Gaziosmanpaşa
Gaziosmanpaşa is another neighborhood of Istanbul located on European side. Its population increased rapidly in a very short time.The population which was around 90,000, during 1950s, became more than 1 million when it was 2000s. Huge migration brought multifariousness to district. There are groups of people from different regions, cultures, political ideas. It has a nationalist, islamic, kurdish, gybsy, bulgarian, alevi neighborhoods which are side to side.
Gaziosmanpaşa had never been invested till 1990s. The large part of district saw blacktop on their roads during 1990s. Worst buses worked for district for many years. Some say that goverment preffered keeping this shanty town quiet instead of developing it.
Residents of city have a very bad impression for Gaziosmanpaşa. The reason is that some part of district have fame of some illegal activities. Sarıgöl is most famous. It is a gypsy neighborhood whose natural vegetation is marijuhana. Also, drug producing and selling is common business in Sarıgöl. Another same concept is Merkez neighborhood (known as Bursa mahallesi) which is also located in Gaziosmanpaşa. If you love weed and have confident enough to go, these shanty towns help you to get the best quality of weed and drug with cheapest price. Sarıgöl has been on the list of goverments urban transformation project which means money grubber goverment has an eye on poor people’s houses and their lands. Idea of Turkish goverment is having no poor people in Istanbul because the city is a good brand to sell so each squaremetre is valuable. Sarıgöl is only one of the victim of tricky goverment.It is tricky because it never invests poor areas of city and put the argüman that these areas are dangerous for society so that they have to be changed.
Recently, Gaziosmanpaşa became the main topic of conversation after a promotional video of Şanzelize Cafe published on social media. Şanzelize stands for the Turkish pronunciation of famous Parisian avenue Champs-Elysees. Although video was published as a promotional video, it became a internet phenomena. If you were on youtube “Gaziosmanpaşa Şanzelize Kafe Tanıtım Filmi”, you can watch the video. Şanzelize Kafe is not an ordinary cafe. It’s a meetig point of people who are named apaçi. Apaçi, literally means one of the Indian clan in Turkish, is a kind of a subculture show up in Turkey recently. It may be counted as a first subculture which is not exporded or exogeneous. Usually, it refers to a young from suburbs who loves partying.They have challenging wearing style, they dance like a crazy and they’re reckless.
Şanzelize Kafe caused a huge argument about social classes in Turkey and reveal that middle class still dont have significant character and their looking way to low-class is very elitist. They are eliminative that they never agree with something which is not standart or not normal. Finally, they are stupidly racist that they use one of the name of indian clan for insulting people. They say that the music which apaçi listen is not good as if they’re decision-maker of what kind of music people should listen, they say wear style of apaçi is funny as if everybody should wear the same. But, its not so suprising for Turkey because people who was listening metal music were named satanist, people who was supporting covered girls entering to universities were named radical muslims.
Youngs from suburbs have been imprisoned to their neighborhood consequent of goverments prohibitive politics. If we consider that there’re still people who has never seen the sea although they live in İstanbul, we can understand situation better. They have to work when they are 16 in order to help to their families. They go work and they come to home directly. They can not socialize because they don’t have money or time. They grown up with turkish tv series whose concepts are always luxury. Their dream is having luxury life like what they see in tv but then they face to reality and they have to go to work early in the morning. In the middle of dream and reality, these guys just smoke bonzai or drugs and dance like a crazy. Finally, they create a subculture which belongs to only Istanbul.