A Historical panaroma of an Istanbul neighborhood: Cihangir from the late nineteenth century to the 2000s

Abstract

This study can be seen as a contribution to the history of a cosmopolitan Istanbul neighborhood, Cihangir, where Greeks, Armenians, Jews, Levantines, Turks, and other Muslim and non-Muslim inhabitants lived in harmony for centuries. Based on oral history narratives by older and new inhabitants of the neighborhood as well as primary sources identified by the author, the present study aims to shed light on its cosmopolitan fabric and the changes it has undergone throughout the republican history of Turkey. It reflects its author̕s perspective which situates the story of Cihangir within the framework of the story of the decline of cosmopolitan Istanbul due to the Turkification policies of the nationalist state. After a series of regrettable events like the notorious Wealth Tax of 1942, the 6-7 September riots in 1955, and the 1964 decree for the deportation of Greek nationals, Cihangir lost its original human fabric with the gradual departure of its non-Muslim inhabitants, specifically the Greeks, who were the main population in the neighborhood. It also presents the cosmopolitan mahalle life in Cihangir, especially in the 1950s and the 1960s. After a period of déclassement, however, Cihangir was reinvented in a globalizing metropolis, Istanbul. This study also discusses the process of gentrification in Cihangir and its effects on the neighborhood and the daily mahalle life there. Present day Cihangir is a culturally heterogeneous but ethnically less mixed neighborhood embracing the few remaining Greeks, Armenians, Jews and Levantines. However, it is a neighborhood still living together with its past.