This paper explores the politics of infrastructure in contemporary Turkey, arguing that the material transformation of urban landscapes—most significantly, that of Istanbul—has been central to both the electoral success of the Justice and Development Party (AKP) and the growing challenges to its rule. At both the municipal and the national levels, the AKP has used infrastructure projects large and small to imagine and enact its political authority, grounding its claims to legitimacy and good governance in the transformation of the built environment and the provision of services to urban residents. Current Prime Minister and former Istanbul mayor Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has sought to leave his mark on the city through a range of high-profile of often controversial infrastructure projects, including new metro lines, a third airport, an Ottoman-style mosque on the city’s highest hill, and perhaps most ambitious of all, a canal that would link the Sea of Marmara and the Black Sea. In mid-2013, one such project—the redevelopment of Taksim Square and Gezi Park—sparked mass protests against AKP rule, and construction contracts lay at the heart of the corruption scandal that engulfed the party later that year. The paper argues that the AKP’s attempts to reshape Istanbul—and the Prime Minister’s heavy-handed interference in what might seem like local questions of urban planning and architectural design—are not only about generating economic value: they are also about the construction and performance of political power. The paper traces the historical trajectory of urban transformation in modern Turkey, arguing that there are substantial and often overlooked continuities between the AKP and its Kemalist predecessors in this respect—both in their ideological approaches to infrastructure, and in the paternalist and often authoritarian character of their interventions in the built environment. Finally, it examines the Gezi Park protests and the AKP’s response as an example of how the materiality of urban politics may also form the grounds for protest and political change.