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The clash of values across symbolic boundaries: claims of urban space in contemporary Istanbul

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Notes

  1. E.g. http://kamilpasha.com/, http://www.tophanehaber.com/, www.haberler.com, www.bianet.org, www.radikal.com.tr, www.hurriyetdailynews.com, www.nytimes.com - see complete links in bibliography

  2. http://www.foxnews.com/world/2010/09/26/turkey-culture-clash-gangs-assault-art-galleries-opening-night/

  3. Nişantaşı is an affluent district north of Beyoğlu that for many symbolises the life of the upper-class Istanbul. Pamuk was also born in Nişantaşı and has lived most of his life in the area.

  4. I have translated the quotes from my interviews conducted in Turkish

  5. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jan/02/dispatch-istanbul-most-dynamic-city

  6. The specific character of Turkish Republican secularism has been contested on various grounds (see e.g. Altınay 2004; Azak 2010). For the purposes of this essay, I have chosen to follow Azak’s use of secularism as “referring to the doctrine that morality, national education, and the state itself should not be based on religious principles, a doctrine which can gain specific meanings in different political and historical contexts” (2010:8) instead of laicism with connotations with the specifically French Jacobin tradition (see Bowen 2007).

  7. Beyoğlu municipality includes the districts of Tophane and Tarlabaşı but Beyoğlu is commonly used in speech to refer to the urban core around Istiklal Caddesi. Sometimes Taksim (referring to either the square at the end of Istiklal Caddesi or the whole area), Istiklal (referring also to its side streets) or even the old Greek name Pera (when referring to the nostalgic character of the area) are used.

  8. See www.mahalleistanbul.com

  9. The complex history of architectural discourses is outside the scope of this essay. See Kezer (2009, 2010) for a detailed discussion of the friction between modernist planning and informal settlements in Ankara.

  10. See http://www.invisibleistanbul.org/ud/node5.html for a tour description that claims nostalgically that the remaining brothel is on a “street that seems to be frozen in time”

  11. ‘Saudi Islam’ is an umbrella term that some of my informants used informally to refer to Islamic movements that were seen as incompatible with Turkish society. The great differences between strands of radical Islam were brushed aside while their foreignness was emphasized.

  12. Not to be confused with an ornamental design, in the contemporary Turkish context Arabesk refers to the popular style of music with influences from Arabic-pop genre with wider connotations with the whole lifestyle of the rural migrants.

  13. During my fieldwork in 2008-2009, Tarlabaşı had already started to have connotations as an emerging bohemian enclave with the expected influx of artists and students moving in. My later correspondence shows that these developments have gradually intensified but their consequences are yet to be seen.

  14. http://database.becomingistanbul.com/#/media/332/850087410

  15. The word Gecekondu refers to the old Ottoman customary law (adat) that makes it possible to build squatter housing on condition that the house is built in one night – nobody sees it being built so it must have always been there. It is nowadays a general term for the accommodation of the rural migrants.

  16. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=11965693

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Tuominen, P. The clash of values across symbolic boundaries: claims of urban space in contemporary Istanbul. Cont Islam 7, 33–51 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11562-013-0245-z

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