Fatih Municipality Meeting

Based on the work of the last year BUDD group, we have been invited to meet with the Mayor of Fatih Municipality and with members of the CBO called the Sulukule Platform. Thus, we have been able to establish a development dialogue with them, getting the different perspectives of these actors regarding the Renovation Program and its implementation.

After hearing their interests and priorities, we have a better idea of the process of transformation that Istanbul is going through, and what this implies for the civil society and the government. Now we have to make a choice about the issues we want to focus on during the next two weeks and justify that decision. So far we have agreed in the importance of the preservation and the conservation of heritage (tangible & intangible), and the issue of the relocation and resettlement of the Sulukule community. But how to link these objectives is part of the struggle of defining the scope of our project, however, we have been advised to chose the needs that we can effectively address in order to make a final decision and start working.