AK Party's local repository: an eloquent discourse on the city during elections

The AK Party Local Governments Presidency organized a meeting on urbanism close to the elections. It was somewhat like a policy development meeting. Many columnists, academics, and some mayors attended the meeting. Osman Nuri Kabaktepe, who is currently the Istanbul Provincial Chairman, was among the participants. The president was giving the floor to the participants one by one, and comments were made successively. Kabaktepe turned to me and said, "Do you notice everyone is talking outside the context?" I replied, "Don't give it away; if we hadn't started a doctorate in urbanism after the age of 45, we would be in the same position. After a few sentences, we would talk about traditional cities and get lost there."

It would not be an exaggeration to say that the issue of manageable local governance and planned urbanism in cities started with the Welfare Party. The adventure, starting with Konya and Urfa, especially peaked with Erdogan's success in Istanbul. Before the 2000s, I had negotiated a topic with Veysel Eroglu, who was the General Manager of ISKI. Municipalism, which started with the Welfare Party, was a local administration that would be considered a local revolution in the history of the republic. It is likely that years will pass, and this local revolution will not be written. I thought we could record the understanding of management from the academic staff to planning, physical municipalism, social municipalism, and cultural municipalism by establishing an academic cadre.

Welfare municipalism did not systematically turn into an encyclopedia, nor was there a study on AK Party municipalism. The AK Party came to the political scene quite prepared in its founding years. The party produced politics, and the parliament and the executive implemented it with legislative work. This situation kept political production constantly alive.

The problem of local governance has largely been a problem of lack of resources since the establishment of the republic. Although planning was made for two cities, Istanbul by Henry Prost and Ankara by Hermann Jansen, calling foreign planners, we are not familiar with planning stories for other cities. Konya and Kayseri seem to be our planned cities. In the Ozal period, cities met resources, and studies were carried out on water, sewage, and some infrastructure issues. The momentum of urbanization processes gained intensity during the AK Party period.

We saw how cities transformed during the AK Party period. Although we do not have a discipline at the level of Germany in our country regarding strategic planning, settlement and population planning, industrial planning, transportation planning, agricultural logistics, etc., significant activities have been carried out in each province in areas where they are needed.

Important investments made in the field did not turn into an intellectual accumulation and legacy. Some thought centers and city policy centers established in some cities only made publications about their own cities. There has been no analytical book-making activity for the municipal understanding of the Welfare Party, as well as there is no registered corpus for AK Party municipalism.

From time to time, some studies have been conducted to guide mayors. However, I think there is no "neat and tidy" answer to give to a new mayor starting in the AK Party when asked, "What is the tradition, knowledge, and accumulation of our party?" March is approaching, and we do not know whether we will be subject to a philosophical integrity in terms of the future of cities and which party's city policy will be discussed. The strong visions of the mayors are not discussed. On the other hand, the polemical politics of the CHP pulls local government discussions into empty spaces.

We have global cities like Istanbul and Antalya. We have cities that are candidates to become global cities. We have cities that govern. We have metropolitan cities, especially Ankara, and human-scaled cities. Each of these cities should have a vision according to its own scale, and the cities should be shaped according to this vision.

The AK Party government, which condensed the infrastructure experience into the last 20 years, became the youngest investment, hardware, and knowledge in the world. This is a very important experience for a state. It is time for AK Party municipalism, which has a 25-year accumulation and has accomplished great things in the field of local governments, to "create a memory."