This paper examines the role of state affinity in community struggles against authoritarian, neoliberal urban transformation projects (UTPs) in Turkey. It argues that as neoliberal hegemonic devices, UTPs produce contentious political spaces within which communities negotiate, resist, or comply with state-imposed, pro-market rationales. As an alternative to depictions of subaltern communities in mobilization as totally 'co-opted' or 'victimized' in neoliberal development or as 'unwilling' or 'unable' to produce a collective rights identity, the analysis offers a more complicated picture of community resistance, inactivity, and co-optation. To do this, it adopts a combination of Henri Lefebvre's theory of production of space and Antonio Gramsci's theory of hegemony. The concepts of common sense and good sense (Gramsci) and moments (Lefebvre) are operationalized in analyzing divergent community mobilizations and their complicated responses to top-down UTPs. The analysis is based on the findings from original ethnographic research on two ethnically distinct working class neighborhoods under UTP threat in Gebze, a satellite city of Istanbul. It compares communities' affinity with the state ideology (Sunni-Turkish, neoliberal) by looking at their ethnic identities and social histories. The article aims to contribute to recent Neo-Gramscian approaches to urban politics and governance.

Emerging from the Ottoman Empire’s 1922 collapse, the Turkish republic inherited a population ravaged by wars and associated diseases and famines. Regarding itself to be a modern state responsible for the health and wellbeing of its people, Turkish leaders created a public health infrastructure and introduced dramatic health campaigns to treat diseases, on the one hand, and to replace folk medicine and healers with science-based modern medicine and physicians, on the other hand. For centuries, however, Anatolian peoples utilized both cold and hot springs to treat various illnesses and infirmities. Compelled to either reject or reinvent these popular sites, Turkish officials opted both to initiate studies that would analyze and quantify the chemical compositions of spring waters and to recast the springs as sites integral to the republic’s curative infrastructure. While this approach appropriated traditional therapeutic landscapes in the name of modern medicine and science, others from within Turkey’s medical community argued against any ‘scientization’ of curative spaces. Contending that such places should be considered therapeutic not due to their chemical compositions or other measurable factors, they reasoned that these sites were entirely legitimate due to their more subjective factors and experiential evidence—noting their psychological effect in calming and refreshing ailing visitors. Additionally, many officials viewed these therapeutic landscapes as ones that might rival the famous spas and resorts of Europe. Amid these discussions, physicians and Atatürk prioritized Yalova, and advocates encouraged its development as a Turkish Carlsbad. Drawing on historical sources from the 1920s and 1930s (e.g., state records, medical journals, and medical conferences), this paper analyzes the framing of these sites, particularly Yalova, in order to engage with the politics of place and science in Turkey’s institutional and social geographies of medicine.

An official document from Prime Ministry Ottoman Archives brings an Armenian architect’s scramble for commissioning to light. According to the document, a library from 18th century ?stanbul required repairing, and a Turkish professional Mehmet Bahri Bey was commissioned after his offer. Yet, Bahri Bey did not sign the contract, and an Armenian architect named Andon Kalfa demanded the job, paying a deposit to get the commission. He even offered to waive the first installment, and as a result he received the repairment job of the library. The precarious Armenian architect Andon kalfa of the late 19th and early 20th century, is also known – according to the memoirs of an Armenian citizen of Turkey – for his construction of Azaryan Mansion in ?stanbul, which is renamed as Sadberk Han?m Museum after its transformation into a museum in 1980. The restoration and the transformation of the Azaryan Mansion into Sadberk Han?m Museum was held by one of the prominent architects of Turkey, Sedad Hakk? Eldem, who is known for his surveys and analysis of the houses of the Ottoman Empire, which he frames under the term “Turkish House.” In his vernacular architecture survey book Turkish Houses (1984) Eldem claims that even though the non-Muslim impact on the Turkish house had been high, and that their influence especially in 18th and 19th centuries had been powerful, it is by the courtesy of the Turkish nation that the contradictory elements could coexist (19). In this paper I will argue that Eldem’s surveys and restoration practice, as an understudied aspect of his oeuvre, twists the cosmopolitan history of Istanbul for the sake of a nationalist inspiration for his model modern house. For this purpose, I will closely examine the Azaryan Mansion and its transformation in Büyükdere, ?stanbul, where Eldem forcefully implements his idea of “sofa plan.” The sofa plan diagram, as intricately studied in Eldem’s books, is symbolic of his ideal “Turkish house.” This close reading of a single building aims to construct a sample for the larger scale “forgetting” in the modernization of Turkey in the 20th century. The paper will first unfold the making of the cosmopolitan Büyükdere shore in 19th century by focusing on autobiographies, maps and photographs that highlight the diversity of actors involved in the making. It will then focus on the aftermath of the house and its restoration and transformation into an Ottoman folkloric crafts and costume museum.

This paper will focus on the Tomb of Suleyman Shah, a Turkish exclave in Syria which was relocated in 2015 within the Syrian territory in response to the threat of destruction by ISIS. I analyze the multiple layers of identity in which the tomb is entangled historically to illustrate the role of materiality in the making and sustenance of national imagination. The confusion about the identity of Suleyman Shah - grandfather of the Ottoman dynasty's founder Osman Bey, or the founder of the Sultanate of Rum - goes hand in hand with the trajectory of the tomb as a mobile built environment, defying the sense of fixity it invokes. I look into the spectrum of responses to the tomb's latest relocation from the Turkish public, media, and the political scene and put it in the context of the wider history of the tomb dating back to the eleventh century. This history entails multiple objectifications, which reveal "the social life of the tomb" as a visiting place mentioned in early travelers' accounts, constructed by the Ottoman Empire in Qal'at Jabar, adjoined with a police post in the early Republican period, and, most recently, conceived as a trope for Turkey's territorial presence in the Middle East. In addition to the textual and visual sources that constitute the spectrum of material practices unfolding around the tomb, I draw on my ethnographic visit to Sanliurfa to illustrate the changes to the meaning of the tomb as conceived vis-à-vis the political present. I propose that the Tomb of Suleyman Shah is a material assemblage where orders of signification belonging the religious, the military, and the national intersect in producing the tomb as an overdetermined material entity, which in turn participates in the making of the national imagination.