Social & Ecological Transformation

A few weeks ago, we came across a promotional text on a website that features fancy photos of detached houses surrounded by trees anyone living in a big city would dream of. The text illustrates a residential compound designed for high-end consumers in Büyükçekmece district of Istanbul.

With the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers in the USA on 15 September 2008, it was announced that the onset of the fourth major crisis in the history of capitalism commenced. When the crisis erupted, its causes were analyzed on three different levels: structural dynamics, institutional arrangements and certain choices with respect to political economy.1 We need to simultaneously elaborate on these three levels in order to grasp both the origins and current advance of the global crisis. 

The G20, shorthand for Group 20, is considered to be one of the most significant conferences of the world leaders. Leaders of the world’s largest economies come together each year to talk about how to boost the global economy and reduce the barriers to international trade and economic development.  

Ünal Akkemik Belgrade Forest, to the north of Istanbul’s European coast, covers approximately 5300 hectares with mostly broadleaf trees. Recent archaeological excavations in Yenikapı confirm that...

The Heinrich Böll Stiftung Turkey Representation together with the Development Center Association and Traces of Seed Association is invits you to the conference between 16-17 November 2012, based on the book “Alternative and New Approaches to Rural Development” published by the Development Center Association in Turkish and Kurdish in 2011. During the two-day conference, the main topics will be “Food Sovereignty”, “Peasantry” and “Rural Development and Gender”. The first day will consist of panels addressing these topics followed by workshops on the second day of the conference.

In the last major set of economic crisis in 1990s the IMF made some serious mistakes that adversely affected the economies of many countries. Instead of acting as a lender of last resort, when it was most urgently needed, the Fund imposed procyclical policies and in (some cases) set unrealistic inflation targets that would be impossible to achieve, given the currency depreciation, without a severe economic contradiction

Women and girls, who are living in communities affected by extractive projects bear the brunt of environmental, social and economic impacts. Women for example mostly face livelihood loss, increased carework, forced prostitution and human traffiking, rape and sexually transmitted diseases due to the presence of extractive industries in their communities

Turkey′s post-crisis adjustments under the AKP administration traces the steps of many developing countries, which are dependent on foreign capital and are conditioned to adopt or maintain contradictonary policies. In order to secure ″investor confidence″ and ″international creditworthiness″, Turkey maintained high real rates of interest in anticipation of increased foreign capital inflow into the domestic economy

Today, the debate and advocacy about human rights has spread beyond its initial confines to numerious fields of action, though it´s unclear to which extent this change in attitude will impact governments an institutions, such as the World Bank. Looking at the institution of the World Bank today, it can be said,that most of its commitments to human rights has been largely rhetorical so far

Especially developing and low- and middle-income countries respectively are hit by the financial crisis in a heavy way, although they mostly did not play a vital role according to the dynamic processes which led to this situation.'The crisis' actually implies two components: a financial an a recession one. Not the fiscial system is hitting these countries in a harsh way, but the lack of trade with the high income countries