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Van city has serious socio-economic cultural development problems. Despite these problems, Van's cultural and natural diversity, as well as its potential to be an important commercial center due to its geopolitical situation, are important for the solution of extant problems. In this regard, this paper strives to examine the challenges of Van from the cultural aspect. Accordingly; in Van, the investments determined by the actors affecting the development and planning process periodically (2003-2016) were evaluated vis-à-vis the classification of cultural economy and human development index. Content analysis was used in the research. The European Union (EU) is one of the international actors in Van and the national actors are; Ministry of Development, Ministry of Interior, Ministry of Culture and Tourism, T.C. Prime Ministry General Directorate of Foundations, Eastern Anatolia Project (EAP) Regional Development Administration, Eastern Anatolia Development Agency (EADA) and Municipalities. It is seen that these are important actors in development policies and the investments they have made coincide with the strategies they have targeted. International actors prioritize social and human development investments within the framework of EU regional development policies. National actors however followed both a development model within the scope of industry, trade and services, which was predominantly based on the economic perspective, and a development model from the tourism perspective in the services class. Consequently, it is seen that development in Van is not directly evaluated from the cultural view, but evaluated together with tourism, culture is instrumentalized for tourism and cultural tourism is brought to the fore and cultural policies are developed from the tourism perspective.

This article aims to explore the political dilemmas of sustainable metropolitan development marked by intense tensions between ecology and economy within the context of neoliberal urban policies over the Case of Istanbul, Turkey. It investigates the re-scaling and centralization of the state in directing the investment capital and focuses on the ways in which it reregulates and loosens the institutions to create exceptionalities in order to realize mega projects. It examines Canal Istanbul and the “New City” or the Yenişehir Project, the so-called “crazy project” imposed upon the city by the central government, which presents a crucial case demonstrating the processes of creating exceptionalities and the erosion of public norms. Empirically, drawing from the Turkish experience through an in-depth analysis of policy documents, plans and reports prepared by a variety of agents, the article demonstrates and discusses different modalities of creating exceptions to capitalize on the lucrative real estate markets through mega projects in an increasingly authoritarian neoliberal context, its ramifications on the existing norms and the oppositions it raised. The article concludes with a discussion on how the new political climate that moved away from subsidiarity, transparency and democratic participation, and became increasingly centralized, created an impasse for planning and that neither the ecology nor the economy could be protected and enhanced. Although economic development discourse is used to legitimize these mega projects, it is obvious that they lead to an ecocide.

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