Public space and urban citizens: Ottoman Izmir in the remaking, 1840--1890 (Turkey)

This dissertation examines the relationship of public space to public spheres in the context of the nineteenth-century multi-cultural Ottoman seaport of Izmir (Smyrna), illustrating the ways city dwellers used urban resources and urban space to mobilize and articulate demands and offer mutual recognition. It focuses on a critical half-century, marked by the state-sponsored modernization reforms (the Tanzimat), during which the Empire's social, political, and governmental structure was reconfigured and Izmir's old physical apparatus modernized. The reforms entailed a shift from a custom-based society to a uniformly codified one, constituting a radical threat against the multiple institutional arrangements in terms of which Ottoman cities worked until then. Each chapter explores a specific urban issue that was of particular concern to Smyrniotes, namely the taxation of urban property, the lighting and ordering of the streets, the remodeling the shore, and the public performance of religious, national, and imperial identities. The case studies discussed in this dissertation demonstrate that the implementation of the spaces and concepts of the modern city was an ambiguous and interactive process that confronted multiple interest groups and resulted in unintended consequences—not a progression of orderly steps towards a uniformly modernized urban environment. They also illustrate that, contrary to the general conviction that questions entailing Ottoman communities have to be answered in terms of ethnicity and religion, Smyrniotes organized themselves across religious, ethnic, and national divides to confront, embrace, and act upon Tanzimat changes. Working through questions of public space, public spheres, and urban citizenship help open the particular experience of modernity in Ottoman Izmir and the cultural politics of identities and powers within its public space. At the same time, the issues explored transcend the boundaries of the Ottoman Empire proper and reach the core of current debates about the centrality of material space to the construction of community and citizenship.