Michael Herzfeld

In this ethnography, I examine fragmented urban and social dynamics in Istanbul, Turkey. The issues of the country are mirrored and coalesced into these dynamics. Binaries of proper/valuable versus improper/abjected city and citizens emerge from a “New Turkey” politics. This creates hierarchies of bodies, urban spaces, ecological practices, and types of knowledge. Rooted in historical de/valuation processes, Turkey’s current technologies of power intensify and gain new momentum and scale. Lawfare, identity politics, urban planning, and technocratic ecological strategies are instrumental in implementing interdependent urban and social transformation. Drawing on two years of fieldwork, I analyze the contestation of governmental actors, local authorities, environmental activists, local residents, and garbage workers over the production and valuation of bodies, space, and ecology. From this, I address the broader picture of classist, gendered, ethnic, and racist discrimination as a process that most evidently manifests itself in urban space.

The socio-spatial impact of a “New Turkey” is most starkly felt among the urban poor whose livelihood depends on environmental practices. Here, I focus on a specific group that is invisible for many: non-municipal garbage workers who are targets of intersectional devaluation. Through green(wash)ing strategies, their homes are displaced by “healthy and sustainable” luxury housing projects and infrastructure. They are treated as second-class citizens and, therefore, socially and economically immobilized. At the same time, they contest the authorities over garbage as a commodity, and the law criminalizes their recycling practices. Conflict and resistance occur not only between actors but also within institutions, activist movements, and affected communities. As various players share risks, new—and sometimes unexpected—alliances are formed under the common goals of social and environmental justice and rights to the city. The ambiguity of all of this is reflected in the title: “BRAVE NEW TURKEY.” On the one hand it speaks to the forging of the current hegemonic Turkishness and Turkish urban landscape under the banner of the “New Turkey” politics. On the other hand a “brave new Turkey” addresses the creative conflict and resistance against this dystopian moment of governing bodies, urban space, and ecology. Indeed, this research deals with the continuous efforts of various groups who claim their place in their “new Turkey.” Under the current political and social circumstances, I consider this an act of bravery. After all, a new Turkey belongs not only to the hegemonically powerful but also to those who shape the country’s future through their creative struggle for diversity and inclusion.

The city has an identity, which cannot be reduced to the identity of those currently living in the city. The link between city and identity can be explored outside the city, in the diaspora of the city, by looking at how the former residents relate to it as a source of identity.

This dissertation is an ethnography of the Rum Polites--a Greek-speaking, Christian Orthodox, Istanbul-born group of people who were displaced following a series of tragic events. Their number in Istanbul fell from over 300,000 to 2,000 during the 20th century. Today they live mostly in Athens, the location of my fieldwork (2000-2004). Employing established methods of ethnographic observation, life story, interview, archival research, and textual analysis, I delineate a distinct cultural identity of the Rum Polites in Athens. Despite their shared religion, ethnicity, and language, Rum Polites differentiate themselves from other Greeks in Greece, through a notion of cultural distinction, which is observable in their practice of everyday life, social organization, and intellectual and artistic production.

The use of two terms of self-designation, Rum (Roman/Orthodox), and Polites (urbanites/Istanbulites), indicates an identification with Istanbul, known as the City for being the symbolic capital in Greek cosmology, as well as an adherence to the grand legacy of the Byzantine and Ottoman periods, during which the Rum Polites were forming the cultural and economic elite. The claim to this glorious heritage is made through an ongoing connection to the City, which is the basis for their cultural distinction and their cosmopolitan identity.

Identification with the multicultural city both positions the Rum Polites beyond nationalist divides between Greece and Turkey, and links them to its current residents, who also yearn nostalgically for the cosmopolitan past of Istanbul. The exploration of a place from the perspective of the displaced opens up new dimensions in the understanding of concepts like minority, migrant, diaspora, and identity in the city.