ABSTRACT
Mersin, a port city located in Turkey’s Eastern Mediterranean region, is renowned for its diverse urban cultures. Throughout its history, the city has received migrations, both voluntary and enforced, depending on shifting social, political, and economic factors. However, since the mid-1980s, the city, its cultural and spatial practices have changed due to the forced displacement of people from the southeastern and eastern regions of Turkey, and more recently due to the displacement of people from Syria since the 2010s. This chapter examines the socio-spatial practices of displaced communities in Mersin’s coastal park and evaluates their ways of appropriating the public space. The case study that was conducted through in-depth interviews between 2017 and 2019 demonstrates that the diverse socio-spatial practices observed can be attributed not only to distinctive cultural practices but also to the various contingent, situated, and site-specific practices that the displaced groups adopted in their new surroundings.
