cities were being recognized as assets of inestimable market value for attracting global corporate headquarters as well as symbolic value in their global images. In Istanbul, a vital past is present and visible within the borders of the western peninsula. Topkap1, commonly referred to as the Ottoman sultans' “palace,” is an imperial city that rests on a promontory overlooking the Sea of Marmara. Before it became the home of Ottoman sultans for nearly five centuries, it was the home of Byzantine emperors for a thousand years. While much of Byzantium was ruined by the time of the Ottoman conquest in 1453, to the trained eye a surprising amount of Byzantine architecture remains intact.
Coexisting with and dominating the historical cityscape is the monumental architecture of the Ottoman period. Topkap1's walls and gates and the many buildings that housed the treasury, the enormous kitchens, the harem, and the palace itself occupy the point of the peninsula. The imperial treasures remain in the various buildings. Sultans' mosques on hilltops overlooking the Golden Horn dominate the sight line of the peninsula. The intricate pattern of lacework streets and narrow alleys that surround the museums, palaces, mosques, and monuments house one of the most densely packed residential populations in metropolitan Istanbul.
There is, then, a material presence of cosmopolitan heritage that has become a symbolic currency in efforts to reimagine Istanbul as a globalizing city. The heritage movement is also important to the story of a globalizing city in another way. It was through the tourist gaze that the city's inhabitants, especially its upper middle class, began to imagine itself as a city that was on the move, able to visualize the prospect of a bright future as continuous with a glorious past. Nearly all the physical structures that have been mentioned are in use today.
The historical peninsula also represents the deep past as present in the lives of Istanbullus. Foreign visitors and tourists who come to the historical peninsula have no choice but to intermingle with Turks from all over the metropolis who live, work, trade, and shop there. The historical peninsula remains the symbolic and physical center of the city, alive with every activity, sight, sound, and smell.
The Globalizing Cityscape 2: Financialization
If the strong presence of global financial institutions is an indicator of a globalizing city, then Istanbul met the test. By the early 1990s, a glass city that became the home of the fledgling Turkish stock market, investment banks, insurance carriers, and five-star international business hotels could be seen a few miles to the north of the old city center, just over the hills from the Bosphorus shore and minutes from the intersection of highways that brought workers over the bridge from the Asian side to merge with the traffic caused by the north-south commuters on the western side. Maslak, as the new financial area was called, became the headquarters of some of the largest Turkish transnational corporations and banks. The rapid change was dramatic when contrasted to the preexisting 1930s state banks headquartered mostly in the central Anatolian capital of Ankara to be close to the state bureaucracy that regulated them, a pattern the early private banks followed from 1950 to 1980. The Turkish Lira was not yet traded on international currency markets, and most banks in Turkey were state enterprises, each with a designated function in different development sectors of the national economy such as agriculture, social security, insurance, and maritime shipping.
The monopoly of the Central Bank over foreign currency transactions came to an end when commercial banks were freed from government regulations and able to operate in international markets, in some cases forming joint ventures with foreign banks. After 1983 there was a premium on banks with greater access to world markets. The export boom and borrowing from abroad brought foreign capital into the Istanbul economy and, more particularly, into the households of those business families that were in a position to benefit from investment in growth sectors such as finance, insurance, real estate, accounting, media, entertainment and fashion, marketing and advertising, and textiles.
New five-star international hotels catering to businessmen, conventioneers, and groups of tourists appeared in the new financial center but also in other parts of the city. Istanbul had no modern international hotel until 1955 when the Hilton was built on Cumhuriyet Boulevard near Taksim square, a center for foreign travelers and international tourism since the mid-nineteenth century. The following year the exclusive Divan Hotel was built a few blocks away. Two decades would pass before the Sheraton and Marmara hotels were added to the rising skyline around Taksim. In contrast, the decade after 1982 saw the construction of a large number of international hotels, several of which were located near corporate headquarters in the financial district.
The Globalizing Cityscape 3: Privatization of Media and Communications
The political economy and culture of media and communications was revolutionized during the liberalization episode. From three state television stations with content provided by state-funded programming before 1983, this whole industry became privatized by the early 1990s.
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