Fundación Punjab

The Sulukule neighbourhood, like Küçükbakkalköy, most of Kağithane and many other Romani neighbourhoods in Turkish cities, has already been demolished. Those few residents who were offered an alternative in Taşoluk, some 45 km from Istanbul have mostly left as the new apartments were well beyond their means and now live in temporary accommodation that is largely unsuitable; cramped and poor housing at best. The majority of the Romanlar, to use the ethnonym that people apply to themselves, who once lived in Sulukule are living in shanties close by in the Karagümrük neighbourhood, with no sanitation, running water or amenities of any kind. The report below is somewhat outdated as Fatih Belediye has already destroyed this once vibrant community and even attempted to eradicate all traces of Romani history by changing the district's name to 'Karagümrük', as I wrote previously.
 
The Sulukule Platform organisation is still working with the displaced and forcibly evicted families and children in the area and continues to advocate for a just restitution of Romani residents' rights. The Sulukule Romani Association is also still active and it's president Şükrü Punduk continues campaigning for the 3,000 former residents.
 
The Human Rights Association (IHD), based in Diyarbakir and Istanbul hasn't carried out a survey of Romani groups in Turkey, so the figures cited below are not based on reliable estimates. The ERRC/Helsinki Citizens' Assembly/Edirne Romani Association project "Promoting Romani rights in Turkey 2006-08" produced a figure of 4.5 million persons of Rom, Dom, Lom and Gezgin origins, based on the research carried out by myself and the research team over two years.
The reference to Sulukule being the oldest Romani neighbourhood in the world is drawn from historical sources dating back to Constantine Monomachus' reign c.1050 and was presented at a number of seminars and meetings I attended to argue the case for defending Sulukule from 2006 onwards. The case is made in more detail in "No Promised Land: History, Historiography and the Origins of the Gypsies", that will be published shortly and the original citation from a hagiography of St George the Athonite comes from Soulis' article in 1961. Much of the other material regarding nomenclature in the article below draws upon Ana Oprişan's studies of Romani groups in Turkey, that she has published.