AYE NC

The Politics of Istanbul's Ottoman Heritage

in the Era of Globalism
Refractions through the Prism of a Theme Park

The current resurgence of interest in Istanbul's Ottoman past, and its

transformation into a key site of political struggles, cannot be divorced from
transnational trends. In the world of late capitalism that we experience today,
large metropolises figure prominently as core settings for the display and
promotion of 'cultural heritage' as a marketable commodity. The symbolic
and economic comodification of 'history' for display and consumption can
be theoretically located in what Sharon Zukin has called 'the new symbolic
economy' of cities,1 or what Allen Scott has referred to as the 'culture
generating capabilities of cities' in transnational markets.1
Invoking continuities with a legendary past, however ambiguous,
enhances a city's attractiveness in the new global game and gives it cultural
cachet in the competition for foreign investments and tourist trade. In many
parts of the world, ranging from Southeast Asia to Europe, transformations
of metropolitan space and urban culture are currently driven by the
deliberate creation of cultural-historical packages and marketable pastiches
that offer 'entertainment value'. There is now an extensive literature on how
this process both reinforces prevailing inclusions and exclusions in the social
fabric of cities, and also produces new ones.
The segmentation of tourist enclaves in urban space is perhaps the
most immediately recognisable and widespread imprint of mass tourism
on a global scale. Susan Fainstein and Dennis Judd 3 use the term 'tourist
spaces' to encompass both the historic/cultural attractions designed for

Imagining the City

tourist consumption and also the related constellation of services (hotels,

convention facilities, restaurants, etc) that accompany them. They argue
that the functioning of such tourist spaces is usually designed to cosset
travellers from their local contexts, to heighten the sense of theatrical
reality they anticipate. But where income inequalities and cultural distance
between affluent tourists and local inhabitants are very sharp, they also serve
as 'fortified enclaves', designed to 'keep undesirable natives out'.4 This is
obviously the case in the large and densely settled cities of the global South.
In many instances, the promise of tourism as the engine of miracle growth
has spurred deliberate state intervention - literally, through bulldozers - to
create secure and protected environments for tourist consumption.5
In the context of the Middle East, the recent histories of Cairo and
Istanbul illustrate how the imprint of tourism is mediated through direct
state intervention in the region. In the case of Cairo, Farha Ghannam has
described how the ambitions of the Sadat regime, with its political discourse
of Infitah (economic opening to the outside) were translated into visions
of a 'modern' Cairo fit to be gazed upon by foreign visitors and upper-class
Egyptians.6 She describes how some of the oldest neighbourhoods of Cairo
were demolished to make room for highways and 'tourist spaces' segregated
from urban poverty and decay, a very similar process to that undergone by
Istanbul in the political conjuncture of the 1980s, when the city was remade
as the 'showcase' of Turkey's economic opening to global markets.
Thus, in both Cairo and Istanbul, 'history' has now been transformed
into a prized collection of architectural fragments to be preserved in bits and
pieces and protected from the sights, sounds and smells of local populations.
City authorities constantly battle with the creeping tendency of the city's
inhabitants to take over 'tourist sites'. The cleanliness and order of 'tourist
spaces' - the glittering convention centres, hotels, restaurants, cafes, galleries
- stand in stark contrast to the dirty streets, perpetually snarled traffic and
crowded daily existence of most urban inhabitants. The cases of Cairo and
Istanbul, as the two largest and most complex metropolises of the region,
also highlight the difficulty of distinguishing the imprint of the transnational
tourism industry from the series of interlocking changes we have come to
describe as 'globalisation'.
Diane Singerman and Paul Amar's recent volume of collected essays on
Cairo,7 for instance, highlights how protected spaces of affluence ranging
from shopping malls to gated communities are rapidly proliferating across
the cityscape. The contrasts between the cosmopolitan lifestyles of the
increasingly 'globalised' bourgeoisie and the 'localised' inhabitants of Cairo
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The Politics of Istanbul's Ottoman Heritage in the Era of Globalism

and Istanbul are no less stark than the differences between 'foreign' tourists
and 'native' populations. It is also worth noting that in both Cairo and
Istanbul, downtown districts associated with 'foreigners' at the turn of the
twentieth century are currently undergoing gentrification.8
Many of the contradictions and cleavages engendered by the conversion
of Istanbul's '2,000 years of history' into commercial revenues remain
familiar in their generalities. A series of urban restoration projects,
supported by coalitions of government- and corporate-run interests, have
obliterated from memory some of the most densely populated areas of the
city, to selectively recreate them as historical sites for aesthetic preservation.
No published statistics inform us how many poor households and small
establishments were displaced during these massive clearance operations.
Numerous old neighbourhoods have simply vanished, their streets and
lanes erased from the map. Others have become progressively gentrified and
taken over by restaurants, boutique hotels or souvenir shops selling Oriental
kitsch, marginalising their old inhabitants and driving out the urban poor
from the urban core.
All of this - amidst a building boom and real estate speculation on an
unprecedented scale - has ushered in a dizzying proliferation of developerled malls and multiplex clusters, five-star hotels, luxury apartment colonies
and gated communities across the landscape of the city. Thus, within a
decade, a new order of polarities and segregation has been mapped onto the
physical and social topography of Istanbul. Throughout, spectacles and events
celebrating Istanbul's unique historical heritage and cultural attractions have
invaded the public spaces of the city, bringing along with them a profusion
of commercialised images that defy segregation in physical and social space.
So for the majority of the city's ten million inhabitants, nearly half of whom
are recent immigrants, the glorification of Istanbul's ancient history along
with its aesthetic preservation and display in segregated 'tourist spaces'
has become the 'new' exclusionary rhetoric of the moment. It has served
to highlight the diverse cultural pasts and multiplicity of ethno-religious
heritages in the living present of Istanbul. In short, the mass marketing
of Istanbul's history has proceeded in tandem with growing visibility and
politicisation of cultural differences among the city's inhabitants.
The historical specificity of Istanbul's heritage struggles resides
elsewhere, in how the city's multilayered past(s) have become the political
site of unfolding conflicts in the national arena. Most immediately, the
appropriation of the city's imperial past inevitably breached national
historiography, to underscore its ruptures and silences. Many of the ancient

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monuments and heritage sites that symbolise the unique attractions of
Istanbul in transnational markets refer back to layers of contested memories,
dislocations and serial destructions that have been a part of nation-making.
The designation of particular sites in the material fabric of the city (and not
others) as 'historical treasures' has been accompanied by intense political
debate, calling forth competing interpretations of different epochs in the
city's history. More broadly, the mobilisation of Istanbul's imperial legacy to
articulate future aspirations for a 'global' future have challenged modernist
imagination of the Republican past.
In the cosmology of Turkish nationalism, Istanbul's name had been
debased as emblematic of Ottoman decadence, pollution, miscegenation,
against which the purity of a new national culture - located in Ankara - could
be imagined. The polarity between these two cities, both as a set of images
and the power relations implied in them, has been one of the central axes
of modern Turkish history. Their names have been continuously valorised
in modern Turkish literature, music and cinema as well as architecture as a
way of articulating such binary oppositions as East and West, progress and
backwardness, modernity and Islam. Hence Istanbul's self-promotion as a
City of Culture in transnational markets has undermined the very categories
upon which the cosmology of Turkish nationalism and modernity has been
based. It has opened the multiple layers of 'Ottoman past' to opposing
political claims and projects, not only for the city, but also for the nation.
Pitched at a more abstract level, the complexity of Istanbul's heritage
struggles must be situated in the theoretical terrain, which Andreas Huyssen
has famously described as 'a world-wide turn to history as the site of memory
struggles'.9 In seeking answers to the current 'obsession with memory and
the past' in Europe and the US, Huyssen traces the complexity of global
processes that have ruptured and transformed older forms of historical
consciousness. But he argues that 'the political site of memory practices is still
the national, not post-national or global'.10 The backdrop to Huyssen's work
is, of course, the significance of Berlin in the political and cultural terrain
of European history and German national identity. The layers of contested
memories associated with Istanbul's name evoke parallels with such 'worldcities' as Shanghai" or St Petersburg,'1 where historical trajectories have been
dramatically reshaped by the dissolution of empires - classical or colonial and the consolidation of modern nation-states in the twentieth century.
Huyssen's general point of argument is relevant, in the sense that growing
uncertainties and ambivalences about Turkey's role in the global arena and
its future in Europe have been accompanied by a paradigmatic shift towards
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The Politics of Istanbul's Ottoman Heritage in the Era of Globalism

Ottoman history as the political site of reworkings of national memory.
Istanbul, as the prominent symbol and bearer of Ottoman legacy, has
become a major point of reference in the emergent power struggles.
To recapitulate, the intensity and complexity of Istanbul's heritage
struggles can be located at the intersection of two analytically distinct
processes, namely:
1. A new order of class polarisation that has sharpened the
existing hiatus between the city's culturally dominant elite
and its disenfranchised immigrant majorities;
2. A 'memory turn to Ottoman history as battleground of what
'national culture' might mean, and who owns it in the global
era.
It goes without saying that these processes are part and parcel of the same
world-historical conjuncture - blowing winds of neo-liberalism, explosive
growth of commercial markets, declining cultural hegemony of the state,
and so forth.
My aim in this article is not to rehearse these generalities, but to explore
how competing visions of Istanbul's Ottoman past and political claims to its
heterogeneous present are intertwined in ongoing 'heritage struggles'. The
centrepiece of my discussion will be a brand new 'heritage park' in Istanbul,
designed and executed by the city government as a flagship project in its
millennial civic consciousness campaign called 'Our Istanbul'. To be able to
contextualise the city government's millennial vision of 'bringing together
Istanbul and the Istanbulites', however, I would like to introduce a brief
caveat on competing political narratives of Istanbul's 'multicultural past'.
Competing Narratives

of Istanbul's

'Multicultural' Heritage

The catchword 'multicultural' (ok kltiirl) circulates in an endless variety

of commodity forms across Istanbul's fragmented public spaces, along with
such associated phrases as 'cradle of civilisations' (uygarlklarn beii);
'treasury of culture' (kltr hazinesi); 'cultural inheritance' (kltr miras);
'cultural diversity' (kltrel eitlilik); 'city of culture' (kltr kenti); and
'world city' (dunya kenti). Such phrases are obvious 'adaptations' from the
global lexicon of city marketing that has swept across the world over the
past two decades to become variously 'naturalised' in different languages. As
they currently circulate in Istanbul's cultural markets - both high and low
- they seem to make immediate common sense, and sound so familiar as to

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be beyond questioning. They are often used interchangeably, to invoke the
remembered past and lived present of Istanbul simultaneously, suggesting
a seamless unity between them. They also convey a sense of belonging and
connection with Istanbul, which is, as we all know, a world city'. In short,
they mark the parameters of a new urban imaginary - devoid of ethnoracial conflicts, dilemmas of urban hierarchy or poverty - which connects us
together as Istanbulites.
But the very familiarity of these catchwords also means they are picked
up and strategically deployed by various political actors and power groups
to narrate alternative political versions of the city's present/pasts. So their
dizzying proliferation across various commodity, consumer and media
markets is the product of a double dynamic, both politically informed and
interactive. They are strategically mobilised, reframed and challenged by
political actors (both dominant and subordinate) to articulate their own
political visions and agendas. As such they constitute a 'popular idiom', or
repertoire if you will, which allows for multiple, divergent interpretations
of what 'multiculturalism' was/is all about - which is another way of saying
that the term 'multiculturalism' acquires referential solidity in the context of
competing political scripts or public narratives.
In Istanbul's cultural markets, there are currently two such competing
narratives that ebb and flow in cross-reference to one another. These are
public narratives in the sense that they inform and knit together an enormous
range of ongoing 'cultural' events in the cityscape, to lend them coherence as
part of alternative political scripts." They also 'suck the past into the orbit of
the present' (to invoke Huyssen)14 by furnishing ready-made scenarios for a
series of performances, displays and exhibits as well as spatial practices and
interventions.
The Multiculturalism

of Istanbul's Nineteenth-Century

Heritage

For Istanbul's corporate elite, affluent upper and upper middle classes as well
as public intellectuals, it is the 'spirit' of Istanbul's Belle Epoque towards the
end of the nineteenth century that captures something akin to its future
promise in the global era. As it is currently framed and configured, turnof-the-century Istanbul is not so much a historically specific conjuncture
saturated with politically charged events, but a timeless moment bringing
together a constellation of elements (a mixture of intellectual freedoms,
political emancipation, economic vitality and cultural creativity) and tying
them to the present through the idea of 'multiculturalism'. It also suggests
that after decades of provincialism, decay and dreary nationalism mandated
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by Ankara governments, Istanbul is now experiencing a rebirth of its identity

as a world-class metropolis.
Of course, contemporary reinventions of fin-de-siecle Istanbul as a
'golden moment' are not necessarily counter-factual. As many historians
have pointed out, the Ottoman capital was swept by unprecedented changes
towards the latter half of the nineteenth century, as it became increasingly
separated from the rest of the imperial realm by special fiscal and political
privileges. The relentless efforts of Ottoman bureaucrats to modernise the
city fabric through a series of ambitious physical and social engineering
projects paved the way to a renaissance in 'blended' public architecture.15
Rival European powers competed with one another in the grandeur of their
embassy buildings, and the glittering lifestyle of the settler-bourgeoisie
affiliated with them. The wealthy and educated Greek and Armenian
bourgeoisie of the city began to actively carve out an urban public space of
associations, confessional schools, clubs and publications. They were at the
forefront of a municipal movement that introduced a new style of urban life
- paved avenues, street cars, gas lighting, European-style hotels, department
stores and cafes.16
These new spaces of urban anonymity, with their 'modern' forms of
contact and interaction, allowed the upper crust of Ottoman elite to
intermingle with the city's native and foreign bourgeoisie outside the nexus
of commerce and trade. They also fostered a heightened sense of political
engagement, and of imminent change towards an unknown future, which
meant that Istanbul became the crossroads of diverse ideological currents
ranging from advocates of constitutional Ottomanism or Pan-Islamism
to Young Turks of all hues, along with Christian missionaries of every
denomination and nationality dispensing education, alms and sermons.
'This was a time and place when cosmopolitanism could be born,' suggests
Caglar Keyder,17 one that offered 'the possibility of different material and
cultural life-styles to co-exist' and held 'the promise of a liberal framework
which could accommodate diverse political platforms'.'8
But fin-de-siecle Istanbul also had a much more troubled and troubling
visage marred by shameless racism, social schisms and religious conflicts. This
is perhaps best illustrated by the following 'tourist accounts' from European
guidebooks from the late nineteenth century, intended to prepare travellers
for the unfamiliar topography of Istanbul as well as offering practical advice.
Such guidebooks offer fragmentary glimpses of a city in motion, with a
changing and fluid population of nearly a million souls:

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Constantinople is a city not of one nation but of many, and hardly
more of one than of another ... There is no people who can be
described as being par excellence the people of the city, with a
common character or habits of language ... Among the 943.575
inhabitants there are representatives of nearly every nation of the
globe.19
The plethora of human types described in these accounts - permeated by the
racial stereotypes of the moment - conjure all the curiosities and dangers
awaiting European travellers who would venture onto the busy streets of the
city:
Moslems are mostly poor people and lazy ... Greeks, Armenians
and Bulgarians have little in common, for each cherishes its
own form of faith, and they hate one another as they hate the
Turks. Many of their members are wealthy, highly educated and
admirable men ... There is a motley crowd of strangers from the
rest of Europe. Eight or nine languages are constantly spoken
in the streets ... These races have nothing to unite them; no
relations, except those of trade, with one another; everybody lives
in a perpetual vague dread of everybody else; there is no common
civic feeling and no common patriotism.20
Interspersed with romantic descriptions of the city's natural beauties, these
guides provide easily comprehensible maps of Istanbul's social schisms:
Constantinople is made up of three cities. North of the Golden
Horn lies the European city, with its two suburbs of Galata and
Pera playing host to ambassadors, bankers, European merchants.
It is the outpost of the West, its ideas, activities and culture. In
the south, facing both as a go-between, Stamboul is slowly and
sadly losing out to the continual penetration of European ideas
and innovations ... The third city, Skoutari, on the Asian side, is
the Turkish city par excellence, inhabited by old Muslims.21
It is not difficult to surmise that most European travellers saw the nineteenthcentury changes in the Ottoman capital as little more than a thin 'veneer
of the West', imposed upon spectacles of horror associated with the Orient,
which they consumed so avidly. But the racial hatreds, ethnic divisions
and religious tensions that seem so palpable in these accounts cannot be
dismissed as a figment of the Orientalist imagination. They presage the
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The Politics of Istanbul's Ottoman Heritage in the Era of Globalism

violence of events that were to seal the fate of Istanbul in the subsequent
decades.
As Keyder summarises starkly: ' In 1913, one out of five persons in the
geographical area that is now Turkey was Christian; by the end of 1923, the
proportion had declined to one in forty.'22 During these ten devastating years,
an estimated two-thirds of the Armenian population perished in massacres,
or from deprivation and disease during forced marches, and those who
escaped death left for other parts of the world. The majority of the Greek
Orthodox population fled under the most adverse conditions, or became
subject to forced population exchanges. Istanbul's population declined
from an all-time high of an estimated 1.1 million just before the First World
War to around 600,000 by 1922. Bereft of its native bourgeoisie, its foreign
residents and its imperial household and bureaucracy, Istanbul 'died'.23
The Aesthetics and Spaces of 'Multiculturalism'
in

Contemporary Istanbul

In contemporary Istanbul, visions of the city's global future and the

multiculturalism of its nineteenth-century history have become inextricably
bound in public, popular and scholarly discourses. In the emergent
power configurations of this new order, the celebration of Istanbul's
unique 'historical heritage' and distinctive 'cultural legacy' has become an
imaginative point of consensus among segments of the urban elite. The
monumental objects of this history are the mosques and churches that
'naturally' grace the landscape of the city and comprise gratifying testimony
to a harmonious multi-religious past. Infused with the spirit of globalism,
Istanbul's 'multicultural' heritage becomes a general term to designate
an imagined past of harmonious cultural coexistence, one that offers the
potential of'openness' to cultural flows from across the world without fear of
contamination. It also creates a space, in Istanbul's contemporary corporate
circles, to appropriate and display a distinctive 'high culture' that is different
from its 'Western' counterparts. As Sakp Sabanc, one of Turkey's most
prominent corporate tycoons, explained in an impromptu press interview:
Outside Turkey, when talking to my partners, I ask, 'How much
is your capital? How many people do you employ?' The man
talks about culture. I ask, 'How many subsidiaries?' They tell
about their art collections. So it is not enough to have money in
transnational markets, money is banal. Business life cannot be
one-sided. It must be combined with culture, education and art.

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Imagining the City

My Japanese partner invested what he earned [in] art, established
museums. I saw them. I said I must also begin.24
The occasion that prompted these comments was the opening of an exhibit
featuring Sabanc's collection of Ottoman headgear. In Istanbul's increasingly
transnational corporate culture, sponsoring innumerable exhibits, concerts,
performances by artists of 'world stature' is something more complex than
promoting a corporate image. It is an implicit assertion of involvement
and contribution to the (re)creation of a 'world-class' Istanbul - one that
celebrates its Ottoman heritage of 'multiculturalism' as its distinctive mark
of identity in transnational space.
In its more consumable and popular versions, as told in a multitude of
photography books, novels and autobiographies, or performed by whirling
dervishes and classical musicians, this is a narrative which condenses the entire
chronological expanse of Ottoman history to highlight what is referred to as
the 'multiculturalism of nineteenth-century Istanbul'. In the ethnographic
present of Istanbul, multiple valences of the word 'multicultural' seem to
encompass all that is 'blended' - from Sufi electronica (cutting-edge beats
laced with Sufi Islamic mysticism) to trendy nightclubs where the young and
beautiful rise spontaneously from their tables and perform a horon (a Black
sea line dance).
Needless to say, the above rendering glosses over the complicated
nuances of political standing and social distinction embedded in narratives
of Ottoman multiculturalism, which circulate in contemporary Istanbul.
What is of immediate import is the way this narrative transgresses the
canons of official historiography without, however, threatening to expose
its silences. The 'multiculturalism' of nineteenth-century Istanbul is no
longer to be understood as cultural domination by the foreign, but a rich
blending of cultures that lends credence to Utopian visions of 'globalism'
for the city and for the nation. At the same time, of course, the traumas of
massive population displacement, ethnic cleansing and forced deportations
that separates the 'real' from the 'mythical' past are deleted from memory.
Narratives of Istanbul's multiculturalism, as mobilised by different groups to
underwrite claims to a 'global' present and future, remain tied to nationalism
in its core.
In the Realm of Municipal Politics:
From 'Conquest' to Narratives of Tolerance' in Islam
In 1994, when Istanbul's first metropolitan mayor with 'Islamic' credentials
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came to power in the aftermath of an astounding electoral victory, a sense of
radical change swept across nearly all strata of the city's population. Within
the circles of the victorious Refah Party (RP), this was a prophetic event,
referred to as the 'second conquest' of Istanbul, 500 years after victorious
Ottoman armies entered Constantinople in the sixteenth century.25 The
Party had nominated a young and dynamic new candidate for the mayoralty
of Istanbul, who pledged a 're-conquest of Istanbul, in the sense of bringing
light to darkness', during the election campaign.26 He was now catapulted
into the national limelight as the new fatih (conqueror) of the city.
For the secular and leftist political forces, already in disarray, the local
elections of 1994 spelled disaster. The RP had succeeded in capturing the
majority vote in nearly all major urban centres in Turkey. The loss of Istanbul,
however, where the left had been entrenched in the city administration for
more than a decade, was especially significant. After years of corruption
scandals and failed reforms, it had lost its grassroots support among the
overwhelming majority of the urban poor and lower middle classes, and
along with it its institutionalised power base in metropolitan government.
It is not possible to over-exaggerate the political, economic and cultural
resources at the disposal of Istanbul's metropolitan mayoralty. These
resources have grown in tandem with the city's mounting significance as the
growth pole of Turkey's neo-liberal economy, so that Istanbul has become
increasingly autonomous from the central administration in Ankara. The
mayor of Istanbul himself, with more popular votes behind him than any
single politician, has been transformed into a key figure in national arena.
In this sense, the 'conquest' or 'seizure' (fetih etmek, ele geirmek) of Istanbul
was both a symbolic quest and a very astute political strategy on the part of
the RP.
For Istanbul's secular elite and middle classes, the militant and mobilising
language of a 'second conquest' amounted to a nightmare scenario of an
'Islamic takeover'. Overwhelmed by a sense of fear and alarm, segments of
the leftist intelligentsia, the bourgeois elite, a host of women's associations
and the leading media institutions mobilised to fight against this 'Islamic
takeover' in the cultural spaces of Istanbul.27 Political analysts rushed
in to analyse the political affinity between neo-liberal policies, growing
poverty in Istanbul's peripheral neighbourhoods and the populist appeal of
political Islam. The mainstream media turned its spotlights on the 'Islamic'
practices of the new city administration, uncovering yet another example of
Tslamisation' on a daily basis, from the headcoverings of female employees
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to the banning of alcohol in public spaces owned and operated by the
municipality.
In the intervening ten years, the governance of Istanbul by 'Islamic'
mayors has become something taken for granted. In local elections, the
suspense, if any, centres on individual candidates for mayor. The metaphor of
'conquest' has lost its relevance, in part because the Islamic movement itself
has been transformed into a neo-liberal, religious-nationalist establishment.
The 'religious' bourgeois are major investors in Istanbul's expanding world
of malls, multiplexes, five-star hotels, gated neighbourhoods and luxury
apartment colonies.
Also, in the dominant spaces of Istanbul's increasingly transnational
corporate culture, 'Islam' has been opened to consumption, continuously
performed and displayed as part of the city's 'multicultural' past and
present. In the constant round of conferences, summits and visits by foreign
dignitaries, events such as the recent 'Islamic Nations Culture Week'
sponsored by the Metropolitan Municipality come and go without attracting
attention. The 'alcohol-free' public facilities owned and operated by the city
administration (parks, restaurants, wedding halls) have now been defined as
offering relatively inexpensive consumer-cum-entertainment alternatives for
lower-middle-class families.18
The issue is how Istanbul can be imagined and represented as a 'Muslim
City' now that the religious spaces and landmarks that might be defined
as intrinsically 'Islamic' are in continuous circulation as icons in the
transnationalised spaces of the city. In the context of Istanbul's local politics,
this has become an increasingly crucial issue, as the support base among the
low-income populations of the city - fragmented along regional, ethnic and
sectarian lines - is contingent on promoting 'unity and harmony in Islam'.
Of Tulips

and Magnificent

Gardens

The following local news item was tucked away in the back pages of
mainstream dailies, not meriting more than passing attention, if at all:
The Tulip Era in Istanbul
The campaign for 'three million Tulips for Istanbul' was launched
today by Mayor Topba at a ceremony on Taksim Square ...
The mayor explained that tulips, which were part of daily life
in Istanbul, will be returning home again. What Westerners
described as 'Ottomans raise a flower, which cannot be eaten',
he reminded, has today become a major source of revenue for
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Holland. He indicated that efforts were underway to encourage
the cultivation of tulips and flowers in villages within the
boundaries of the greater Istanbul municipality. 'Tulips are very
important in our lives. We name our children after them. They
exist in our textiles, our ceramics, our literature, our poems, our
life. The tulip is returning home', he said ...
Of the three million bulbs, one million will be distributed to
citizens to plant in their own gardens and homes. The mayor noted
that when they flower in April, anyone who sends a photograph
will be eligible to enter the competition for 'the best tulips grown
in Istanbul'. The most beautiful 100 tulips will be selected and
awarded a prize of 300 YTL [approximately US$200] ... After
the ceremony, packages containing five bulbs, a flowerpot and
planting instructions were distributed to citizens. 29
The 'city pages' of major national newspapers in Istanbul are devoted to
problems' of immediate concern to readers, such as traffic congestion, water
shortages or intimations of corruption at city hall, which journalists so
diligently try to expose. Favourable reporting of activities sponsored by the
mayor's office is rare as they are simply non-news, unless they border on the
humorous - as was the case with the 'tulips returning home'.
For the metropolitan mayoralty of Istanbul, however, the tulip campaign
was part of a persistent institutional effort to objectify, in the territorialised
space of ongoing events and landmarks in Istanbul, an alternative 'golden
m o m e n t ' in history when the ethos of Ottoman-Islamic civilisation was at its
peak. The explicit use of tulips as a trope for Ottoman-Islamic high culture
dates back to the early eighteenth century, evoking a m o m e n t referred to
as the Tulip Era in history textbooks. Framed as part of Turkish national
history, and committed to memory by successive generations of children to
this day, the Tulip Era epitomises the glories - and excesses - of O t t o m a n
rule, as revealed by the following textbook paragraph:
The Tulip Era: In Turkish history, the name given to the years
between 1718 and 1730 corresponding to the second half of the
reign of Sultan Ahmet III (1703-1730). Since tulips became the
rage among the state elite who began to cultivate them in their
gardens, and tulip designs and motifs became widespread in
embroidery, carpets, tiles and miniatures as well as poetry and
literature, this period was subsequently named the Tulip Era by
poets and historians. The prominent figure of this period was
Grand Vizier Damat Ibrahim Paa (1718-1730), who encouraged

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poetry, scholarship and the arts. Beginning with Istanbul, many
artworks were built throughout the land, including parks,
gardens, fountains, educational endowments, mosques, libraries
and palaces. A tile factory was established in Istanbul to decorate
the newly built or repaired buildings. Among the scholarly
achievements of this period was the establishment of the first
Ottoman printing house by Ibrahim Mteferrika. The Tulip Era
came to an end in 1730, when the pleasure-loving excesses of the
state elite led to the rebellion of Patrona Halil, resulting in the
dethroning of Ahmet III.30
Of course, it is never entirely clear what adults remember from textbooks, but
the defining images of the Tulip Era offer such exciting visions of magnificent
gardens and sumptuous palaces, saturated with pleasures of poetry and
art, that the drama of its ending in a violent rebellion is transformed into
a compelling episode that resonates with abiding themes of injustice and
retribution. It also constitutes a core event in historical narratives of Ottoman
decline, signalling the moment when the ruling dynasty began to degenerate.
So through a mixture of popular mythology and historical narrative, the
story of the Tulip Era has mutated into 'common knowledge', as a timeless
moment when the poor people of Istanbul went hungry while the Ottoman
rulers were engaged in 'pleasure-seeking activities'. This makes its ending
immanently plausible and memorable, so that most adults can summon (or
embellish or invent) a series of 'historical facts', such as the 'beheading' of the
Grand Vizier and his associates (in front of the palace gates), the installation
of a 'figurehead' Sultan (amidst palace rivalries and intrigues) and so forth,
in a way that prefigures and explains the entire progression of events during
the 'long' nineteenth century of Ottoman decline.
Not surprisingly then, trying to reinvent the Tulip Era as an imaginative
point of reference when the Muslim populations of Istanbul occupied a
privileged status and Islam was the locus of authority merging both religious
and political power raises the troublesome issue of its ending. It is only by
resuscitating its mythical location in territorial spaces along the shores of
the Golden Horn that it becomes possible to highlight its significance as a
moment of equilibrium, when the tolerance of Islam reigned supreme.
A Miniaturised Heritage Park on the Shores of the Golden Horn
The idea of building a heritage park displaying miniaturised models of
architectural monuments was born during the Metropolitan Municipality's
millennium campaign. In search of a 'global vision' for Istanbul in the new
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millennium, Mayor Grtuna (1998-2004) commissioned a large survey
to measure 'civic consciousness' among the city's population. The findings
of the survey were widely publicised in the media, and gave birth to the
campaign theme 'Kentim Istanbul' (My City Istanbul). As highlighted in a
campaign pamphlet:
Only 33 per cent of the city's inhabitants define themselves as
Istanbulites [Istanbullu]. We must analyse this well. A person lives
in Istanbul for years and thinks of others as Istanbulites, but not
himself.
17 per cent say they do not like anything about Istanbul ...
They do not love the history, culture and natural beauties of
Istanbul. We cannot remain indifferent.
47 per cent say that when they go back to their region
[memleket], they do not miss Istanbul. They do not miss it because
no identity relationship has been established. Istanbul does not
deserve this.
Of those who live in Istanbul, 17 per cent have never seen the
Princess Islands; 11 per cent have never been to the Bosphorus;
28 per cent have never been to any of the historical and tourist
sites of the city. Do you know that we have citizens [hemehri]
who have never gone across to the other side [yaka] from where
they live ?
In our beloved Istanbul, which aspires to be a World City
of Culture, 64 per cent of inhabitants say that they have never
participated in any cultural, artistic or informative [bilimsel]
activity. This is not something Istanbul can accept.
When we examine the findings as a whole, we observe a serious
problem with identity and sense of ownership [sabiplenme].
Inhabitants of such cities as New York, Paris or London define
themselves as New Yorkers, Parisians and Londoners. Those who
live in Istanbul must also become Istanbulites.
To describe the numerous activities that were part of the millennium
campaign would be tedious. Most were modelled after similar 'civic
consciousness' projects elsewhere:

drawing competitions in schools;

conferences and panel discussions where academics discussed the findings

above; posters of popular stars saying 'I am an Istanbulite'; and so forth. The
idea that the immigrant poor, once they see the historical monuments and
natural beauties of Istanbul, will develop a sense of belonging and identity
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with the city, is very much in tune with 'middle-class' sensibilities. It is
difficult to say what it meant for the immigrant populations it addressed.
But the miniaturised heritage park, which was initiated as part of
this campaign (but not completed until 2003) proved to be huge success,
with some 900,000 visitors during its first year. It also suggested that the
millennium slogan itself, 'Kentim Istanbul \ was embraced and implemented
at the grassroots level by the mayors of Istanbul's thirty-two district
municipalities, as an empowering theme, in the sense of 'our Istanbul' that
connotes a claim. In the opening ceremonies of the park, Mayor Grtuna
expressed the significance of Miniaturk as follows:
As the Metropolitan Municipality, our vision of Istanbul as a star
shining among World Cities is synonymous with the cultural
synthesis that emerges from its becoming a centre of many
civilisations. We are proud and happy to hand over Istanbul's
Golden Horn to the coming generations in its identity as a
gleaming [tertemiz] centre of culture, art and tourism. Miniaturk
shoulders a very important mission in this new identity of the
Golden Horn. The interest it has generated not only in our
own country but also abroad resides in bringing together the
richness of all the civilisations that have passed through Anatolia
and nourished this land for millennia ... This is the heritage of
humanity.
A delightful journey through the history of civilisations'; 'a fairyland where
civilisations meet, not in war but in peace'; 'from Antiquity to Byzantium,
from Seljuk to Ottoman and Republican Turkey, all the cultures that
have left their imprints in this geography are brought together in a single
park': these are the kinds of expressions that have been used to describe
Miniaturk in a host of publications ranging from newspaper columns and
journal articles to websites.31 What such descriptive accounts attempt to
capture, in words, is the experience of an entirely new order of historical
time, within the enclosed boundaries of Miniaturk. In the tangible reality
of the park itself, close to 100 'major works of architecture' from different
historical epochs have been lifted out of time and place and reduced in scale
with extraordinary detail, such that they can be experienced simultaneously.
These miniaturised models not only 'represent' different civilisations, but
also transform them into a new whole, by bringing them together in the
enclosed spatial order of the park itself.
The miniaturised models of 'architectural monuments' displayed
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The Politics of Istanbul's Ottoman Heritage in the Era of Globalism

together in Miniaturk 'bring together three millennia of history over an
area of forty thousand square meters', as described in its brochure. These
were selected from an original list of all possible works with the help of an
advisory committee of historians, to ensure that they are representative of
different historical epochs; but only those that could be miniaturised were
included. The originals of more than half of these 'architectural works' are
from Istanbul, and include buildings such as the Galata Tower, the Haghia
Irini Church and the Blue Mosque (which are popularly recognised as
having 'tourist value', as their photographs constantly circulate in postcards,
on television screens, etc) as well as contemporary works (eser) such as the
Istanbul Bridge and Atatiirk Airport (with miniature airplanes). Completing
the list from Istanbul are models donated by sponsors such as the Profilo
Shopping Mall and the Yap Kredi Bank. These have all been reduced and
miniaturised in exactly the same proportion to their original size, so that
they are graspable in fascinating detail, and placed along the walking paths
of the park. There is a card-operated machine next to each of these, which
'speaks' in several languages (Turkish, English, German) to provide brief,
'encyclopaedic' information.
The remaining 'architectural works' (eserler) are neatly classified as
'Anatolia' and 'Ottoman Heritage Abroad' in sections of the printed
catalogue. Those from Anatolia (forty-five models) range from the 'Rock
Houses of Mardin' and the 'Ruins of Mt Nemrud' to the 'Sumela Monastery',
the 'Temple of Augustus', 'Atatrk's Mausoleum' and the 'Izmir Clock Tower'.
In addition to representing different civilisations and historical epochs (as
explained by the catalogue and the machines next to them) the geographical
location of these 'works' has been taken into account so as to include all the
regions of Anatolia.
There are only twelve models representing 'Ottoman Heritage Abroad'.
Still, these are crucial in providing closure to the times and spaces invoked
in the microcosmos of the park. Miniature models of the 'al-Aqsa Mosque'
and 'Damascus Gate' (both in Jerusalem), the 'Mehmed Ali Paa Mosque'
(in Cairo), the 'Gl Ali Baba Tomb' (in Budapest) and the 'Mostar Bridge'
(in Bosnia), continuing with Atatrk's House' (in Thessaloniki), mark the
geographical boundaries of the Ottoman Empire at the peak of its glory,
at the beginning of seventeenth century. They also frame the symbolic
boundaries of an Ottoman/Islamic/Turkish civilisation whose achievements
(and heritage) extend from Jerusalem to Bosnia.
The politics and semiotics of how 'three millennia of history' are
represented and recast in the spatial and temporal order of Miniaturk merits

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a much more detailed interpretative analysis than the cursory description I
have offered above. What is flagrantly obvious is that the choice of individual
historical monuments to claim particular epochs (as expressively articulated),
as well as the conception of their imaginary totality (as articulated through
their symbolic ordering in the park) have been orchestrated so as to convey
a new 'golden age' for Istanbul. It is also evident that in the political
choreography of the park, commonly recognised symbols of nationalist
historiography have been selectively mobilised and realigned in ways that
resonate with the religious symbolism of Islam.
A semiotic reading of how the symbolic communities of Islam and
Turkish nationalism are simultaneously invoked and brought into dialogue
with one another in the representational world of Miniaturk would exceed
the boundaries of this paper. It would also fall short of conveying how the
'political design' embedded in the iconography of the park actually operates
in the experiences of visitors to the park. So I will turn below to the 'lived'
reality of the park itself, to talk about how it is (re)choreographed through
the routines and practices of the visitors themselves.
On a Hot August Day in Miniaturk
In the sweltering August heat, trying to reach Miniaturk through
the congested traffic of Istanbul takes close to two hours by public
transportation. Upon approaching Miniaturk, one's first encounter is a
huge parking lot, mostly empty apart from municipal buses lined on one
side. The park is walled off from the street, with uniformed guards at the
gate. Moving through the imposing gates, one steps onto a vast platform of
gleaming granite, with a glass-walled ticket office on one side and a souvenir
shop/bookstore on the other. The platform leads up to a panoramic view
of the park below. Hanging over the parapet, shoving each other, are some
thirty giggling young boys waiting for their teacher to buy tickets. I join
them on the lookout, anticipating the childlike spell of an artificial city with
miniaturised models of buildings.
Spread out before me, as though conjured by magic, is a magnificent
carpet of lush green grass and manicured flowerbeds that seem to extend as
far as the eye can see. So overwhelming is the contrast with the congested
city streets and the harshness of grey concrete that one's gaze compulsively
falls upon the profusion of colours, and the senses surrender to the chimera
of a cool breeze drifting across the open air. Who could possibly imagine
the existence such a wondrous park in the city centre of Istanbul, with
greener-than-green lawns and rows upon rows of flowers in synchronised
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The Politics of Istanbul's Ottoman Heritage in the Era of Globalism

colours ? The whole panorama seems to have leaped out of the pages of a
glossy gardening magazine, especially in August when every scraggly patch
of grass in Istanbul's public parks turns yellow and a layer of grey dust settles
on all the shrubbery and tree leaves. My own first sensation is sheer pleasure,
even as I recognise the hyperreality of such brilliant colours and register the
existence of people milling about in the park, dwarfed by the distance.
The children lining up to follow their teacher into the park are students
from a Qur'an Course [Kuran Kursu) in Esenler, one of Istanbul's peripheral
municipalities. There are four such student groups in the park that day, all
arriving by bus from Esenler. 'We try to keep them off the street, and teach
them something without pressuring and boring them too much,' their
teacher explains. Like all the other Quranic teachers, he is a young man
dressed in a somewhat shabby suit and tie, looking very sombre amidst the
excited crowd of boys in cheerful T-shirts and clean sports shoes. Trailing
behind the group are two older municipal employees, who help keep track
of the children and keep them in order.
At ground level, the park, which looked almost empty from afar, turns
out to be full of boys who had arrived earlier. The teacher chooses one of the
empty pathways and stops in front of the first 'miniaturised monument' he
comes across. He inserts the magnetic card into the machine, as the children
early crowd around him. But the metallic voice spouting from the machine
cannot be heard, unless you stand right next to the teacher; so most of the
children become restless and began to drift off from the group. By the time
we reach the third 'monument' along the pathway, the teacher himself has
become bored with the lengthy stream of information coming from the
machines. He roams ahead, reading aloud the names of buildings from the
placards, then gives up the effort altogether and simply gazes around. The
rest of us scatter in different directions.
The children end up, inevitably, at the Istanbul Bridge (which one can
walk across) and Atatiirk Airport. The municipal employees congregate in a
corner to chat with one another. After some desultory conversation with the
other Quranic teachers (who have all lost their charges and seemed to be
equally bored with gazing at miniaturised buildings), I spot a lively group of
women at the far end of the park and decide to join them.
The women's group - they are of all ages, including children - are on
a daily tour, having arrived by bus from the outskirts of Istanbul early in
the morning. They are affiliated with one of the numerous immigrant
associations (Biga, (anakkaleliler Dernei) within the boundaries of the
Kartal municipality, which sponsors such daily bus tours on a regular basis

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throughout the summer months. The young man who accompanies them
turns out to be a former tourist guide, currently employed by the Kartal
municipality. He purposefully leads the group to particular monuments, to
talk about them enthusiastically, holding the interest of everyone, including
myself. So I spend the next two hours with them, enjoying the leisurely pace
and free-floating chatter of the women. Their tour of the park ends in front
of the largest model (Cappadocia) to allow for a last photo opportunity for
the entire group.
At around i PM, all the municipal tours end, and the buses begin to leave
one after another. As the sun becomes unbearably hot, the army of park
employees (who had been picking invisible weeds from the flowerbeds all
morning and warning visitors to stay off the grass) also disappear from the
scene. Thus the park becomes deserted, apart from a small group of foreign
tourists with backpacks and a couple of families with children. By this time
I am too exhausted myself to continue further, and decide to come back on
another day, in the late afternoon. On my subsequent visits to the park, I
discover that the late-afternoon visitors are overwhelmingly composed of
middle- or lower-middle-class families, arriving by car.
I have told the story of my first morning in Miniaturk to emphasise a
particular paradox, a puzzle if you will, which kept repeating itself in each of
my later visits. Of course, all of my visits led to different kinds of encounters
and conversations. They also opened the door to a host of questions and
avenues of inquiry that extended beyond the microcosm of the park itself,
such as the world of Quranic schooling in Istanbul or the complexity of
differences among district municipalities on the periphery of the city.
So on every visit, the 'blindness' of my own earlier observations became
apparent; but they also brought me back to the same question, namely: if
visitors (regardless of age, gender, education, etc.) become so rapidly bored
with 'miniaturised monuments', then what is the 'wonder' of experiencing
Miniaturk all about? This question came up because all my encounters and
conversations in the park on different visits revealed that visitors had in one
way or another learned about the park as 'absolutely worth seeing' ('mutlaka
grlmesi gerek'). Afterwards, they raved about it as a 'wondrous' ('byl,
'sihirli') and 'wonderful' ('ahane') experience. But what was so 'wondrous'
and 'wonderful' about this experience, if not the miniatures?
A Detour by

Way of Nineteenth-Century Panoramas

and Miniaturised

Cities

In her discussion on the newly emergent world of public spaces and pleasure
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The Politics of Istanbul's Ottoman Heritage in the Era of Globalism

grounds in European capitals of the nineteenth century, Susan Buck-Morss
dwells on the popularity of 'panoramas' as favourite attractions.32 In the
arcades of mid-nineteenth century Paris for instance, they were among the
pleasures on offer, vying with the spectacle of goods on display behind the
glass windows of shops. People who paid to look at 'panoramas' (through
viewing holes) were enthralled by sweeping views of cities, battling armies,
historic events that seemed to unfold before their eyes, as lighting dissolved
from one scene to another in rapid succession to create the illusion of
seamless movement. Buck-Morss emphasises how this 'magical' experience
of movement across time and space, at an accelerated pace, corresponded to
that of moving along the passages of the arcades. Strolling along the galleries
replicated a panoramic 'tour' of an entirely new world of urban spectacle including crowds. So wondrous was the combination of commodity displays
and pleasures they offered (from gastronomic perfections and intoxicating
drinks to gambling halls, vaudevilles and sexual delights) that they seemed
'like fairy grottoes'.
The principle of panoramic representation - the creation of environments
that transport people from one time or place to another - was replicated in
many of the new public spaces of European capitals throughout the 1800s.
Public parks, ornamental gardens, railroad stations, sports palaces, exhibition
halls, wax museums were all designed to transform the material world into a
new reality. There is little doubt, however, that it was the world expositions,
each more spectacular than the rest, which surpassed the imagination in
creating 'incomparably fairylike' environments." As dramas of visibility for
imperial power, the fantastical quality of such environments demonstrated
the ability to fashion 'objective' reality, appropriating and transforming the
whole world into a dazzling exhibit.
For visitors, they offered the experience of being transported to
fully realised 'unreal' worlds, so extraordinary (i.e. monumental, exotic,
miniaturised) and at the same time realistic (made concrete through realistic
representations and real objects), that how they were accomplished seemed
incomprehensible. The 'amazing' quality of this experience is perhaps best
conveyed in Tim Mitchell's seminal account of the members of an Egyptian
delegation that travelled all the way to the Paris Exposition in 1889, and
found themselves walking on a Cairo street so realistically recreated, with the
facades of the buildings made to look dirty, and with donkeys from Cairo;
even the Egyptian pastries on sale claimed to taste like the real thing.'4
What 'shocked' the Egyptians, as Mitchell describes it, was not only
extraordinary scale and realism of the representation itself, but the mystery
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of how it was made possible. It is this element of mystery, or inexplicability,
that makes visual spectacles a distinctive mode of displaying power. On one
hand there is the wonder of the simulated-yet-real experience itself. On
the other, there is wonder at the incomprehensible (hidden, inexplicable)
machinery of power that makes it happen.35 In this sense, visual spectacles do
more than represent or symbolise power, they inspire belief in its amazing
(fantastical or magical) abilities to control and shape the world.
More often than not, visual spectacles are calculated to astound by their
sheer extravagance or excessiveness. They are 'spectacular' in the everyday
sense of the word, remarkable for their larger-than-life qualities. Worlds in
miniature, by contrast, are designed to astound visitors by the exactitude with
which they duplicate reality, both in detail and solidity. They are 'spectacular'
in the sense of demonstrating the power to make anything happen - such as
duplicating entire cities in mimetic accuracy and detail, so that they can be
comfortably inhabited and pleasurably explored in representational space as if by magic.
Indeed, some of the most elaborately detailed miniaturised worlds created
for world expositions of the nineteenth century were models or panoramas
of the imperial capital in which they were held. These were often mounted
and illuminated in such a way that visitors felt as through they were standing
in the middle of the city, which lay outside the grounds of the exhibition
itself. In his classic account, Mitchell emphasises how the 'astonishing
realism' of such models or panoramas served to mark 'the common centre
shared by the exhibition, the city and the world'.'6 As visitors were drawn into
and encircled by the exhibits, they found themselves positioned at the centre
of the imperial capital (in object form), surrounded by national' pavilions
whose majesty was commensurate with their colonies-on-display. The
mythic imaginary of historical progress implied in this spatial configuration,
conflating colonial domination with capitalism's achievements, needs
little elaboration. It was a common theme of successive world expositions
organised throughout the nineteenth century, along with the Utopian
promise of technology to revolutionise the future of humankind. Cities
hosting successive international exhibitions were expected to celebrate
technology's unlimited possibilities, each by staging more spectacular
exhibits than ever attempted before, to affirm its continuous advancement.
Whatever the spectacles on offer in previous expositions, the 1888 Paris
Exposition eclipsed them all with the Eiffel Tower, a triumph of engineering
and a spectacular city panorama wrapped in one. By all accounts, the tower
was intended to demonstrate the unlimited possibilities of iron by making
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The Politics of Istanbul's Ottoman Heritage in the Era of Globalism

its strength resemble the 'lightness of lace'. Its vertical aspirations were
abhorred and deplored by critics of its time, who described it as a 'monstrous
erection' and a 'barbarous mass' at the very heart of the city, 'humiliating'
and 'diminishing' all the cultural monuments and architectural works of
Paris. It was also a huge popular success, recouping its entire cost in less than
a year from the sale of tickets.'7 The crowds that thronged to climb its height
could explore the whole city of Paris laid out below them, with its avenues,
parks, railroads, etc 'miniaturised' and made accessible to the gaze, in its
totality. In 1889, visitors standing on top of the Eiffel Tower must have 'felt
as though they were standing at the centre of the exhibition, the city, and the
world''38 - an illusion so 'real' that it can only be described in the language of
'magic'.
In contemporary metropolitan life, panoramas of cities, viewed from
high on top, remain a compelling experience. This is so despite, or perhaps
because, our imagination of the city as a totality is increasingly constituted
through a profusion of visual representations that remain outside the realm
of mundane existence. Rolling cameras and beaming satellites sweep across
entire cities and whole continents, linking them together across space and
time to remind us that there is more to experiencing the city than what
meets the 'eye'. But since such images are a priori merged with what the 'eye'
absorbs, they can no longer be separated from the 'reality' we engage with.
Everyday experiences are registered through dominant representations of
space/vision, which precede and overlay them in complex ways.
In actual life, with its predictable routines, the possibility of rethinking
such dominant representations is often foreclosed before it even occurs.
The majority of the time we occupy the physical city by 'habit', navigating
streets, billboards and traffic signs as the eye skips over the familiar and fills
in the missing links. Only as a stranger, a lost newcomer, do we pay attention
to our surroundings. So our memories of the city do not show dramatic
confrontations but rather scenes from its habitual topography, which coexist in the mind together with a host of dominant representations of the
cityscape as a totality - without necessarily contradicting each other.
When viewed from high, on top, the city reveals itself as a totality
as though to a stranger on first encounter. As the 'naked' eye touches
and absorbs that which it observes, images in the mind overlay physical
space, creating an entirely novel experience. This is neither the city of
representational images, nor the city we navigate in habitual existence. The
panorama transforms the 'remembered' city of images and habituation into
an experience of 'wholeness'. Looking below, we seem to comprehend the

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entire city in its totality, and experience the self as part of that totality the ultimate inclusion. In contemporary metropolitan life, the panoramic
experience encapsulates a feeling we can never retrospectively imagine, a
sense of wholeness with the city.
The Privilege of Panoramas and Labyrinths of Impoverishment
in Contemporary Istanbul
The notion of panoramic perspectives is more than a metaphor in
contemporary Istanbul. The physical topography of the city, famously
described as being situated on seven hills and surrounded by sea on all three
sides, offers panoramas of breathtaking beauty that have historically been the
crucial marker of its acclaimed glory. Views of the city's 'natural beauty' have
always been closely interlinked with residential hierarchies of wealth and
privilege. In present-day Istanbul, the boom in property and land markets is
increasingly driven by the proliferation of gated communities and shopping
malls outside the built-up core areas of the city. But for the upper crust of the
city's wealthy elite, a panorama of the sea' remains the sine qua non of urban
residence - secured by hidden cameras and high-tech surveillance. Perhaps
the easiest way of conveying the sense of privilege associated with panoramas
of the sea in Istanbul is to borrow a quote from an interview with the Nobel
Prize-winning Turkish novelist Orhan Pamuk, whose work has been closely
associated with the city:
Nobody until now has seen the entirety of Istanbul as I have,
horizontally and perpendicularly, that is in depth, in a manner
which penetrates its history and its soul, and which comprehends
its positioning, the way it settles on the seas, the way it extends.
The view from my office has such a privilege that it suits a novelist.
Sometimes I think I deserve everything that I see from here.39
Pamuk's image of himself looking out from his office window and taking in
all of Istanbul, locating himself at 'the heart of the city', conveys the sense
of privilege and inclusion associated with city panoramas in Istanbul in
more ways than one. In many of his novels, Pamuk mobilises panoramic
perspectives of Istanbul to intimate how the past and present of the city are
fused, constantly investing the sights of the city with meaning. For him, the
inhabitants of Istanbul have always remained 'strangers' to the city, unable to
comprehend its repository of secrets - the Ottoman elite because they came
from different countries, and 90 per cent of its population because they
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migrated to the city over the last fifty years. How Pamuk sets up the city as a
mystery that conceals its secrets from its inhabitants, and defines himself as
a 'novelist of Istanbul' by appropriating its signs as a text to be illuminated,
remains beyond the scope of this paper.40 My purpose in borrowing a quote
from this interview is to emphasise how 'possessing' a panoramic overview
of the Bosphorus constitutes a 'privilege' in contemporary Istanbul, making
the owner an insider within the city's hierarchies of wealth and power,
symbolically and literally.
The inhabitants of Istanbul whom Pamuk refers to as 'strangers' to the city
(or as people who have arrived from Anatolia) are subsumed in a diversity
of groups in terms of their history and experiences in the physical/social
topography of the city, which makes generalisations meaningless. Below I
want to offer some excerpts from a set of interviews with workers who clean
the windows of skyscrapers in Istanbul, i.e. men who 'see' the city from on
high on a daily basis. Hasan, in his late twenties, was born in the Eastern
Anatolian town of Mara, worked in cotton fields and vegetable gardens and
ended up cleaning the windows of a corporate tower in Istanbul. He narrates
his arrival in Istanbul as follows:
I came to Istanbul by bus. First I came to Gztepe, to my uncle.
I came to Istanbul to earn money and go back. I found a job in a
furniture workshop at Goztepe industrial zone. I used to go with
my uncle's son. I worked for a week. Then the employer told me to
bring six cups of tea. I went out, but see, I did not know my way to
anywhere. I found a teashop near the corner... two or three streets,
they all look alike. I went in and out of streets, but could not find
my way back. So what I knew was going up to the Goztepe Bridge
41
and taking the minibus back home ... and so I did.
When questioned about what the city looks like from above, Hasan did not
have much to say, explaining that he had been cleaning windows for a long
time. Metin, his co-worker (born in the village of Amasra on the Black Sea),
was more forthcoming:
It is different, above is better, and down below makes you feel like
suffocating. But when you go up it is like you are free. Istanbul is
underneath. Now when you are walking down there, everything is
42
concrete, you suffocate, as if you were jammed in it.
Celil used to work in a teashop in the bazaar of Erzurum in northeastern
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Anatolia. Migration to Istanbul was tough for him, and he worked in
various jobs before he began to clean windows. He tells the story of how
he accidentally got the wrong minibus and ended up in one of Istanbul's
affluent neighbourhoods:
I got on the wrong minibus. I got off in Etiler, everything changes
there, because it is full of women in furs and men with ties. Even
within the district, things differ. I have been in Istanbul for
twenty-eight years, and I could not once take my aunt to the place
I like most, Beikta. If I take my wife there, we have to sit down,
drink something. No way. How is it possible, on 420 lira?43
Although Hasan, Metin and Celil were co-workers (hired by a subcontracting
firm), they arrived in Istanbul from different provinces and resided in
different neighbourhoods in its sprawling periphery, among their own kin
and relatives. But their stories follow a similar pattern; their topography of
Istanbul was mapped by a series of low-paying, often temporary jobs they
have held. They give the names of districts where their work was located,
but the district itself rarely appears in their stories. The city of Istanbul they
inhabit evokes a labyrinth, with identical streets, minibus routes, different
yet equally low-paying jobs - a suffocating drudgery that seems to offer no
exits. Although they work on skyscrapers, they do not register or absorb
Istanbul's panorama.
Ending

with

Miniaturk

Anatolia is described as the 'cradle' of civilisations in the promotional

literature of Miniaturk and represented as such by the choice of models on
exhibit. The idea of ancient Anatolia as the 'cradle' of modern civilisation
dates back to the latter half of the 1930s in Turkey, when a new generation
of cultural theorists sought to revise official historiography. This was an
attempt to replace earlier theories of the origins of 'Turkish race' with
a 'humanist culture', by establishing continuities between ancient and
modern inhabitants of Anatolia. In art as well as literature, a new wave
of Turkish humanism emerged, elaborating the similarities between the
culture narrated in the Homeric legends and a highly selective, often
anecdotal account of Turkish folklore. Thus Hellenism was embraced as
a 'universal' ideal and conflated with Anatolia's 'native' identity, as the
'cradle' of civilisation.44 Since then, the rhetoric of Anatolia as the 'cradle'
of civilisations has been transformed into common knowledge - something
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The Politics of Istanbul's Ottoman Heritage in the Era of Globalism

taken for granted, without questioning. In the context of Miniaturk, the
forty-five monuments representing Anatolia as the 'cradle' of civilisations
have been very carefully chosen by the committee of historians to locate the
origins of Hellenic civilisation in the present territory of Anatolia, along
with its native 'treasures'. But the majority of visitors to Miniaturk already
know that Anatolia is the cradle of civilisations', and do not reflect on the
choice of monuments on display. When asked to do so (by me), they search
their memory for omissions and try to come up with suggestions on what
else might have been included.
The people who have migrated from Anatolia, however, are a 'problem'
in Istanbul; or, perhaps more accurately, the Anatolian origins of people
who live in the city's sprawling low-income peripheral neighbourhoods (the
gecekondu) are part of the problem they constitute. In the listing of Istanbul's
major problems, which demand urgent solutions, what is referred to as
gecekondu sorunu ('the problem of gecekondu') heads the list, next to none
other than the traffic problem and the crime problem, with the corruption
problem following close behind. Given the spatial connotations of the term
gecekondu, many of the urgent problems identified on the pages of daily
newspapers, or on the evening television news, become mapped onto city
space as a part of the gecekondu problem - i.e. associated with the inhabitants
of Istanbul's low-income neighbourhoods (with the exception of the traffic
problem).
The 'causes' of the gecekondu problem as well as the 'solutions', as identified
and elaborated by planners, journalists, politicians and intellectuals, have
shifted over time. In the early 1950s and 1960s, for instance, the gecekondu
problem was predominantly defined as a temporary matter that would be
resolved as the peasants coming from Anatolia became 'integrated' into
the city. In the latter half of the 1970s, when the political left in Turkey
became prominent on the national scene, the gecekondu problem was
formulated as one of unemployment and exploitation. But now, in the
'global' Istanbul of Turkey's future ambitions, the 'gecekondu problem'
has assumed greater urgency than ever before, as it is 'polluting' the city
aesthetically and culturally. So the clearance of gecekondu neighbourhoods,
by relocating property owners to municipally financed apartment blocks
(and letting renters take care of themselves), has become the official policy
of the metropolitan city government as well as the district municipalities.
The metropolitan government's millennium project of promoting urban
citizenship and identification with the city is fraught with contradictions.
For visitors of Miniaturk, however, the Anatolia on display is fused

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with the ancient past and global future not only of Istanbul but the whole
nation. Roaming its paths offers the experience of a totality, with the self at
its very centre - the ultimate inclusion. It is this sense of inclusion I want to
suggest, which makes Miniaturk a 'magical' experience, difficult to recapture
retrospectively but 'absolutely worth visiting'.
In Lieu of a Conclusion
Over the past two decades, the idea of a 'global' Istanbul has become the
site and symbol of Turkey's aspirations in the twenty-first century. Future
visions of the city and of the nation have become inextricably bound up
in public, popular and scholarly discourses. Claims to a global future for
Istanbul have breached the canons of official historiography, calling forth
new interpretations of its Ottoman legacy. In the process, Istanbul's multiple
and multilayered pasts have come under intense debate as the negotiating
ground for alternative political projects, not only for the city but for the
nation as well.
In the Istanbul of the 1990s, 'history' is produced, reconfigured and
disseminated in a host of commercialised forms, from tourist brochures
and auction houses to news broadcasts and political summits. This is
obviously very different from 'history' as written and disseminated by the
Turkish state. Hence my emphasis is on a number of competing public
narratives that circulate in commodity forms to mediate between the past
and the ethnographic present of the city. These are 'political' narratives in
the sense that they mobilise alternative versions of the past, from different
socio-cultural locations, and address different constituencies. What they
have in common is the way they accentuate forms of belonging, or yearning
to belong, to a wider cultural configuration than the territorially bounded
nation state. At the same time, of course, they reveal how yearnings for
collective identities beyond the nation-state are shot through with the kinds
of essentialisms we tend to associate with nationalist rhetoric.

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Notes
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
13.
14.
15.
16.
17.
18.
19.
20.
21.
22.
23.
24.
25.
26.
27.
28.
29.
30.

31.

Zukin, The Cultures of Cities.

Scott, The Cultural Economy of Cities.
Fainstein and Judd, 'Global Forces, Local Strategies, and Urban Tourism'.
Ibid., pp. 26-7.
Oncii and Weyland, 'Introduction', Space, Culture and Power.
Ghannam, Remaking the Modern.
Singerman and Amar, Cairo Cosmopolitan.
El Kadi and ElKerdany, 'Belle-Epoque Cairo'.
Huyssen, 'Present Pasts: Media, Politics, Amnesia' and Present Pasts: Urban
Palimpsests and the Politics of Memory in the Present.
Huyssen, 'Present Pasts: Media, Politics, Amnesia', p. 26.
Lee, 'Shanghai Modern'; Shadid and Weiping, 'Pathways to a World-City'.
Boym, The Future of 'Nostalgia.
Somers, "The Narrative Construction of Identity'.
Huyssen, 'Present Pasts: Media, Politics, Amnesia', p. 33.
(elik, The Remaking of Istanbul; Bozdoan, Modernism and Nation Building.
Rosenthal, 'Foreigners and Municipal Reform in Istanbul: 1855-1865'.
Keyder, Istanbul: Between the Local and the Global, p. 35.
Ibid.
Quoted from an 1892 guide from Baedeker of Leipzig, a publisher of guidebooks for
German travellers, in Hastaoglou-Martinidis, 'Visions of Constantinople/Istanbul
from Nineteenth Century Guidebooks'.
Quoted from a 1900 guide from John Murray of London, a chief publishing house
for guidebooks, in ibid., p. 10.
Quoted from a 1912 Guide Joanne, published by Hachette, in ibid., p.o.
Keyder, 'The Consequences of the Exchange of Populations for Turkey'.
Mansel, Constantinople.
Hurriyet, 30 March 1999.
Bora, 'Istanbul of the Conqueror' ;nar, 'National History as a Contested Site'.
Hrriyet, 26 December 1993.
Bartu, 'Who Owns the Old Quarters?'
Houston, 'Brewing of Islamist Modernity'; Saktanber, 'Outdoor/Indoor?'
Hrriyet, 3 December 2005, (abridged).
This paragraph is from one of numerous 'preparatory' history books available
on the market, designed for high school students taking the national university
examinations. Since university entrance examinations are centrally administered,
and highly competitive, there is a lucrative market for such 'preparatory' books, with
new ones appearing each year. They all replicate the same high school curriculum, but
with a different set of sample test questions based on the previous year's examination,
and at different prices depending on quality of print and paper
A cultural management firm, Istanbul Kiiltiir A.., which was initially established
to run the millennium campaign, has since become the main operational arm of
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Imagining the City

Istanbul's metropolitan administration in cultural affairs'. In addition to organising
and publicising a host of 'cultural activities' financed by the metro administration,
Kltr A.. publishes a glossy bi-annual magazine titled Gezinti, devoted to
'enhancing knowledge of Istanbul's cultural heritage'. The first issue, published in the
summer of 2003, was almost entirely devoted to Miniaturk, with extensive excerpts
from Mayor Gurtuna's inaugural speech (including the paragraph translated here), as
well as an in-depth interview with him on the regeneration of the Golden Horn. The
broad publicity campaign that coincided with the opening ceremonies generated a
burst of journalistic commentary in the daily press and news reports on television.
For the sake of brevity, I have picked out a few of the most frequently used phrases
used in numerous superlative accounts of the park.
32. Buck-Morss, The Dialectics of Seeing, pp. 82-3.
33. Daily life in Istanbul of the 1990s was marked by a dizzying proliferation of
commodities and images. This experience of mundane life through a new objectworld - through the circulation of new forms of media, mobile phones, music CDs,
large-scale spectacles - evoked nineteenth-century European cities, when daily life
suddenly took on new meaning. Thus I have heavily borrowed from Susan BuckMorrs, whose book captures the 'phantasmagoric' quality of this urban experience so
well. The vast literature on the 'hyperreality' of contemporary theme parks does not
seem particularly relevant or illuminating in the context of Miniaturk.
34. Mitchell, Colonising Egypt, p. 10.
35. Slater, 'Photography and Modern Vision', pp. 2 1 9 - 2 7 .
36. Mitchell, Colonising Egypt, p. 9.
37. Buck-Morss, The Dialectics of Seeing, p. 399.
38. Ibid.
39. Interview published in Istanbul, 1999; see Irzik, 'How to be a Novelist of Istanbul'.
40. Irzik, 'How to be a Novelist of Istanbul'.
41. Interview, December 2005, courtesy of Eda akmak.
42. Ibid.
43. Ibid.
44. For an extended discussion of the construction of Anatolia in the works of several
novelists during this period, see Bilsel, 'Our Anatolia'.

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