İlya's garden

Old residents still call it İlya'nın Bostanı, after İlya Soro, a Greek gardener who sold its vegetables until the 1990s. It was foundation land, granted to two families in the late Ottoman years, and the state foundations directorate took it over share by share between 1966 and 1977.

Then came the plans:

• 1990: a dialysis hospital, stopped in court.
• 1992: bulldozers, until a local shopkeeper stood in front of them.
• 2000: a private university's school, blocked by a lawsuit.
• 2010: a build-operate-transfer scheme.
• 2014: trees cut, answered by a residents' vigil.

In April 2015 it reopened as a community garden of about 16.5 decares and more than a hundred plots.

The twist: the neighbourhood saved the land as green space, not for the family who had worked it. Some older non-Muslim residents still keep away because, as they put it, the land belongs to someone.