterranean University in Cyprus. For the last ten years, he was a construction contractor and is now a demolition expert. In 2016, his supply yard was located on Yakacık Street in Sultanbeyli (Figure 6.8). Before, he worked as an audit manager in a national newspaper and as a sales manager for an energy drink. After having insight from his close friend about the growing demolition sector, he decided to take over the previous shop two years ago to manage demolitions and sell second-hand components. His business was registered as a construction and decoration company.

He preferred customers from Trabzon, Adapazarı, and Malatya that bought wholesale. For instance, he had a client who was a livestock breeder from Malatya. This client traveled to Istanbul once a year with his livestock on his large truck before a religious sacrifice holiday when trade tents were erected in certain parts of Istanbul. Before going back to his village on the last days of the holiday, he visited Ulaş's shop to load his truck with secondhand components next to the remaining animals that he did not sell. He mentioned another truck driver customer: "He does not leave empty-handed from Istanbul after unloading the goods he transported. Taking two to three hundred items from the shop, he sold them back to his hometown in Trabzon. In his home village, he either rents a storage space or an empty field to sell the items. Another regular customer purchased all the interior components to remodel their village house in Rize, located in the Black Sea Region.

Even though he was making more money from wholesaling, he also sold second-hand components to individual consumers on internet marketplaces such as 'Letgo'. In this manner, he increased his internet presence. When I asked him whether he planned to create a website, he replied it wasn't required at the present because he had enough clients and didn't keep the components in his depot for too long. Plus, he had neither the time nor the payroll budget to maintain a website. He did the administration and management work, and his employees were responsible for the physical labor.

In 2016, he employed ten people without a contract: two were foremen; one was a craftsman and master repairer of reclaimed metal and wood components; and one was a shopkeeper. The rest were day laborers from the hiring site.Their business drastically changed after three years. On the second visit to the area in 2019, the shop was unrecognizable; there was a new 3-story building at the back of the old shop. By the side of the depot workshop, there was a yard with some reclaimed items on display. In a brief talk,Ulaş said that the demolitions had slowed down due to substantial competition over the last three years.

In order to adjust to the market,He decided to expand the retail part.Keeping the front, he demolished the back part of the shop, which was an old squatter house. Later, he erected a new building connected to the old part. It was not lucrative to keep up with demolitions, so he began stocking more newly manufactured doors and kitchen cabinets. He was still making demolitions but less of them. For that purpose, he kept the yard where he stored reclaimed components.

*Figure 6.8: Ulaş's supply yard*

Source: Author's own

Urban renewal projects opened a new path for Ulaş's ambitious plans. Within five years, he accomplished this by opening up a retail part where he sold all sorts of new doors. In contrast, the second-hand retailer in Beykoz that I will refer to in the next subchapter was determined to maintain affordable second-hand components. He invested in repairing components rather than selling new manufactured goods.

#### Beykoz: Distribution Center to the Istanbul's Black Sea Villages

Beykoz district is at the northern end of the Bosporus on the Anatolian side. Having borders with the Black Sea, it is the least populated district and is covered with forests, small villages, and gated communities. Currently, urban development projects cannot access Beykoz because the forests and natural habitat are being protected by law. However, the third bridge and its highways constructed in 2016 by the AK Party administration pass through the area. Urban expansion is planned to expand to the North of Istanbul.

Demir is a 40-year-old scrap collector from Niğde. When he migrated to Istanbul 25 years ago, he began his career with the help of a fellow villager. He wandered in the residential districts with his pushcart and called for used household items. Like the rest of his village, Keçikalesi, he was professionally involved in collecting and selling scrap and second-hand items. 13 years ago, he expanded his scrap business by purchasing 4 acres of land and turning it into a retail yard (Figure 6.9) in Beykoz Cumhuriyet village, a district in the Black Sea Region of Istanbul. It is located 50 kilometers from the urban center. I first encountered Demir's yard during an excursion to the construction of the Northern Highway that goes over the third Bosphorus bridge in 2016. He was a very ambitious businessman and had a strong entrepreneurial vision:

I am a well-known trader all over the country, from Giresun to Van, from Konya to Elazığ. My secret is customer satisfaction through word-of-mouth recommendations. Three generations of customers find us and buy materials. Since our business got successful, customers from outside the village are visiting. Although wholesale is more profitable, I want to stay local.

He was pleased with the number of customers representing a potential for other producers in the village, especially farmers: "I am introducing my customers to my fellow villagers who produce dairy products and local fresh vegetables. I am making our village known to outsiders". By taking a superior position and believing that he brought wealth to the village, he saw himself as a successful entrepreneur.

The source of his construction materials derived from his visits to demolitions in 2013. He bought reclaimed materials that he dismantled with his team; sometimes he also bought them from the contractor. He had a well-equipped workshop to repair the existing window frames. Plus, he has large storage facilities in the village. His team consisted of his relatives from his village. He was frequently sending materials to Niğde.

Because of the quality of his products and low price, low income and middle-class families preferred to visit his yard (Figure 6.10). Due to his accomplishments, he was once interviewed by a local newspaper. He even opened another shop.

 Demir's second-hand depot supplies cheap components for rural parts of Istanbul. Villagers in the area often visit his establishment for repair and construction projects. As long as the building stock is renewed by demolitions, his model can survive within neoliberal dynamics, especially in a national economy dependent on the construction sector. However, such entrepreneurial approaches and accumulation of second-hand materials is no different on the European Side.There is a similar distribution of *çıkmacıs*: they are located separately in the Eyüpsultan district and there is an agglomeration of depots and supply yards in Tahtakale, which is situated in Avcılar.

*Figure 6.9: Spatial diagram of Demir's supply yard*

Source: Author's own

*Figure 6.10: Demir's PVC frame displays*

Source: Uzel Metal

#### 6.2.2 European Side

#### Eyüpsultan: Güzeltepe – Old *Çıkmacıs*

The area is located between Eyüpsultan and the Kağıthane district along the main road, Mareşal Fevzi Çakmak Caddesi. Formerly, Kağithane6 and Alibeyköy were part of an industrial zone surrounded by working-class neighborhoods. The workers were living in *gecekondus* and later *apartkondus* (see Ch. 4.5.1), which they built with their own resources close to the factories. Today, the area has become one of Istanbul's largest real estate development zones and is close to the city center. The deindustrialization of the area enabled gentrification, which changed the social and economic structure of the district. Unlike the European side, a few *çıkmacıs* from the *gecekondu* period remained in this area, but they could not participate in the high-end transformation controlled by corporate construction companies.

#### From Father to Son, Halis' Supply Yard

Halis, from Sivas, was 33 years old and running a supply yard near the old industrial valley along the Alibeyköy Creek on Mareşal Fevzi Çakmak Street. He had studied tourism at the university and his father was a retired demolisher. He took the business over from his father in 2014. For nearly 30 years, his father ran their previous supply yard that was situated on the same street. The area experienced the usual deindustrializing factory demolitions and massive development described elsewhere. The municipality confiscated the property of Hilas' father's old supply yard on which they had been squatting since the 1990s.They could not stay because their land deed was temporary.The spot became a municipal depot for road maintenance, and a new metro station was built next to it.

After his father's retirement, they rented a smaller property where there used to be two *gecekondus* with a garden (Figure 6.11).The gardens became their storage yard; the houses were transformed into offices and enclosed storage spaces . The salvaged plastic window frames leaning over a triangular stand were displayed in the yard surrounded by ramshackle garden walls. At my visit

6 The area was a large demolition site: concrete debris, rusted metal parts, corrugated roof material and structural remains in 2011. On this land today exist government offices, a university campus, shopping malls, offices, and high-end residential blocks. For further reading on Kağıthane's urban transformation please see (Özçevik and Tan 2013).

in 2014, they were not doing demolitions anymore, and Halis was only selling second-hand components that he bought from scrap collectors and demolishers. He expressed his frustration about corporate firms:

They used to demolish factories along the Alibeyköy Creek, Golden Horn, and Marmara Shore. When corporate companies took control over the market, demolishers like my father could not compete with them. We were a small business. We hired ten laborers, and my dad did not invest in machinery. I could continue the demolition business, but I was not interested because it demanded heavy labor and the work conditions were dangerous.

*Figure 6.11: Spatial diagram of Halis' supply yard*

Source: Author's own

Eventually, Halis made an agreement with some scrap collectors to remove reusable components from demolitions. In his supply yard, he charged double what he paid the scrap collectors. During the interview with Halis, scrap collectors came with their truck and unloaded some leftovers from a condemned squatter house: an interior door, a metal exterior door, a PVC frame, a window security bar, and a marble kitchen counter. One of them from Niğde, where scrap collectors usually come from, stated that they did not have a shop to sell their components. Still, they wanted to launch a website to sell their stuff, not only giving them to scrap yards or second-hand shops but also putting them

in an online marketplace like gittigidiyor.com, a site for second hand goods in Turkey supported by eBay.

The building components are affordable for villagers living close to the periphery of Istanbul. Halis mentioned that there used to be more customers from the neighborhood because the demand for cheap products in the informal settlements was higher. When most of the *gecekondus* were transformed into apartment blocks and later large residential projects, Halis mentioned that fewer customers were interested.

Halis complained that the second-hand market was unstable, had a low profit margin, and lacked experienced demolishers. Instead of individual customers, he had more wholesalers from the Black Sea and Central Anatolian region visiting his yard.

Halis' supply yard sets an example of how second-hand businesses are inherited from family members. The demand for inexpensive materials comes mostly from the rural areas, where incremental constructions continued in Istanbul Black Sea villages. In contrast, the next part highlights that the demolishers' businesses increased their second-hand stock in their yards near urban renewal projects in Avcılar.

#### Avcılar: Tahtakale – A New Emerging Hub for the Western Periphery of the City

Avcılar district is located in a seismic zone that has been declared one of the most dangerous. In 1999, it was severely damaged by the Düzce earthquake7 , which occurred 190 km away. According to a recent earthquake damage projection report, an earthquake over 7.0 magnitude will destroy 233 buildings, cause severe damage to 1,261 buildings, and create moderate damage to 5,545 buildings (Sesetyan et al. 2020). In the same area, the developments of the Başakşehir district and the Olympic stadium have attracted government investments that fuel the construction sector. There were metal and plastic recycling warehouses along 0–3 Kuzey Yanyolu Road in the Tahtakale neighborhood of Avcılar

7 After the Düzce earthquake in 1999, the Avcılar district was the most devastated area in Istanbul. The main factors for this were the building's poor foundations and structural systems, and that 90 percent of the buildings were constructed with weak concrete using marine sands with shells (Dalgıç 2004). Even though the replacement or reinforcement of the buildings are urgent, the rehabilitation projects are moving very slowly.

(Figure 6.12). I spotted four second-hand supply yards along Istanbul Street in 2019.

*Figure 6.12: Distribution of çıkmacıs and recycling warehouses in Tahtakale*

Source: Author's own based on Google Earth

#### Tezel Brothers: Experience is a Way to Success

While passing through Istanbul Street in the Tahtakale district, I spotted the Tezel brothers' banners on both sides of the street: "Demolition and Remodel Works." It was impossible not to notice the supply yard while driving up the road because there were second-hand components overflowing onto the pavement. On one side, they owned their depot, and on the other side, they were squatting in an abandoned supply yard (Figure 6.13). They covered the façade of the warehouse with images of heavy construction equipment and a photo from a demolition where a water cannon was spraying water at the rubble.Outside, they were displaying the PVC frames since they were durable in various weather conditions, and inside, they had metal and wood components, which were more expensive.

*Figure 6.13: Spatial diagram of Tezel Yıkım*

Source: Author's own

They were trading second-hand components to customers from peripheral districts of Istanbul and neighboring cities: Kırklareli, Edirne, and Tekirdağ. After the Syrian conflict, there was a considerable demand for cheap construction items from *gecekondu* owners who remodeled their houses in the area. Using these components, these owners transformed their gardens, attics, sheds, former barns, and other spaces in order to rent to Syrian refugees in the Tahtakale and Şahintepe neighborhoods. For nearly a decade, these peripheral low-income districts became densely populated by refugees. One can easily spot Arabic graffiti while taking a walk in the neighborhood.

Süleyman and Gürbüz first migrated to Istanbul in the 1970s from Arapgir village in Malatya.They knew their fellow villager Rıfat whose business was located at Altınşehir on the Asian side (see Ch. 6.2.1). Establishing their family business in 1987, they squatted a field in the Zeytinburnu district on the European side. Here the first *gecekondu* neighborhoods emerged among the factories. At the time, they worked on the deindustrialization demolitions along the Golden Horn. They were selling the materials and components they recovered from factory demolitions to *Gecekondu* dwellers and sometimes offered informal credit to dwellers for building their houses. Süleyman commented on their role:

New arrivals squatted the state land, and we supplied them with construction materials. It was a time when there were no rules, and the mafia was strong in the *gecekondu* market. After informal houses were seen as a problem for city development by the government, we started demolishing them. First, we helped, later we destroyed.

Their second-hand trade declined after the *gecekondus* were targeted by the government for investment projects. Contradicting their first constructive relations with *gecekondus*, they were hired by the municipality to demolish squatter houses in the 2000s. For instance, in 2007, they conducted *gecekondu* demolitions in Ayazma and Tepeüstü8 . Forgetting that they were also once migrants, the brothers commented: "It was sad to see people homeless. The state promised to place them in newly built TOKİ housing with affordable credits. Somebody has to do the work for the good of our country".

They relocated their supply yard to Tahtakale after selling their yard in Zeytinburnu, for which they obtained the land deeds in the 1990s. With that money, they expanded their business by investing in demolition machinery: three excavators with hydraulic breaker and digger attachments, one longreach demolition excavator with jaw cutter, two mini excavators with bucket attachment, and two jackhammers with air compressors. He explained their entrepreneurial reasons for this business expansion:

We used to do demolition all by hand using sledgehammers and pickaxes. For a more professional business we had to keep up with the competition, so we bought heavy construction equipment. Corporate customers or governments expect to deal with an established business.

In 1999, after clearing earthquake debris from several sites in the Avcılar district, they saw the potential of moving their depot to the Tahtakale area located close to Avcılar. Süleyman described this potential: "It was an ideal location where recycling warehouses were established. We were selling the reinforcement bars to metal recycling warehouses.There were not many materials to be reclaimed from damaged buildings, only steel". With other demolishers from

8 The urban renewal projects in Ayazma and Tepeüstü neighborhoods was the first large- scale transformation project in Istanbul between 2004 and 2007. The residents, mostly from the urban poor, were forcibly evicted and displaced from their decadesold settlements as the neighborhoods were "cleansed" for redevelopment and offered to developers for prestigious projects (Uzuncarsili Baysal, 2013).

different parts of Istanbul, it took them months to remove the severely damaged and totally destroyed buildings in Avcılar.Whatis more,it was an arduous task because the earthquake destroyed the buildings and people died in them.

Overall, the brothers were confident that they were doing a crucial job that enabled reconstruction processes after the 1999 earthquake and urban renewal projects. Plus, they were still supplying cheap material to the poor and refugees. Since they were located on the western border, they had customers from other cities.Their location among other recycling depots supported their visibility in the district. Since they were the oldest and most experienced, there was a dense circulation of materials in their depot. They said that there were less construction projects in Avcılar than Kadıköy because it had lowincome households. Still, there was work potential since the municipality was giving financial support to the families in high-risk buildings.

#### 6.2.3 Overview of Supply Yards in Istanbul

The infrastructure of the *çıkmacı* supply yards spreads out over both sides of Istanbul.Their workplaces appear in grouped or singular depots on lands they squatted During the rapid urbanization in the 1970s. The supply yards on each end of the city, Altınşehir and Tahtakale, are located close to the peripheral recycling warehouses and construction retail markets. The diagrams of the supply yards show that yards have storage, display and repair workshop spaces.

In the past, some *çıkmacıs* on the European Side demolished factories during the deindustrialization of the city center. Later, they participated in the clearance of squatters. Currently, they reclaim materials from urban renewal projects. For instance, Rıfat and Tezel Brothers have been part of this historical transition. Some of the *çıkmacıs* are wholesalers buying materials from demolishers or scrap collectors. Old and established ones also demolish buildings. Further, they use online marketplaces to sell second-hand items to individual customers. Georgian second-hand traders also do business with them.

Their mobility is an essential factor in maintaining their livelihood. Their flexibility can be observed in their labor structure also: they hire family members and refugees. This informal model is beneficial for the unstable market. In 2012, the number of reclaimed components increased. However, after the coup attempt in 2016, the numbers were declining due to economic instability. Due to these fluctuations in the construction market, *çıkmacıs'* operations are either shrinking or expanding.

Each actor has a role in spreading the magnitude of the informal practice (Simone 2009). Rıfat shared his knowledge and experience to other salvagers and reterritorialized the *çıkmacı* network by transferring his knowledge to others. According to sectoral andindividual changes, supply yardsmay appear and disappear but the network continues to survive and expand its borders. Similar knowledge transfer occurs when the profession passes from father to son (see Ch. 6).

In the following subchapter, material reclamation processes outside of Istanbul are discussed since the urban transformationis not only associated with Istanbul.

#### **6.3 Demolisher Supply Yards in Anatolia**

Based on what I learned from Istanbul's *çıkmacıs* and following the path of the second-hand components being distributed out of Istanbul, I visited Ankara, Kayseri, Nevşehir, and Niğde.These cities were also awash in demolition waste excess because of urban renewal. Some *çıkmacıs* in these cities were operating in eastern regions where military conflict had destroyed the urban environment. Some of them worked in removing earthquake debris. And some of them, in Ankara, formed a demolition cooperative on the periphery of the city.

#### 6.3.1 Ankara: A Demolisher Cooperative

Ankara, Turkey's second-largest city after Istanbul,is located in central Anatolia. The capital has a population of approximately 4.5 million in the urban core and 5.6 million within its provincial borders. Ankara has grown through rapid urbanization since the 1980s (Şenyapılı 2004). Half the population used to live in *gecekondus* (Özdemir 1999). The central government initiated urban renewal projects through a series of legislation in those areas, and they were executed by large and small development firms and TOKİ (Güzey 2009).

In Turkey, demolition is an 'unsystematic' deconstruction process. It seems to function arbitrarily and spontaneously by frugal efforts of individuals who barely make ends meet.These efforts, which echo the early industrial era when goods were frequently broken and had to be fixed and reused, are very sustainable. (Thompson 1979). For over a decade, the local demolishers have operated as a cooperative, which is located in the Tatlar area, also known as Karpürçek, part of the Altındağ district (Figure 6.14). Being 30 km from the city center, it is a rural area at the city's edge. Together, they are responsible for the clearance and dismantling processes of buildings in the city.

*Figure 6.14: Location of Ankara Demolishers' Cooperative*

Source: Author's own based on Google Earth

#### Mehmet, Debris of Earthquake and War

Before the cooperative formed, the demolishers were located in the city center. The municipality of Altındağ sold them public land for affordable prices. During this transition to the periphery of Ankara, they became a cooperative. Now, the cooperative consists of 34 individual businesses forming a cluster of supply yards and warehouses.

The structure of the site looks improvised and ramshackle but, at the same time, sorted out and functional.The cooperative is 10 km away from the closest Ankara neighborhood. In between there are empty fields and the steppe. Its closest neighbor is an abandoned wrestling arena. In the yards, five-meterlong beams leaning over the surfaces created a splintered wooden façade. The warehouses themselves were hidden behind these surfaces (Figure 6.15).

Mehmet, aged 62, said that, for him, demolishing was an inherited profession. When he was young, he worked with his father and grandfather on demolition jobs. Due to a lack of professional training in this field, the workers had to learn from kin or fellow villagers.Mehmet said that he was expecting his grandson to someday be an excavator operator. The grandson, Ali, was already at work, taking out nails from an old wooden beam.

Generally, they used their heavy machinery and operators. If theirs were not available, they rented excavators and other equipment. During their work, Mehmet provided daily insurance, which covered health and employment benefits for his temporary workers. Yet, since it was temporary, the workers were employed in precarious conditions. He said that the Turkish workers did not like working in heavy labor. It was sometimes hard for him to find day laborers. In those cases, he employed experienced Iraqi workers. On rare occasions, he hired Syrian refugees, but he did not prefer working with them.

Mehmet pointed out that their business doubled after launching their website. In addition, he made some strong connections with the local government and subsequently received an invitation to tender meetings for governmental building deals. He was also a strong supporter of the AK Party. For large-scale projects, the members of the cooperative came together. Besides Ankara, they also had many projects in other cities: in Bursa, they were dismantling a hospital; in Gerede, they were demolishing a private rest area of a bus company; and, in Bolu, they were bringing down the old municipality building. For jobs outside Ankara, they were renting a flat where all the workers could live. Either they brought the reclaimed components back to Ankara, or they sold them to a wholesaler in the same location. Since their base was in Ankara, the trade was controlled from the cooperative site in Tatlar.

They had customers from neighboring villages and cities and even as far away as Georgia. There were many hobby gardens with small-sheds and country cottages around the area. For instance, he sold 500–600 pieces to a farmer from Konya. Furthermore, he made clear that construction permissions were not checked very strictly in the rural regions:

It is forbidden to make new construction in 2/B lands9 without permission. However, no villager follows the rules because they know there will be a

9 Based on the Forest Law No. 6831, 2/B lands are places that lost their forest quality (for instance after a fire) (Turkish Parliment (TBMM) 1956). After being given land deeds based on properties such as private property or state treasure, they could be used for agriculture, animal husbandry and dwelling.

zoning and construction amnesty sooner or later. They even bribe the municipality or pay fines in small amounts.

*Figure 6.15: Mehmet's depot with a Turkish flag*

For Mehmet, urban renewal was not the only reason for demolishing buildings. Earthquakes and war were also reasons for destruction and reconstruction in the eastern region. In 2016, he worked in Şırnak (Cizre and Silopi) to clear the debris of destroyed buildings as a result of armed conflict.10 He explained that the quantity of reinforcement bars in some destroyed buildings was three times higher than a typical building. After the destruction, Eastern cities in Turkey, where the Kurdish population was the highest, were immediately registered as risk areas associated with Law No. 6306 for reconstruction processes. In some cities, renewal designated by TOKİ followed the central government's decisions on land expropriation. Mehmet observed that the

Source: Author's own

10 According to a report by the Union of Chambers of Turkish Engineers and Architects, buildings were destroyed by armed forces during 2015–2016 clashes between Turkish Military and Kurdish militant forces. The combat zone was declared as a 'risky area' based on law no. 6306 issued by the Council of Ministers (Union of Turkish Engineers and Architects Chambers (TMMOB) 2019).

building leftovers—wood, brick, and corrugatedmetal parts—were used by the survivors to make permanent shelters.

The demolishers were forced to move out of the city center by the municipality. During this transition, they stayed together as a worker organization. Furthermore, the cooperative structure enabled them to be recognized as a formal organization. For instance,Mehmet could participate in tendering processes.With the recent tectonic and political dynamics, he became an exclusive actor in the construction sector. Mehmet cleared and reused building remains in parallel to these conditions: earthquake debris, war wreckage, and excesses of urban renewal projects. The following section focuses on a similar cooperative structure in Kayseri.

#### 6.3.2 Kayseri – Local Suppliers

Situated in Central Anatolia, Kayseri is a large industrialized city with a population of over a million. As a result of investments in local industry since the early days of the republic, Kayseri is counted as the first city to be among the Anatolian Tigers11 of the Turkish economy (Karatepe 2003). In the 1990s, the urban area grew exponentially because of industrialization and domestic migration, which resulted in informal urbanization. Currently, it receives a growing refugee population from Syria because of the work opportunities there (Shakhsari 2014).

#### Özcan, The School Teacher

Like Ankara, Kayseri demolishers were located on the edge of town (Figure 6.16). I was surprised to find that they also formed a cooperative business structure. Their single-floored, *gecekondu*-style buildings constructed with brick and wood were hidden behind the second-hand building elements. More significantly, long wooden poles and part of a roof structure were leaning against the walls of the buildings.  This scenery revealed that the repair and maintenance of the city are beyond formal governance and state domination

11 Anatolian Tigers is a term that refers to the Anatolia cities (Denizli, Kayseri, Gaziantep, Balıkesir, Konya) that have broken remarkable economic and industrial growth records since the 1980s (Demir, Acar, and Toprak 2004).

(Graham and Thrift 2007). The view also highlights a necessity of organizing material cycles that exists in flux. Not only because infrastructure breaks down constantly, but things decay —waste away—based on time (Viney 2014).

Özcan, aged 45, a math teacher in a high school, was taking care of his family's business after work. His father, Mehmet, who is now retired, started their demolition business in 1976 after several experiences in wholesale trade. In 2003, the family stopped doing demolitions. Instead, Özcan established a wood workshop that made doors and kitchen cupboards. Still, they were part of the demolisher cooperative, consisting of 24 small individual businesses located in the Konaklar neighborhood in the Melikgazi district of Kayseri. In the cooperative, several businesses assumed responsibility for: recycling, salvage, and production; scrap dealing, demolition, excavation, furniture production, and PVC windows; and sanitary equipment trade. Özcan said the cooperative earnings were neither registered nor invoiced but they still all paid a minimum income tax. The cooperative was initiated by Özcan's father, Mehmet, in 2010 by assembling the first group of businesses. Özcan explained his father's intention: "He formed the coop in order to avoid eviction and gain a formal institutional identity. Having a cooperative created a defined professional field which we lacked for decades."

At first, the cooperative was squatting on state land in the center of the city and did not pay rent; the state had them in a court battle and were trying to kick them out. Then, the land got more valuable due to its location. Because of these circumstances, the municipality offered them a newly planned industrial site on the periphery of the city. Last year, they bought 600 m2 of land from the municipality.The municipality promised to develop the new site.They were not so easily convinced to leave their central location since the development of the new site was prolonged due to a lack of resources. However, they did believe they could turn their businesses into small manufacturing workshops at the new site.

Özcan explained that, since they did not have heavy equipment, they used to demolish old country houses by hand in the 1980s and 1990s.That was when migrants from the villages in eastern Turkey were coming to Kayseri. Apartment blocks replaced the traditional buildings. After agreeing with the developer, they bought the overall house as scrap material. Reclaiming bricks, stone lintels, roof tiles, and roof beams, they sold these vernacular components to villagers who constructed houses in their villages and rural migrants from eastern Turkey who built squatter houses.

*Figure 6.16: Location of Kayseri Demolishers' Cooperative*

Source: Author's own based on Google Earth

After the nation-wide natural disaster risk legislation in 2012, Kayseri also was affected by speculative renewal projects. Despite the fact that Kayseri was not locatedin a seismic-risk zone, there were demolitions of traditional houses going on there. Additionally, there was a five-year exponential growth in the real estate market. By 2018, the projects slowed down due to the economic crisis. According to Özcan, there was a prominent real estate bubble in Kayseri. Since the 1990s, he was frustrated about how buildings have been replaced by concrete apartments:

I used to maintain my income by selling massive masonry stones reclaimed from traditional houses. Mostly Armenian. They are extinct now. We sold the stones that were used to build *gecekondus*. Now, we are demolishing them.

There were fewer vernacular materials obtained from buildings.The industrial components like plastic frames or steel doors were easily disassembled from a building.There were many more wooden beams in the cooperative supply yard than in Istanbul (Figure 6.17). Damaged and overly old wood was cut to be sold

as firewood. Additionally, there were antique building parts that they sold to hotels in Cappadocia. They purchased rare building parts to use in restoration projects.

*Figure 6.17: The beams from old vernacular houses are used for roof structures*

The customers with low budgets, especially refugees, were visiting their supply yard from neighborhoods like Eskişehirbağları, a *Gecekondu* Prevention Zone12. Özcan highlighted that they have had more Syrian customers who rent apartments in the zone during the last five years and he clarified:

The owners are repairing their old houses to fit several refugee families. They became rich from renting, and as a result, Eskişehirbağları became a refugee neighborhood. Refugees cannot find regular jobs. They survive from waste picking which is supposed to be illegal.

Source: Author's own

12 *Gecekondu* Prevention Zones (Gecekondu Önleme Bölgesi) are serviced plots of land provided for incoming migrants that are released once the infrastructure is put in place; land is parceled out and allocated according to approved housing construction policy, generally accompanied by some technical support from local governments, see also (Ch. 7.3.3).

The second-hand trade of the cooperative was not only local but also international. Özcan mentioned a trader called Bego from Batumi, Georgia, who bought second-hand components from the cooperative:

He drives to Istanbul, Antalya, Bursa and Eskişehir. He fills his truck with cheap materials and sells them in Georgia. Depending on the demand, he also buys furniture and retail goods. The border is flexible since Georgians can travel without a visa, and there is a free trade agreement between the Turkey and Georgia.

The regular visits of Georgian traders prove that the demand for second-hand components goes beyond international borders. However, their visits did not follow a regular pattern. Local visitors from low-income neighborhoods and Cappadocian hotels regularly buy materials.

#### 6.3.3 Nevşehir and Niğde – The Motherland of the *Çıkmacıs*

Nevşehir and Niğde are two small central Anatolian cities founded on the west of Kayseri. Compared to the rest of Turkey, urban renewal projects were not as intense in these two cities. People from both cities began migrating to Istanbul in the 1970s. Generally, they found jobs in scrap collecting through kinship relations and village fellowship. At the time of my visit, there were three supply yards in different parts of Nevşehir that had similar spatial layouts to the ones in Istanbul. Two of them were located in the industrial zone and one in Karapınar village. The owners of these places used to work in Istanbul as scrap collectors with pushcarts. In 2012, they began salvaging buildings in Istanbul. Maintaining their village relations, they arranged to ship items from Istanbul every three to four months.Concerning the decline of demolitions in 2018, they remarked that there were fewer second-hand components reclaimed in Istanbul. They mostly traded the items to villagers who had farms and vineyards in the area. These people were building small huts and cottages to watch their crops.

One of the owners of the yards (Figure 6.18), Mehmet used to be a truck driver and later a scrap collector in Istanbul. Coincidentally, he was a relative of Demir, whose supply yard was located in Istanbul (see Ch. 6.2.1). Every month, he transported 200 items from his brother-in-law Demir's supply yard in the Beykoz district. From demolitions of traditional houses, he was getting roof components, wood beams, and roof tiles. Like the *çıkmacıs* in the region, he

was selling second-hand items reclaimed in Istanbul and new pieces produced in Gaziantep. He said that budget customers preferred second-hand. What's more, he was actively using online second-hand markets and Facebook's product and service pages to advertise and show his items.Through online marketing, he sold several components to a truck driver from Ordu in the Black Sea Region, and he sent window frames to İzmir.

*Figure 6.18: Mehmet's supply yard in Niğde*

Source: Author's own

Nevşehir and Niğde supply yards were strongly connected to Istanbul because of the rural migration in the 1980s. They brought most of the secondhand materials from Istanbul and distributed them to the surrounding villages. Local urban renewal projects were not present as they were in Konya and Kayseri. As a result, the amount of second-hand material excess from local projects was low.

#### 6.3.4 Overview of Supply Yards in Anatolia

The demolisher supply yards in Ankara and Kayseri become cooperatives to gain a formal identity.The municipality removed the demolishers from the city center to the perimeter and sold them land in small installments.  They also share building demolition and salvage tasks. They pass information to one another in order to help each other. In contrast, the second-hand supply yards in Nevşehir and Niğde are scattered across the city. Due to the migrative associations of the area, they bring the materials from Istanbul and distribute second-hand components to villages.The business they do with Georgian exporters reveals theinternational trade routes. Free trade between Turkey and Georgia makes such a material exchange possible. *Çıkmacıs* prefer to sell wholesale because it brings a larger amount of cash at one time.

The second-hand customers are mainly locals, villagers, and farmers who make small-scale constructions in vineyards, country cottages, barns, and hobby garden sheds that are not liable to construction and zoning regulations. This gives a freedom to construct small-scale properties based on their needs and resources. Local authorities do not often control such small-scale constructions that can be categorized as informal self-help construction. The level of informality increases in the rural parts, and the demand for secondhand is substantial. The ownership of the supply yards passes down through kinship relations. However, some did not stay in demolition and reclamation. Their permits allowed them to shift between different sectors. They look for different ways for income. For instance, Özcan is making furniture but he stayed with the cooperative nevertheless. Their entrepreneurial maneuvers relocate them into the formal sector.

In addition to building reclamation, the Ankara cooperative is taking part in clearing condemned buildings caused by an earthquake or military conflict. Their role in clearing destruction is part of a heavy-handed system that erases the urban fabric physically and socially through forced evictions and Turkish-Kurdish military conflict. It is interesting to observe that demolishers are deeply integrated into this system created by the AK Party administration.

#### **6.4 Second- hand Export: Georgia**

The research in Georgia began when the *çıkmacıs* informed me about the activities of Georgian wholesalers. Following this information, I found an advertisement entitled 'Used windows from Turkey' on Facebook during a site visit to Tbilisi in 201813. Then, I contacted a Georgian wholesaler for a visit and an

13 I first visited Tbilisi to attend the first edition of the Tbilisi Architecture Biennial in 2018. After completing preliminary research with the help of local architects, my findings

interview. The Georgian capital of Tbilisi, the most populous city, is the final destination for second-hand components from Turkish cities.

In the background of free trade, there is the bureaucratic, emigrational, and economic cooperation of the legal protocols between Turkey and Georgia. Second-hand dealers in Georgia use the advantages of business agreements and customs duty privileges between the two countries. In addition to being a migration destination for Georgian job seekers, Turkey also has mega projects and high-budget investments in Georgia's transportation and tourism infrastructure.

The traders travel with their trucks and visit supply yards in Anatolia to collect and ship second-hand elements back to Tbilisi and Batumi. The demand for cheap construction goods results from poor economic conditions and scarcity of industrial production in Georgia. Additionally, due to financial absences and incremental self-help construction, the repair culture in Georgia is another reason for the demand for second-hand trade.

The supply yard was 15 kilometers away from the city center. The owners also had a storage place in another location in Tbilisi. Most of the items were displayed randomly outside in a yard. There was a small rough stone building in the yard used as a workshop and an office. The owner, whose name was Giga, was 28 years old. He was from the Autonomous Republic of Adjara14 in the country's southwestern corner bordering Turkey and the Black Sea. Like most Adjara people, he knew Turkish well enough to initiate an interview. His ties with Turkey began at a young age when he traveled to the Black Sea region of Turkey for several jobs: seasonal agricultural worker in tea picking, alcohol and cigarette smuggling, and second-hand car trade. After these experiences, he ended up helping his father, who was bringing construction materials to Batumi from Turkey. After the intensification of urban renewal projects in Turkey, they observed that cheap components were being reclaimed from demolitions. As a result, they decided to import these components.

Once a month, Georgian traders visited several *çıkmacıs* in Turkey. They traveled through Anatolia until their truck was full of building materials. Giga mentioned that one of his relatives in Bursa15 arranged the demolition of 5 blocks of apartment buildings. He would bring his employees to Bursa to work

were first presented in a lecture as a pre-event; later, the documentation of the findings was exhibited in the biennial.

14 Adjara is primarily Muslim and has its own language.

15 Bursa, located in northwest Turkey, is its fourth most populous city.

in the demolition, salvage the blocks and transport them to Tbilisi. He was expecting to get five truck loads that they could sell within two months. According to him, such large-scale demolitions were the most profitable for his operation. If such a large batch of items arrived, he would distribute them to several storage places in different cities in Georgia: Kobuleti, Kutaisi, Batumi, and Kakheti.

In 2018, they brought two trucks full of 700–800 pieces of construction components every two months: wood parquet, windows, doors, heaters, and old natural gas boilers. Each shipment was posted on a Facebook16 page as videos or photographs. They sold them at 2–3 times the incoming price. The number of second-hand components was insufficient to supply the demand, and they decided to produce new items in their workshop (Figure 6.19).

During a revisit in February 2020, Giga said they were bringing fewer second-hand items from Turkey because there were not as many demolitions last year. They had become more focused on their own new product production. Nevertheless, they were still dependent on Turkey as a source of raw materials. According to him, the cheap construction items were particularly needed by Georgians:

We do not have an established industry since the Soviet period17. Russians took away all their factories after independence. Owing to the lack of industry, we are dependent on other countries. Most households are barely making ends meet. We need cheaply produced or second-hand items in the construction sector. After socialism, the Soviet micro-districts were developed by former dwellers and newcomers. Since then, cheap items are necessary.

16 In Georgia, Facebook is regularly used as an online marketplace.

17 Georgia was conquered by the Russian Empire in the nineteenth century after a long period of Ottoman and Persian dominance. Georgia had its own independent state from 1918 to 1921 when it became merged into the Soviet Union. Georgia became a constituent (union) republic in 1936 and remained so until the Soviet Union's collapse in 1991. The Georgian economy was modernized and diversified during the Soviet era. Georgia declared sovereignty on November 19, 1989, and independence on April 9, 1991 (Collier and Way 2004).

*Figure 6.19: Giga's Supply yard in Tbilisi. The brick building is the workshop area.*

Source: Author's own