Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Architecture, 2001. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 361-395). / Starting from the premise that maps are essentially about visualizing space, this dissertation examines what the Ottoman maps of Istanbul reveal about the city's perception, as it evolved in connection to urban development after the conquest. The maps that form the subject of this study appear as illustrations in three manuscript books. The Istanbul maps contained in Mecmu'-i Menazil (1537-8) and HiinernAme (1584) respectively mark the beginning and the accomplishment of the city's architectural elaboration. The other twenty maps, featuring in manuscript copies of Kitab-i Bahriye (1520s), roughly span the period between 1550 and 1700. The variants of a design fixed around 1570 offer an image that fulfills its topographic elaboration in the late-seventeenth century. While the making of this map's design relates to Istanbul's sixteenth century urban development, its topographical elaboration reflects a new perception of the city. These picture-maps, produced in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, form a unique group of documents as the only known Ottoman pictorial representations showing the city as a whole. As revealed by the context of the books containing them, their making relates both to Ottoman Empire's territorial expansion and to the appropriation of Constantinople as its new capital. Their cartographic language combines, in different manners, the familiar conventions of Islamic miniature painting with artistic forms encountered and assimilated during territorial expansion, particularly in contact with Venice. / (cont.) Especially the making of the Istanbul maps in Kitfb-i Bahriye copies illustrates the crucial role of the Mediterranean seafaring culture, its navigation manuals, nautical charts and island books. These images of Istanbul can be related to the development of the urban landscape and its symbolic function. Their study as cartographic representations pays attention to both accuracy and emphasis in their topographic contents. Supported by contemporary European visual sources and travel accounts as well as Ottoman topographic and poetic descriptions of Istanbul, the viewing directions, the depictions of buildings, and the overall cartographic composition in these maps are interpreted as features shaping a symbolic landscape that developed from an ideal vision to an actual garden-like urban environment, structured by land, water, and architecture. / by İffet Orbay. / Ph.D.

In this thesis, I investigate sense-making processes in financial markets. My focus is on the role of narratives in these routine activities in digital market places or what Cetina and Preda (2007) describe as scopic market systems. I conceptualize narratives told by market professionals in these systems as another form of market device (Callon et al., 2007) which combines different modes of knowing and explanation to cope with flows of data/information and funds, and works to generate value from assets exposed to markets. From a sociological perspective, I argue that the substitution of social network-based information search and face-to-face exchange relationships in financial markets with flow-based and anonymised representations and exchange relationships do not undermine the importance of social networks in shaping sense-making and decision-making in financial markets. However to argue so, I broaden the concept of social network with the help of Bourdieu’s (1997) notion of economic, social and cultural capital. I introduce the notions of field and meta-field of power, habitus, and position-taking by Bourdieu (1997, and Wacquant 1992) to my conceptual discussion of financial markets. In light of this, I describe financial markets as hierarchical and competitive structures inhabited by different groups of investors and intermediaries and shaped by competition and conflict among these groups. I argue that these groups’ position in the field is conditioned by their economic, social, and cultural capital which are generated and sustained within and outwith the field. Consequently, I suggest that these groups’ sense-making and investment activities and their use of market devices including storytelling acts should exhibit distinctive modes in accordance with the specific positions they have voluntarily or involuntarily taken in the field. To substantiate these claims with narrative evidence, I present the case of the Istanbul Stock Exchange (ISE) in Turkey. Opened in 1985, the ISE provides an instrumental case to study the role of sense-making narratives as another form of market device in scopic market systems with a Bourdieusian sociological framework. As gathered from publicly available information and early pilot fieldwork in the ISE headquarters, the ISE as a field has been occupied by three dominant investor types since 1991. These are domestic retail (DRIs), domestic institutional (DIIs), and foreign institutional investors (FIIs). These three groups have a dominant weight in either trading volume or share ownership in the ISE. Drawing on my (participatory) observations between 2008 and 2009 in an asset management company and four brokerage houses which served DRIs and/or DIIs and FIIs, I present evidence on how distinct combinations of economic, social and cultural capitals among these dominant investor-intermediary groups shape their sense-making activities and consequent sense-making stories in the ISE.

Once declared as a habitual relic of ‘the Third World’ countries, patrimonial regimes have re-emerged on a global scale. Even in the fully bureaucratized states, patrimonial relations made a convincing comeback. How did patrimonialism, which used to be condemned as an artifact from a distant past, prove to be so tenacious, even resurgent in the current global political economy? How does modern capitalism, which emerges painfully out of the crucible of patrimonial states and empires, become, once again, a patrimonial formation? What makes patrimonial-type regimes resilient? In pursuit of this question, the dissertation analyzes the historical-social conditions of possibility for the longevity and resilience of the Ottoman Empire –a patrimonial and bureaucratic empire that ruled a vastly diverse population of people spread over three continents and did so with relative peace and stability. How did the Ottomans keep their patriarchal core and its patrimonial organization intact for six centuries? The research finds three elements that contributed to the maintenance of the empire’s patrimonial formation: adab, an Islamic tradition of professionalism, good manners, and moral propriety; a patrimonial status elite (devşirme) composed of men separated from their non-Muslim parents at childhood and carefully cultivated as Ottoman Sunni Muslims and employed in various capacities for state service; and third, a specialized apparatus of the patriarchal state, the imperial palace schools formed as a network around the main academy at the Topkapi Palace, the Enderûn-ı Hümâyûn. The dissertation focuses on the life, curricula, and pedagogy at the Enderûn campus. As part of the imperial academy’s courtly habitus the Islamic tradition of adab was central to the students’ upbringing and cultivation. How did this historically unique combination of (tradition, status, and apparatus) contribute to the Ottoman Empire’s structural stability and organizational endurance?

In the twenty-first century that we are living, most of the contemporary metropolises are under constant visual electronic surveillance under the name of security and public safety. Istanbul as being one of the big cities has joined this surveilled metropolises / its streets and public spaces are under constant watch by the invisible watchers behind the MOBESE cameras. The way that the system works on how to impose power on the citizens with the constant observation has it roots in the design principle of Panopticon that Jeremy Bentham created long time ago. Today, Bentham&rsquo / s eighteenth century design Panopticon has dispersed and merged into the urban scale and replaced by these surveillance cameras. The observation tower and the guardian in panopticon have transformed into the main control room and the cameras. Citizens in Istanbul are under a panoptic power of surveillance. Ordinary citizen is being watched by the invisible guardians behind the cameras. The ones behind the cameras constantly see everything, but never seen by the citizens. This thesis attempts to discuss this assumption of Istanbul becoming an urban panopticon and its affects on the physical layout together with the social aspect of it in Istanbul. One of the main objectives is to investigate the consequences of this visual surveillance on the way that the public life and public spaces of Istanbul is affected.

Texte remanié de: Thesis--Jerusalem--Hebrew University, 1999. / Bibliogr. p. 443-481.

This study is about "transness" in contemporary Istanbul. As this thesis demonstrates, transness is an urban phenomenon, an identity specific to time and space. In Istanbul, it is a subculture, defined by sex, gender, sexuality, class, and ethnicity. "Transness: An Urban Phenomenon in Istanbul" situates itself as part of a conversation about marginal subcultures in Gender Studies, Queer Theory, and especially Transgender Studies. This study fills two gaps: the temporal gap between the early Turkish scholarship on trans issues and the contemporary trans world of Istanbul; and the conceptual gap between trans words -- transvestite, transsexual, and transgender -- and trans identities in Istanbul. Furthermore, this study brings the current issues and discussions of US-based queer scholarship into the Turkish context and does so by discussing recent Turkish examples of media representations ranging from a documentary to a movie, and to a newspaper article; and by analyzing certain drag performances. All these examples discussed in this work exemplify the temporality and spatiality of transness, its relation to heteronormativity, and its publicness as a subculture. As is suggested by my examples, transness is 'out-of-time' and 'out-of-place,' always already public, and, as a performance, it asserts individual identity. Moreover, it is also always a public performance. All the examples point to the complex relationship between queerness and transness, and claim that the queerness of transness is always contextual. Combining the detailed analysis of these examples with the ethnographic work on Istanbul's trans world, "Transness: An Urban Phenomenon in Istanbul" provides answers to the following questions: "What is transness?" "What is the impact time and space have on transness within the urban structure of Istanbul?" "What is the relationship between dominant normativity and transness?" Finally, this MA thesis offers new perspectives and opens new paths for further research on the topic intended to help imagining new futures for trans folk in Istanbul. / text

The purpose of this dissertation is to identify various sources hitherto neglected by the field of historic preservation in Turkey, and to seek possible ways in which they can be incorporation into this field. As demonstrated by the case study chosen for this dissertation--the Balat District in Istanbul--the use of these sources fosters a richness of perception which today is lacking in historic preservation in Turkey. The dissertation begins with the hypothesis that historic preservation in Turkey was used to legitimize the constructed reality of the new Turkish Republic. Since the Republic represented everything the Ottoman Empire was not, it had to be purged of its Ottoman inheritance, including the Empire's institutions and its diverse, non-Muslim population. Istanbul's urban fabric, however, bore unmistakable marks of both. While the eradication of these marks was never a declared policy, the net effect of the Republic's actions was essentially to have that result. A heightened awareness of the neglected sources mentioned above may help obviate the ways in which history has been rewritten, and may also help us develop preservation policies which provide a richer, more complex and multi-ethnic reading of Balat's--and ultimately Istanbul's--past. In the case of Balat, in contrast to the relatively few sources used by preservation authorities (mainly old photographs and historic maps) stand a vast array of sources that typically go unnoticed. Among these are Byzantine records, Ottoman governmental records, Islamic court records, rabbinical records, church records, etc. In practice, a neighborhood preservation project would ideally use most of these sources. To make the current study manageable, however, I will focus specifically on Islamic court records. During my fieldwork in Istanbul, I scanned roughly 4,300 court records (covering the period from 1800 to 1839) to identify cases pertinent to the built environment. The 1198 cases that I identified provide a wealth of information related to building types, ownership patterns, commercial activity, demographics, mobility, etc.--information which helps us reconstruct the lifestyle of Balat's residents, and ultimately aids in the rendering of a multi-faceted narrative of the District's urban history. / text

Due to the inappropriate planning and explosive population growth in urban areas, especially in developing countries, sustainable and disaster-safe urbanization has become the most important challenge for governments. Urbanization presents benefits in different ways but has led simultaneously to changes in land use/land cover (LULC), impacting soil quality, runoff, surface temperature, water quality, and promoting climate change. The environmental implications of LULC changes cannot be understood well enough to take precautions without the knowledge of LULC change. This reality is the driving force behind my research, which focuses on impacts of urbanization on flood and soil erosion hazards in Istanbul, Turkey. Istanbul is the biggest city in Turkey with its almost 15.000.000 population. In 1999 the Marmara earthquake destroyed the city especially the newly developed zones. Every year Istanbul suffers also from flood damages. Istanbul has been experiencing uncontrolled migration, chiefly from rural areas, since the economic reform policies took place in the second half of the 20th century. These policies forced the city to expand towards the agricultural land and to the coastal areas. Istanbul has been faced with illegal housing and uncontrolled development since then. This development has produced significant decreases inproductive agricultural lands and created more impervious areas. Infrastructure development has not matched the rate of the population increase and uncontrolled urbanization, making the city vulnerable increasingly to natural disasters. This dissertation aims to understand the impacts of urbanization on flood and erosion hazards in Istanbul by examining changes in the city using remote sensing (RS) and geographical information systems (GIS) methods. LULC was examined first: Two change detection methods were applied to choose the best performer for Istanbul. The post-classification comparison (PCC) method produced better results than the principal component analysis (PCA). PCC utilized 1984, 1997, 2001, 2007 and 2010 Landsat images of the study area. These Landsat images were corrected atmospherically and radiometrically using COST Model (Markham and Barker, 1986). After the corrections geometric rectification was performed with the help of 1987 topographic map, 1995 orthophotos, 2005 GPS data. Location and nature of the change were derived for the time periods. Results show that since 1984, agricultural land have been replaced increasingly by urbanization. Flooding and related soil erosion are both natural events. Yet these events can be hazardous; they can harm/destroy lives and property. In recent years these events have become disasters for Istanbul. We investigated the role of urban growth in such disasters. To understand the urbanization and flood relation better, flood events for each time period were examined using LULC change, runoff information and watershed analysis. Soil erosion events occur slowly and in Istanbul they do not happen frequently (yearly) as with flooding. But some of the locations of erosion that occurred in the past are now urbanized areas. It is thus important to understand how the built environment affects soil erosion. We applied the Revised Universal Soil Loss Equation (RUSLE) method for each year in the time series. Prior erosion locations digitized from General Directorate of Mineral Research and Exploration were compared to predicted locations. The resultant maps indicates that European side of Istanbul is more prone to erosion than Anatolian side.

This dissertation examines the discourse generated by students and teachers at an American missionary school in Constantinople (Istanbul) between 1871, the year the school was founded, and 1923, the year of the Ottoman Empire's end and the Turkish Republic's beginning. From its position as religious proselytizer in a locale that was not a Western colony, the American College for Girls (also known as Constantinople Woman's College) gradually re-presented itself as a secular, independent institution of higher learning that offered a modem education in the English language to Ottoman women of diverse religious and linguistic backgrounds. The College's re-imaging occurred in response to local conditions: although missionaries had found Protestant evangelism to be largely ineffective, many Ottoman families desired a Western education for their daughters. In addition, the American female teachers in Constantinople found intellectual and professional opportunities for their own development that they likely would not have had access to in the United States. Thus, the Americans' moderation of their religious rhetoric occurred in response to: 1) their role within the shifting objectives of the missionary movement; 2) the demands of their Ottoman clientele for a Western-style education for women; and 3) their personal desires to preserve their professional status as college-level educators. Nonetheless, in its pedagogical discourse and in its depictions of students, the College's rhetorical production exhibits racialized views of "nation" as well as an Orientalist, in Edward Said's meaning of the term, view of the school's role as Western educator. Similarly, the College's continual blurring of the designations of "race" and "nation," in which the students are always viewed within their racialized, "national" identities, exemplifies Homi Bhabha's categories of colonial ambivalence and mimicry. This dissertation, while acknowledging the American teachers' complicity in the construction and repetition of Orientalist discourse and the Ottoman students' internalization of this racializing discourse, also problematizes current postcolonial theoretical assumptions by identifying a mutuality of purpose within the discourse of the Ottoman students and the American teachers in the non-colonial but still "Oriental" late Ottoman Empire. / Department of English

The Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi, AKP) has had a political hegemony over Istanbul for more than a decade. Initiating rapid rates of development, the Turkish economy has nearly quadrupled under AKP leadership. The political party has also become notorious, though, for moving further away from a liberal democracy. Flirting with authoritarianism, recent governance trends include a weak rule of law, stringent social policies, extralegal policy execution, and substantial censorship. While Istanbul closely aligns with several emerging urban centers, the factors contributing to its patterns of growth are unique to both Turkish history and culture, and the city’s strategic regional position. Through a proposed self-sustaining cycle of neoliberal policy implementation, followed by institutional and political consolidation, the AKP has managed to maintain control of new engines for growth while facing increasing pushback from the residents of Istanbul. Though the past few years have been marked by unprecedented development, weaknesses in the AKP’s institutional structure are beginning to show. Istanbul is on the brink of an economic downfall. The government needs to take immediate action against a massive urban crisis if it wants to sustain legitimacy of authority. In leveraging the strategic location of the city, international institutions must partake in shifting Istanbul towards a more sustainable trajectory of urban growth.