JINHA

EylemDaş- Perihan Kaya /JINHA

İSTANBUL – As the ruling government in Turkey continues to oust local shopkeepers from the streets of Istanbul to make way for luxury hotels and malls, one more historic site will be closing its doors.

The city is losing yet another historic haunt in the downtown Beyoğlu district: Laterna Café. Café manager UrmiyeUysal says the trouble for Laterna and many other local sites started when Turkey's Parliament passed a 2012 law calling for the "transformation" of buildings under "emergency risk." The government has taken a liberal interpretation of what constitutes risk and conveniently declared sites in the path of urban transformation projects, like Laterna, to be unstable or dangerous.

City security guards came to the building one night to deliver a document to Urmiye, 60, declaring that her building was "unauthorized"—although Urmiye has a license for the business and has been paying rent for 30 years. Officials have refused to hear her complaints, continuing to insist that she doesn't have a license.

Urmiye says she and her customers are continuing to struggle for Laterna with actions and protests outside the building. They have hung the windows of the building with newspaper clippings and signs documenting their struggle. They say they will stop the amnesiac transformation of Istanbul.

"I'm 60 years old and I'm struggling for this," said Urmiye. "What else will I do after this, collect garbage in the street?"

(fk/cm)