The socioeconomic mechanisms of the democratisation process in the Eastern Mediterranean are complex. Approaching the history of capitalism from the point of view of the process of adopting cars, this paper inquires about sui generis socioeconomic and intellectual mechanisms that shaped political transformation in the late Ottoman era and develops the term “transport capitalism.” It argues that transport capitalism emerged in the long nineteenth century, enabling some countries to have lower freight costs and thus industrialisation. Adopting cars in the nineteenth century was a part of the global interest in lowering transport costs. While countries like Britain with natural and man-made canals had more access to transportation, the countries with a land-based topography needed roads and overland transport technologies to compete for the economic share of the first industrial globalisation. For the Ottoman state set at the conjunction of the seas connecting the Mediterranean to the Black Sea, the Adriatic Sea, Indian Ocean, and beyond, maritime transportation did not become a primary means of transporting domestic goods. When the territories making it a Mediterranean state were lost toward the end of the century, overland transportation became even more vital. After the war with Russia in 1877-1878, Ottomans lost their grain gardens in the Balkans. Eventually, importing flour from France and the US became more affordable than transporting grain from Konya to Istanbul. With an interest in realising a potential transport revolution, the Ottoman state supported the building of Anatolian Railways. When cars arrived in 1907 in the Ottoman territories, lowering transport costs was still an economic dream. With the arrival of cars, transport capitalism became more feasible as cars needed car parts and small businesses, from repair, gas stations, and garages to car dealers. Expanding on transport capitalism and its implications for the late Ottoman era, this paper argues that a sui generis form of democratisation process was in process in the late Ottoman era despite the despotism and political suppression of liberties under the Hamidian regime. Lowering transport costs was a significant economic infrastructure to facilitate the transition into a more democratic system by increasing the connection between domestic markets and the mobility of people. If not economically or materially, the process of developing transport capitalism left its imprint on the public view via extensive reports of roads, trains, and cars in the papers.

In 1952, Russell Dorr, Chief of the United States Mission to Turkey reflected on the environmental significance of Turkey’s national terrain for America’s Cold War, expanding across the Mediterranean and Middle East theatre. And he argued that “on the most uncertain sort of ground” like Turkey’s, “predictions [were] always dangerous,” as this country was situated in “a world where a war, cold in some spots and not so cold in others, [was] raging.”1 Dorr further portrayed Turkey's soils, rivers, and seas as the main ammunition, which, if designed effectively, could fundamentally alter the power geometries in favor of the U.S. military-industrial complex. This paper takes Dorr’s design speculation as its starting point to explore how U.S.-sponsored infrastructural development in Cold War-era Turkey operated as a war by other means—one that capitalized, financialized, and weaponized built space. The paper focuses on a key project led by the U.S. military, namely “The North Atlantic Treaty Organization Infrastructures,” with a focus on Turkey's position in this multi-scalar project. The NATO Infrastructures referred to a massive network of aboveground, underground, and submarine defense systems and technologies, designed to intercept a potential Soviet expansion into the Mediterranean Sea. Drawing on an architectural analysis of maps, images, and textual material, first, the paper discusses how the NATO Infrastructures redefined the term "infrastructure." Second, focusing on a formative period in the construction of this network—between 1952 (the entry of Turkey and Greece into NATO) and 1974 (the Turkish invasion of Cyprus)—the paper conceptualizes the emergence of a "Cold War Space" from the global circulation of military design technologies—a space that continues to evolve today by weaponizing Turkey's landscapes and waterscapes. 1.“Mutual Security Agency, Special Mission to Turkey for Economic Cooperation: Turkish Viability after 1954,” (May 2, 1952), Records of U.S. Foreign Assistance Agencies, 1948-1961. Mission to Turkey. RG 469 Entry Lot 1400, Box 12, NARA, College Park, MD.

On the Imperial Roads to National-Colonialism; Iranian and Iraqi National Armies on the British Roads to Occupy Kurdistan Mainstream understandings, both from left and right camps, conceive the relationship between the Western Imperialist powers and the nationalists in the Global South to be of an antagonistic character. It is also a commonplace, from their perspective, that the whole issue of the “minorities” in the Global South is the production of the imperialists’ intervention into the internal affairs of the former “nations”. This paper proposes that both of these claims are the distortion of historical realities experienced by non-ruling indigenous people in the Global South: Modern nation-state building in these countries, and the marginalization of the non-sovereign identities, were the (by)products of the imperialist intervention by the European powers. The infrastructures and governance technologies developed by the European powers for their imperial agenda both before and during the World War One proved to be key for the ruling classes in the Global South to territorialize and institutionalize their powers and to impose their domination over the indigenous population. The occupation of Kurdistan by the Iran and Iraqi armies in the course of the 1920s is one of the best showcases in this regard. In this paper, I shed lights on the significance of road building for nation-state formation, and by focusing on the stories of two roads built by the British in Southern and Eastern Kurdistan, in 1918 to 1927 respectively, I discuss how this imperialist legacy informed state building by Iran and Iraq in Kurdistan. Key words: Imperialism, National-Colonialism, Sovereignty, Nation-State, Kurdistan, Modern Roads.

How do competing political projections, economic motives, and security rationales inform infrastructural policies? How do state actors project infrastructural imaginations into the future when the present is under duress? This article explores these questions by looking at infrastructural development in Turkey through multi-sited archival research and fieldwork. Based on evidence from the late Ottoman period to the early Cold War, it claims that infrastructures are ambivalent and can take on uncanny qualities, particularly in moments of crisis and liminal spaces. It also argues that state actors may seek to implement highly curated forms of infrastructural posturing rather than indiscriminately project infrastructural power across the national space, in recognition of the modern predicament that the infrastructures undergirding our daily lives can also unravel them. It mobilizes the term tactical development to delineate the Turkish response to this dilemma and its lasting consequences, particularly in borderland areas. Finally, the article focuses on the question of infrastructural ideology, demonstrating the importance of identifying how various actors distinguish between different infrastructures, weigh their utility against costs and risks, rank their benefits, and propagate beliefs about what infrastructure is ultimately good for. It argues that we must take the question of infrastructural ideology seriously to understand the making of infrastructural presents and their long-lasting legacies. Keywords: Infrastructure, borderlands, civil-military relations, planning, Turkey, Ottoman Empire

The nation-states that emerged in the former European territories of the Ottoman Empire during the long nineteenth century placed urban reconstruction at the heart of their modernization programs. As the setting for intensive state-building activity, the cities were to house the new national institutions and had to meet the needs of the ever-growing bureaucracies. On the ideological side, it was in the urban setting that governments could most effectively promote the new national identity by introducing a unified visual code and a standardized material culture. The reconstruction and expansion of urban fabrics were hailed as a victory over a civilizational enemy and a daring first step toward achieving modernity. In the Bulgarian nation-state, established in 1878 in the aftermath of a war between the Russian and Ottoman empires, the modernization discourse was focused on the capital city’s historic center. Sofia, one of the oldest urban agglomerations in Southeast Europe, had emerged and evolved around a thermal spring. During the Ottoman period in Sofia’s history, the area of the thermal spring, known as Banyabaşı, housed several public baths and other water facilities. Banyabaşı was at the center of a water culture that permeated everyday life in Ottoman Sofia. With the establishment of the Bulgarian nation-state, however, space and place would be reconceptualized in a way that prioritized nation over nature. This paper traces the debate about the making of Bath Square, modern Sofia’s representative center. I show how over the course of three and a half decades, from the late 1870s until the early 1910s, Sofia’s historic center was stripped of its Ottoman-era water facilities. Even the city’s most iconic structure, the main thermal bath, did not stand a chance against the march of modernity and the construction of Bath Square as a symbol of the nation-state. The new buildings that were erected at Bath Square in the 1910s represented neither the relationship between nature and culture nor the city’s rich Ottoman legacy in place-making and natural resource management. Sofia’s modern center showcased the success of the nation-state and the steadfast pursuit of modernity.