Reading Landscape in Beyoglu and Tarlabasi: Engineering a ‘Brand New’ Cosmopolitan Space, 1980–2013

Abstract

This article discusses the intricate relationship between cultural identity formation and the urban landscape using an example of urban modernization in Istanbul’s Beyoğlu district. The area under scrutiny is called Tarlabaşi and is currently the site where the state is executing a judicially contested gentrification project. The project is based in an area which housed an ethnically and religiously heterogeneous composition of middle- and working-class groups until the 1960s, became dilapidated from the 1970s onwards and was stigmatized by the Turkish government at local, metropolitan and national levels. It was portrayed by the media as an area of social and cultural deprivation, allegedly home only to the most marginal members of society. This article will discuss the relevance of landscape as a useful category in historical research. Secondly, it will discuss how and why dominant representations of Beyoğlu’s urban landscape have developed and been instrumentalized in modern Istanbul from the 1980s onwards. Finally, this article shows how successive attempts of socio-cultural engineering by local governments, in order to reform or ‘modernize’ the urban landscape, had a strong impact on the physical and imaginary landscape of Beyoğlu and Tarlabaşi. It will be argued that local Istanbul and Beyoğlu governments, inspired by neoliberal ideas of urban planning and city marketing, have attempted to reshape the cultural identity of Beyoğlu and Tarlabaşi in order to legitimize drastic interventions in the area’s urban landscape and socio-cultural composition.