We are standing in the garden of Istanbul’s Piyale Paşa Mosque, surrounded by scents of mint and chamomile and the faint sound of Turkish pop music, talking with two women wearing rubber gardening clogs. This space has been used to grow produce for local markets since the sixteenth century, but in less than a month it will be destroyed as part of a development project in the neighborhood of Kasımpaşa. The gardeners were told it will be turned into a parking lot.

Turkey is in the midst of a major construction boom. Entire neighborhoods are being emptied of inhabitants and demolished to create blank slates for municipal or private development. The 2013 protests against plans to replace Gezi Park with a shopping mall, and the violent police response they generated (seven protesters were killed and over eight thousand were injured; fourteen people lost an eye), received international media attention and successfully halted the shopping mall plan. But aggressive development continues, and as of last year at least thirty-two new shopping malls were being planned throughout Istanbul.

In August 2013, as the Gezi protests died down, a smaller, less publicized struggle broke out in Yedikule, a working-class neighborhood located along the ancient city walls. Yedikule houses one of the last remaining complexes of market gardens in Istanbul.