Neighborhood residents, who were asked to evacuate their homes and have been protesting for days, told Milli Gazete Correspondent Furkan Erten about their troubles.
In the Tozkoparan District of the Güngören district of Istanbul, there is a great injustice and rent transformation under the name of "urban transformation".
The residents of the Ornek Site and the slum area in the neighborhood have been fighting against the injustices of the Ministry of Environment and Urbanization and Güngören Municipality for a long time. After the region was declared risky without any investigation, citizens were asked to evacuate their homes. The process started under the name of urban transformation continued with the commercial status of the lands. After the value of the lands multiplied, a great persecution began to be applied to the citizens. Citizens whose natural gas and electricity are cut off late at night are forced to buy a house by being in debt.
“NOT MY LIFE AND MY SALARY ARE NOT ENOUGH TO PAY THE DEBT”
Neighborhood resident Fehri Sarıcı, "They come here for rent, not for earthquakes. If the shop they will build is sold, they will build one building. If I am in debt, neither my life nor my pension will be enough to pay the debt. There is a difference of 500 thousand liras. I have suffered here for 35 years, my land has been valued, he says 'get out, go'," he said.
THEY DECLARED THE BUILDINGS RISKY WITHOUT TAKE A CORE SAMPLE
Atakan Yücel, one of the residents of Örnek Site, "In December 2020, the Ministry of Environment and Urbanization and Güngören Municipality were informed that the area we live in was declared a 6A risky area, and our houses were requested to be evacuated within 30 days with a notification. However, there was no core sample taken from our buildings in the risky area announcement. With the observation-based report of Istanbul University, it was desired to initiate an urban transformation in the Tozkoparan neighborhood, which is spread over a wide and green area, to gather the houses in a certain area and to transfer the land rights taken from them to the ministry. As a result of the lawsuits filed at the Regional Administrative Court, many cases of stay of execution were accepted. However, these cases were brought before the 10th Administrative Court, and the court in turn canceled all stay of execution cases," he said.
THE VALUE OF THE LAND INCREASED, THEY ARE TAKING CITIZEN OUT OF THE REGION
Yücel, who said that the area they live in is one of the most valuable lands in the region, "The Sample Blocks we reside in are one of the most valuable plots of the region with 158 flats and an area of 6600 square meters and are marked as Area 5 in the project and the land quality has been changed to commercial or commercial + residential. Since it is close to Merter Tekstil bazaar and the land quality has changed, its value reaches 300 million TL. Showing our houses as an urgent risk area and taking us out of this region and wanting to give us a house by debiting a region that is twice the current market value leads to injustice and injustice. Since the residents of the neighborhoods who live here know very well that the so-called transformation is not urban but profiteering, we resist until the end. In addition, with the consent letter imposed on us instead of the contract, it is requested that all your land rights be transferred to the ministry in the future," he added.
PEOPLE DON'T KNOW HOW MUCH THEY WILL PAY
Saying that citizens do not even know how much they will borrow, Kiriş said, "Here, the public is asked to be indebted open-ended. People do not know how much they will owe on the documents they sign. It will make ground plus 8 floors instead of your sub-floor 4 floors. For these reasons, people of all views came together here and started to take action. For this reason, criminal complaints began. Our elderly people passed away due to the sadness and stress they experienced. Relatives of these people cried out, "You killed them"," he said.