- History, Visual Culture, Visual Culture Of Cities, Ottoman History, Turkish History, Urban Studies, Urban History, Psychogeography, Critical Theory, Art History, and 21 moreNationalism, Museum Studies, Civil Society and the Public Sphere, Public Space, Ottoman Studies, Ottoman Empire, Postcolonial Studies, Globalization, Neoliberalism, Power, Social Exclusion, Architecture and Public Spaces, Architecture, History Of Eugenics, Siyasi Düşünce Tarihi, Osmanlı/Türk siyasi düşünce tarihi, Türk Düşünce Tarihi, Intellectual History of Turkey, Intellectual History, History of Ideas, and History of Political Thoughtedit
This article explores the ways in which debates about urban policy became a space for members of the literate Turkish public to negotiate the boundary between state and society during a period of dramatic social transformation in the... more
This article explores the ways in which debates about urban policy became a space for members of the literate Turkish public to negotiate the boundary between state and society during a period of dramatic social transformation in the 1930s. Inspired by circulating urbanist discourses, Turkish reformers reimagined society from street level up by passing a series of laws which empowered municipalities and abolished the neighborhood muhtar and council of elders, the basic units of local administration since 1829. Eleven years later, however, these offices were reconstituted and absorbed into municipal bureaucracy where they became the focus of heated party politics and struggles across Turkey. The debates which brought about this transformation, I argue, were ultimately about how far into daily life the authority of the government should extend and in what ways Turkey was able to adopt international standards of urbanism in a time of economic and political uncertainty.