Istanbul, City of the Fearless
Istanbul, City of the Fearless
Urban Activism, Coup d’État, and Memory in Turkey
Christopher Houston
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS
University of California Press
Oakland, California
© 2020 by Christopher Houston
Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file at the Library of Congress.
ISBN 978-0-520-34319-1 (cloth : alk. paper)
ISBN 978-0-520-34320-7 (pbk. : alk. paper)
ISBN 978-0-520-97467-8 (ebook)
Manufactured in the United States of America
28 27 26 25 24 23 22 21 20
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
This book is dedicated to Joel Kahn (1946–2017), professor of anthropology, admired PhD supervisor, beloved mentor, and deeply missed friend.
Contents
List of Political Parties and Groups
1. Spatial Politics, Historiography, Method: Introduction
2. Activism, Perception, Memory: 12 Eylül Museum of Shame
3. De-Ottomanization, Modernism, Migration: A Selective History of Istanbul, 1923–1974
4. Inscription, Sound, Violence: Militant Repertoires and the Production of Space in Istanbul, 1974–1980
5. Gecekondu, Factory, Municipality: Three Fields of Spatial Politics
6. Militants, Ideologies, (F)actions: What Is to Be Done?
7. Pacification, Resistance, Reconstruction: Coup d’État, City of the Fearful, 1980–1983
8. Phenomenology, Event, Commemoration: Conclusion
Epilogue
Bibliography
Index
Acknowledgments
It is a genuine pleasure to acknowledge the contribution of so many people to the researching, writing, and publishing of this book. Its genesis can be traced back to a walk in Istanbul one evening with a pal who remembered, as we passed his old high school, an assembly in the late 1970s when the entire student body had raised clenched fists in the air, in silent memory of a slain student activist. The story piqued my interest, and ever since, I have annoyed my friends and acquaintances, and their friends and acquaintances, to tell more about those years in Istanbul. Quite simply, the book could not have been written without them, since it is an account of their imaginative descriptions of activism, events, factions, places, and experiences in the city. Without being banal or simplistic, I wish to record my admiration for that generation’s forbearance in suffering, for their graciousness toward their own and others’ youthful and militant selves, and for the clarity decades later of their thoughts and emotions concerning those years of revolutionary fervor.
The book itself has been rather long in the making, and there are a large number of institutions and individuals that I must thank for supporting its composition. First, I am grateful to Macquarie University and its Department of Anthropology here in Sydney for providing an environment that values collegiality and teaching, while structuring time for its members to pursue both fieldwork research and writing. Colleagues are one’s best teachers. Greg Downey and Lisa Wynn have been supportive departmental heads throughout the process of the book’s writing, and the University facilitated research leave in Istanbul.
Staff at the German Oriental Institute in Istanbul, and Tomas Wilkoszewski in particular, tolerated my endless requests for tattered newspapers and faded copies of old leftist journals bundled up in the depths of the library. It has also been an educational pleasure to be involved in Tomas’s own doctoral research program over the course of the project. The Anthropology Department at Princeton University provided a wonderful home for six months in 2018, which facilitated completion of the work, while also allowing my son and I to fall in love with New Jersey’s native animals, including squirrels, gophers, deer, and raccoons! Special thanks there to Carol Zanca, Julia Elyachar, Onur Güney, Ryo Morimoto, Lawrence Ralph, and Nikos Michailidis for their friendship and hospitality, as well as to Carolyn Rouse, head of the department.
There is another group of individuals who I am very glad to mention, people who in a huge variety of ways, often without knowing the true import of their contribution, have added their defining touches to the shape and content of the book. These are Michael Jackson, Kenan Çayır, Joost Jongerden, Dilek Çilingir, Trevor Hogan, Robbie Peters, Faik Gür, Jean-Paul Baldacchino, and Kalpana Ram. As usual, my father, James Houston, edited the entire manuscript for grammatical and stylistic niceties, despite the bouts of illness that have laid him low over the last few years. A million thanks to filmmaker extraordinaire Max Harwood for his assistance on the manuscript’s images, as well as for designing the cover of a music CD produced as a welcome break from writing anthropology.
Kate Marshall at University of California Press welcomed the book from the beginning, and I am deeply indebted to her work and support in fostering the manuscript through to publication. I also thank Enrique Ochoa-Kaup, and the entire editorial team for the further polishing of its prose. There are other publishers to thank as well. Versions of parts of chapters 1, 2, and 4 have been published in two articles as follows: portions of chapter 1 and 2 in “Politicizing Place Perception: A Phenomenology of Urban Activism in Istanbul,” in Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (JRAI) 21, no. 4 (2015): 720–38; portions of chapters 1 and 4 in “How Globalization Really Happens: Remembering Activism in the Transformation of Istanbul,” in International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 39, no. 1 (2015): 46–61.
It is a delight to name my family, to acknowledge their interest in the project, as well as their timely
