Gecekondu
Gecekondu (Turkish for put up overnight, plural gecekondular) is a Turkish word meaning a house put up quickly without proper permissions, a squatter's house, and by extension, a shanty or shack. Gecekondu bölgesi is a neighborhood made of those gecekondular. Gecekondu neighborhoods offer an affordable alternative for shelter for many low-income households who can not afford to purchase or rent formal housing. Before the gecekondu phenomenon, teneke mahalles (tin-can neighbourhoods) constituted the main pattern of informal housing starting from the late 19th century. Term gecekondu gained popularity with the construction of informal settlements by migrants from rural Turkey in the 1950s when the mechanisation of agriculture created a significant surplus population in villages. The immigrants, including Roma, who fled Bulgarian and south Romanian cities after the 1877-78 Russo-Turkish War, were the earliest founders of teneke mahalles in different parts of İstanbul such as Kumkapı and Nişantaşı. However, the inexpensive housing option provided by teneke mahalles soon became attractive for local poor such as Kurdish and Armenian immigrants. Etymology In Turkish, gece means "night" and kondu means "placed" (from the verb konmak, "to settle" or "to be placed"); thus the term gecekondu comes to mean "placed (built) overnight". And bölge means