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The neoliberal turn in Turkish politics following the rise of the AKP to power in 2002, and the urban transformation projects carried out by this government in Istanbul did not mark the end of clientelism as a political dynamic, but it did bring profound changes both in its means and its ends. My hypothesis is that whereas inhabitants of informal settlements had long been able to influence the urban environment and appropriate a portion of the economic rent attached to land through clientelist exchange, the dynamic has now reversed. Clientelism is now focused on access to social policies and serves chiefly as a basis for the political pedagogy of the ruling party in support of its policy of neo-liberal urban transformation. In the present article, I examine this hypothesis in the case of Şahintepe, an informal neighborhood in the district of Başakşehir.