Localizing modernity in the Eastern Black Sea Region of Turkey: Historical anthropology perspectives (2006) (original) (raw)
Related papers
Small Towns in Turkey: Footnotes in Somebody Else’s History
Journal of Historical Sociology, 2011
This article follows the trajectories by which modernity and development in Turkey have been constituted as an antagonism between villages and cities. Both inspired, albeit in opposing ways, modernising/ developmental ideals, and constituted the true locus of nationalist discourses. Meanwhile, small towns with shrinking populations, low-level capital accumulation and limited jobs have been left invisible. They have been depicted as irrelevant places of the same essence, which had nothing to add to the story. As such, the article is an analysis of how the Republican history is constructed as a narrative of an antagonism between the West and the East, backwardness and progress, modern and non-modern. What follows is an exploration of how provincial places and people, which are lumped together on either side of these binaries, are left out, silenced or marginalized.
SİYASAL: Journal of Political Sciences, 2023
The article reviews the scholarly bibliography on provincial Turkish towns during the Early Republican Period with a specific emphasis on the study of the negotiation of social change at the provincial level. The article discusses the strengths and limitations of a body of work published since the 1960s and evaluates their position and contribution in the historiography of modern Turkey. Up to the late 1990s and the opening of the State Archives of the Republican Period, a tendency occurred to overlook the study of provincial towns in favor of major cities and villages. Post-2000 historiography that addresses sociopolitical change increasingly produces works that consider provincial towns; nevertheless, space is mostly regarded as a necessary spatial container of the process under study and, as such, rarely receives critical engagement. The article considers the dominant periodization of the literature, which truncates the history of modern Turkey before and after 1923, as extremely limiting in scope. Thus, it suggests that the narrowing of the spatial-geographical perspective (going local) and the widening of the time frame beyond the 1923-1950 period are promising directions for the research on sociopolitical changes during the late Ottoman Empire and republican Turkey.
History of Istanbul / VOLUME 1 /Istanbul’s Long Century: On a Global And National Scale
Istanbul’s Long Century: On a Global And National Scale, 2015
Due to its unique geographical posi on, Istanbul's economic and poli cal influence spread over a wide area. Istanbul lies at a key intersec on of strategic sea-lanes, and connects two con nents, working as a hinge-city. The city was established on firm land to the north of the Marmara Sea, which connects the Aegean and Black Seas, and towards the southern end of the Bosphorus, straits that have undisputed geo-strategic importance. Like the Marmara Sea, Istanbul is a place where the cultural ecologies of the Aegean and Black Seas intertwine. Including the Balkans and Asia Minor, it can be considered to be in the economic and poli cal heart Eastern Europe. As the mee ng point of passageways and ac vi es that join together many ci es spread over two con nents, Istanbul is also a vital bridge for numerous social networks. This complex formula has resulted in both its fortune and misfortune. Istanbul is a port city, a military city, a poli cal city that was the center of two empires, a commercial city which served as a mee ng point for transna onal colonial networks, a financial city, an educa onal city with numerous secondary and higher educa on ins tu ons, and also a cultural city that func oned as the center of ethno-religious diversity. In the history of the city, these features o en intertwine. Istanbul has collected all sorts of complicated and diverse features that resist singular defini ons of the city; these diverse features o en interact with each other through symbiosis, allowing different historical layers to survive con nuously. It is a rare example of a city in which historical and geographical features are represented in both eclec c and synthe c forms and integrated (assemblage). Looking at the transforma on of the city throughout history, we encounter a different Istanbul in every period. Istanbul is the sum of all these geographical and socio-historical differences. In this paper, focusing on Istanbul's recent history, I will a empt to explain the city's comprehensive sociological transforma on over the last century. THE NINETEENTH CENTURY CONTEXT AND THE MODERN CITY Demographic mobility in recent O oman history has determined the new forma on of Istanbul. The demographic movements , intertwined with late nineteenth and early twen eth century socio-technological developments to form the main features of Istanbul in the Republican period. Demographic changes include the internal structure of popula on movements, the forma on of public health (sanita on) ins tu ons, large popula on movements caused by wars and geographic separa sm, and ethno-religious components of the popula on. Socio-technological processes define the versa le effects of techno-industrial revolu ons, which took place one a er another. The city's history can be be er understood by explaining how it was transformed by economic, spa al, cultural, and administra ve processes, thus providing a context for socio-historical change. Among those processes which transformed the city by following predetermined and original routes are: large fires and subsequent periods of reconstruc on, the spread of railways, the renewal of harbors, the introduc on of the telegraph, telephone and electricity to urban life, the a empt to shape the urban macro-form with motorized vehicles, and the evolu on of communica on technologies. The cultural transforma ons that surrounded the moderniza on of the O oman State and the Turkish Republiccan also be understood in terms of the decisions that shaped conflic ng poli cal and administra ve structures. This ar cle will discuss the city's recent history, which was shaped by conflicts and breaksthat carry it from the past to the future.. As the capital of a mul na onal empire, which was damaged by hegemonic disputes between the great powers of the nineteenth century, Istanbul found itself in the eye of a storm. As one of the most prominent and fascina ng ci es during military-agrarian empires, Istanbul had to keep pace with the innova ons of this period. It represented not only one of the ci es that were involved in manufacturing for the progressive capitalist markets of the me, from which the industrial revolu on emanated, but also witnessed different types of se lements typical of growing economies. The capitals of modern na on-states, as seen in both their architecture and planning, were venues for symbolic power in this period. When the problem of subsistence provisions was eradicated following a boom in produc on, the number of se lements accommoda ng large popula ons started to increase rapidly. Growing and urbanizing popula ons in Europe and America reflected the birth of a new city form. The most tangible results of 1 2
Cultures and Practices of Coexistence from the Thirteenth Through the Seventeenth Centuries Multi-Ethnic Cities in the Mediterranean World, Volume 1, 2020
Once a small Muslim town on the Asian shore of Bosporus, Üsküdar was a quasi-rural settlement known for its summer residences, beautiful vineyards, and gardens. From the second half of the sixteenth century onwards, Üsküdar became one of the most attractive suburbs of Istanbul for the building activities commissioned by the Ottoman imperial household. The increasing number of mosque complexes stimulated the region's urban development and transformed the rural Üsküdar into an urbanized town. As its boundaries began to extend towards the south-east direction, new neighborhoods were being formed, and the new settlers of the town altered the region's ethnoreligious composition. This study provides the first findings of my preliminary research for my dissertation on the spatial evolution of Mahalle-i Ma'mûre formed around Nurbanu Mosque Complex, the most significant imperial endowment in Üsküdar built between the years of 1570-79. The Muslim, Greek, Armenian, Jew, and Gypsy residents of Ma'mûre shared the same public sphere that linked them and shaped their identities and solidarity networks. Focusing on their occupations patterns, local networks, commercial activities, marriage, and divorce practices, I try to map different ethnic and religious communities within the neighborhood sociality through the lenses of judicial records within one year.
ABSTRACT: In modern cities, neighborhoods are mostly seen as a part of urban planning. Modern people are identified with ID numbers and there are many apparatuses which watch them from mobile phones to social media in their everyday lives. In the early modern world, however, the social aspects of the neighborhood fulfilled the same role. There was a heightened awareness of being a neighborhood resident and the neighborhood watch as the most effective tool for social control. This awareness and sense of belonging brought with them an increased accountability and responsibility among the dwellers to one another. In this thesis, I will analyze some neighborhood-related cases from various Istanbul court records of the very early eighteenth century, which was one of the most turbulent periods of the imperial capital in terms of military failures, social unrest, natural disasters, and so on. On the basis of these court records and other official and non-official primary sources, I will try to explore the role of the community-based neighborhood structure in maintaining social control and order in Istanbul. In doing so, I will consider both the external (state-based) factors and internal (neighborhood-based) factors. The findings and/or non-findings of this study offer an opportunity for both horizontal and vertical comparison of early eighteenth-century Istanbul neighborhoods with the neighborhoods of its contemporaries as well as the earlier times. ÖZET: Mahalle kavramı, günümüzde neredeyse sadece şehir planlamasının bir parçası olarak görülmektedir. Artık kimliği kendisine verilen kimlik numaralarıyla tespit edilebilen modern çağın insanının izlenilebilirliği, hemen herkesin kullandığı cep telefonlarından, günlük hayatın ayrılmaz bir parçası haline gelen sosyal medyaya kadar pek çok farklı yolla sağlanmaktadır. Bu izlenilebilirlik otoriteler tarafından gerçekleştirilebildiği gibi özellikle kişilerin günlük hayatlarını sosyal medya üzerinden teşhir etmesiyle de mümkün olmaktadır. Erken modern diye nitelenen dönemde ise, mahalle, daha çok sosyal yönleriyle karşımıza çıkmaktadır. Mahalleli olma bilincinin son derece yüksek olduğu ve mahalle mensubiyetlerinin kimlik oluşumunda önemli rol aldığı söz konusu dönemde mahallelinin bakışları izlenilebilirlik ve sosyal kontrol bağlamında tek değilse bile en önemli araçtı. Bu mensubiyetten ileri gelen mesuliyetler ise mahalle sakinleri arasındaki karşılıklı sorumluluk duygularını arttırmaktaydı. Bu tezde, Osmanlı tarihinin askeri yenilgiler, ayaklanmalar, doğal afetler gibi pek çok açıdan en hareketli dönemlerinden olan ve mevcut tarih yazımı literatüründe hakkında oldukça boşluklar bulunan on sekizinci yüzyılın ilk yıllarına ait İstanbul mahkeme kayıtlarında, mahalleyle ilgili davalar analiz edilecektir. Söz konusu mahkeme kayıtlarına ek olarak incelenen resmi ve resmi olmayan birincil kaynaklarla birlikte, İstanbul'daki sosyal kontrol ve düzenin sağlanmasında cemaatvâri mahalle yapısının etkisi irdelenmeye çalışılacaktır. Bu bağlamda ise, devlet kaynaklı dışsal faktörler ve mahallenin kendi dinamiklerinden kaynaklanan içsel faktörler birlikte değerlendirilecek ve sıradan insanların sesine kulak kabartılmaya çalışılacaktır. Çalışma sonunda, bulunan ve/veya bulunamayan veriler ise bizlere, on sekizinci yüzyıl İstanbul mahallelerini çağdaşı diğer şehirler ve daha erken dönemlerle hem yatay hem de dikey bir karşılaştırma imkanı sunacaktır.
Kadim Şehrin Silik Çeperleri: Osmanlı Dönemi Trabzon’unda Mahalleler (17-20. yy. Arası)
Mimarlık bilimleri ve uygulamaları dergisi, 2022
The city of Trabzon, which has been one of the most important settlements in Anatolia since the ancient eras, contains the traces of political, economic, and social mobility observed throughout its long history in its urban texture. The study focuses on the urban texture of Trabzon after the Ottoman conquest and focuses on the period between the 17th and 20 th centuries, which is seen as an important deficiency in the literature. In this context, archival documents kept during the Ottoman period, especially through the records of the kadı court of Trabzon; the main backbone of the study is the determination of the mahalles (quarters) that are newly established, whose names have changed and merged, as well as examining where these mahalles are located on the city topography and discussing the dimensions of urban growth seen in 17-20. Century period.
start the introductory section of this article with a discussion of the very broad title, " Town and Tribe " , when this title is limited as regards time and place through the con tinuation " The Conflict Between Tribe and Nobility in Ottoman Diyarbekir (1891-1909) " The reason will become clear when our analysis of a rather specific area is considered within the context of general theories about this topic. Right from the start I should indicate that this article is part of a series of urban history studies that approaches critically the classical historiography on towns in Turkey. Therefore it contains in itself a hidden criticism of this historiography. This criticism targets " uniform " or " centralist " approaches to the concept of " Islamic Town " and its corollary " Ottoman Town " , which result in rigid categorisations. Scholarship about the developments that led to the disintegration of the Ottoman State and the foundation of the Republic has been domi nated by approaches that often put the centre in the foreground and neglect the provinces. In this context many features characteristic of the provinces were either missed or linked back to the centre and thus deprived of their provincial element. The disintegration of the Otto man State itself happened right after a period that had substituted extremely centralist meth ods for much less centralist methods of long standing. The Republic that was then founded was built on a paradigm that linked everything back to the centre and sought to make it uniform. For the nationalism of the Republic, which rested on homogeneity, retreat from the centre as well as increase in diversity posed a vital risk. Perception of this risk necessarily led to contempt of all that was related to the provinces, despite all populist talk, and to the notion that history was predominantly made from the administrative core. This situation determined for a long time the basic starting point for historical study: " the centre ". Indeed, even the discovery of the provinces and the development of academic sub disciplines such as local history and urban history did not lead to great changes in the ap proach that put the centre in the foreground. The provinces were an " object " that did (could) not transcend the boundaries that the core had determined. Consequently two different re searchers studying two different Ottoman cities that were considered provincial in terms of history, culture, ethnicity, religion and geography would arrive at the same conclusions even if they focused on different centuries, because the provinces were something that the centre " created " and were definitely to be read from a centralist point of view. The Ottoman provinces that are thus imagined are a theoretical construct and reflect not the provinces themselves but rather the image that the centre had formed of them. Consequently the inter pretative frameworks that had their roots in Ottoman centralism were generally even more rigid than the methods applied by the Ottomans themselves. Once one goes beyond this rigid centralist approach, one can speak of a reality of each Ottoman town that is specific to it and stands in a close relationship to the town's pre Ottoman phase.
Spatializing an İstanbul Neighborhood in the 19th Century Tahta Minare
2023
Turkologentag 2023 The analysis of neighborhoods plays a significant role in understanding the social, spatial, and economic changes in Ottoman cities. This paper aims to show what kind of contributions a new resource, namely Esas-ı Emlak Registers, can contribute to neighborhood studies. In this paper, the changes of the 19th century Ottoman urban reforms in İstanbul will be analyzed using digital humanities methods by considering the Tahta Minare neighborhood on a micro-scale. In this study, Tahta Minare’s Esas-ı Emlak Register - dated 1290/1874 was used to analyze the social and spatial effects of the 19th-century urban reforms in an Ottoman neighborhood. Spatial changesin the Tahta Minare neighborhood are compared with the data obtained from the primary source and maps belonging to diverse periods. The mapping of the Tahta Minare allows comparative analyses to be made about the changes and continuity of the streets, avenues, and buildings in Tahta Minare between the years 1875-1950. For determining the social profile of the neighborhood, this paper is going to analyze the occupational groups in neighborhood such as Armenias, Jews and Muslims. By doing this, the social structure density of the Tahta Minare neighborhood will be revealed.
2014
"This study analyzes the spatial, demographic, and socio-economic structures of Edirne –the second capital of the Ottomans- in the 1700s. The main aim of this dissertation is to understand the Ottoman city in the case of Edirne (Adrianople), taking its mahalles as the main unit of analysis. In doing this, I, based on a relational approach to the city, examine different layers of city life simultaneously, e.g. its physical, demographic, and socio-economic structures on the basis of the sociospatial dimension of the mahalle. I analyze the primary sources such as avârız and kefâlet (surety) registers of Edirne through quantitative methods including hierarchical clustering, correspondence analysis and through GIS (Geographic Information Systems) applications. In this study, I focus on a single city and study it in a detailed manner with a methodology through which I will be able to, in the future, compare its socioeconomic and topographic structures and historical development with those of other cities. I try to interpret the attributes derived from the archival sources, such as titles, occupations, ethno-religious identities, gender, and properties of the people in relation to the city spaces and to describe the ecological position of the city by focusing on the spatial neighborliness/conjunctions or distinctiveness of these attributes. In other words, I was able to reveal how these attributes concentrate at the mahalle level and how mahalles differ in terms of these attributes. Accordingly, mahalles got multi-definitions constituting certain zones or sectors with other mahalles on the basis of qualitative resemblance to each other different than the conventional districts (semt) defined by on the basis of topographical neighborhood. Besides, I was also able to visualize the change undergone by the city of Edirne in two different periods –1686 and 1703 – via different attribute profiles in two successive phases. This was an opportunity both to see what changed in the city and what did not and to interpret the interaction of the inner changes with the general historical context of the period under study. In this way, important developments were actualized in the relational methodology regarding the problem of following continuity, discontinuity and the change routes of different time series (sequences), which is among the most important methodological problems of historical studies. ÖZET Bu çalışma, Osmanlıların ikinci başkenti olan Edirne şehrinin 1700’lerdeki mekânsal, demografik ve sosyo-ekonomik yapısını incelemektedir. Tezin ana amacı, Osmanlı şehrini, Edirne mahallelerini merkeze alarak anlamaya çalışmaktır. Böylece şehrin, mimari, demografik ve sosyo-ekonomik yapıları gibi farklı düzlemlerini - şehre ilişkisel yaklaşımın da verdiği imkan ile- eş zamanlı ve sosyal mekan temelinde çalışmak mümkün olmuştur. Avârız ve kefâlet sayımları gibi arşiv kaynakları, hiyerarşik kümeleme, mütekabiliyet analizi gibi niceliksel metotlar ve GIS (Coğrafi Bilgi Sistemleri) gibi harita uygulamaları ile yorumlanmaya çalışılmıştır. Bu çalışmada tek bir şehir, yeni yöntemler kullanılarak etraflıca çalışılmış ve gelecekte başka şehirler ile sosyo-ekonomik ve topografik özellikler çerçevesinde yapılabilecek mukayeseli bir çalışmanın zemini oluşturulmuştur. Arşiv kaynaklarında kişilerle ilgili verilen unvan, meslek, dini-etnik aidiyet, cinsiyet ve mülkiyet durumları gibi nitelikler şehir mekanı temelinde yorumlanmış ve şehirdeki mekânsal komşuluklar-ilişkiler, bu niteliklerin ayırt edici yanları ortaya konularak adeta şehrin ekolojik tasviri yapılmıştır. Başka bir ifadeyle, bu niteliklerin mahalle düzleminde nasıl yoğunlaştıkları ve mahallelerin bu niteliklere göre nasıl farklılaştığı keşfedilmiştir. Bununla irtibatlı olarak mahallelerin çoklu tanımlar elde edebildiği ve diğer mahalleler ile alışılagelmiş semt gibi tasniflerden farklı olarak niteliksel komşuluklar yoluyla gruplaşabildikleri görülmüştür. İlaveten, Edirne’de 1686 ile 1703 arasında oluşan bazı değişimler çeşitli nitelikler dikkate alarak izlenebilmiştir. Bu da bize, şehirde neyin değişip değişmediğini görebilme ve dönemin genel tarihsel bağlamını daha iyi değerlendirme noktasında büyük bir imkan sunmuştur. Ayrıca, tarihsel çalışmaların en önemli meselelerinden olan süreklilik ve süreksizliklerin keşfi ya da iki zaman arasındaki değişimin istikametini çalışma zorluklarını aşma hususunda da ilişkisel yöntem böylece bize bir ipucu sunmuştur. "