“A Prostitute Lodging in the Bosom of Turkishness”: Istanbul's Pera and its Representation

Abstract

Conceptualising the public sphere as a form of sociability in the Sennettian sense, the paper explores the intimate connections between novel and Western forms of sociability and civility in nineteenth-century Pera – the most cosmopolitan and Westernised district of the Ottoman capital. It shows how through a distinct culture of social interaction transcending ethnic and religious lines, and a code and manner of dealing with strangers Pera stood at the juncture between the East and the West and opened up the prospects for the development of ‘cosmopolitan civility’ – a form of social relations between strangers, a coexistence and openness to unassimilated others. The paper argues that by attacking cosmopolitanism Turkish nationalism not only brought an end to this form of civility, but also transformed Pera by constructing it as a symbolic space falling outside the ideals and values of the ‘imagined community’.