The "New Falcon" neighbourhood was where my travel agent was born. He told me so shortly before I travelled to Ankara in September 2005. I decided to take a look. It was the first time more than two people warned me against entering a neighbourhood. However, I pushed on, and found it very picturesque, though very poor. And I had no trouble with anybody, so: safe after all.

A viewer adds:
The Yeni Doğan Mahallesi is a good example of a ‘gecekondu’ neighbourhood.
‘Gecekondu’ (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. In Turkish, ‘gece’ means "(at) night" and ‘kondu’ means "placed"; thus the term gecekondu comes to mean "placed (built) overnight".

In common usage, it refers to the low cost buildings or houses that were constructed in a very short time by people migrating from rural areas to the outskirts of the large cities.
These squatters exploited a legal loophole which states that if one starts building after dusk and moves into a roofed ‘house’ before dawn the next day (without having been noticed by the authorities), then the authorities are not permitted to tear the ‘building’ down without a legal proceeding in court (and thus it is more likely one can stay).

These ‘gecekondu’ areas are usually very densely populated. It is reported that almost half the residents of Istanbul - some six million people - dwell in gecekondu homes.
The gecekondu phenomenon is directly linked with the problems of unemployment and poverty in the rural areas of Turkey, especially in the east of the country. In many instances entire villages have migrated to the outskirts of the large industrialized cities in order to seek a better standard of living.

Often, foreigners are dissuaded from entering these neighbourhoods, in fact not because this would be especially risky, but out of national pride. Turks are often afraid that one might think less about Turkey, after seeing the ‘gecekondu’ poverty and lack of ‘modern’ comfort up too close.

Correspondent: J.M.Criel, Antwerpen.
Source: (among others) Wikipedia.

YENİ DOĞAN

Yeni Doğan, benim seyahat acentacımın doğduğu mahalle. Bunu, bana, Eylül 2005’teki Ankara seyahatimden çok kısa bir süre önce söyledi. Ben de orayı görmeye karar verdim. İlk kez bir mahalleye girmemem konusunda ikiden fazla kişi beni uyardı. Ben yine de devam ettim ve oranın, çok fakir olmasına rağmen çok iyi resim veren bir yer olduğunu gördüm. Ve hiç kimseyle başım belaya girmedi; sonuçta sağ salim oradan ayrıldım.
Türkçe çeviri: Melek Emir. Katkılarından dolayı teşekkür ederim.