As you approach contemporary İzmir from the bay, the city that lies ahead of you invokes images of a fortress city. It is enveloped by an unbroken concrete wall made up of tall apartment buildings, one morphing into the other, only to be interrupted by narrow streets. Republic Square, located at the very tip of the bay, resembles a gate to this immense fortress. If you walk half a kilometer eastward through this opening, you will arrive at a large green space at the heart of the city, quite unusual for, modern cities in Turkey. This is the Kültürpark, where İzmirians go to jog, play tennis, have their wedding ceremonies, take their children to play, and watch theatrical and musical performances. Its trees and flower gardens infuse life in a city that has fallen prey to the invasion of concrete as a result of unplanned over-urbanization. Toward the end of each summer, the park becomes even livelier with the opening of the annual Izmir International Fair on the grounds. The Fair attracts some four million visitors every year, and even though the majority are İzmirians, people from other parts of Turkey also flock to İzmir to view the pavilions of Japan, China, U.S.A., and England, as well as those showcasing Turkey’s national firms (Fuar Kataloğu 2000).

This paper explores the historical transformation of masculinity and male intimacy in the Ottoman Empire, with a special emphasis on ethnic, class and gender subtexts of same-sex relationships. Focusing on two significant historical narratives—one written by the historian Mustafâ Âlî in the late sixteenth century, the other by the nineteenth-century historian Cevdet Paşa—I will discuss the ways in which both historians produced narratives of transition and decadence and deployed a problematic historicism that does identify same-sex intimacy. Coming to terms with the inadequacies of both essentialist/identity-based and constructivist approaches for understanding historically specific gender and sexual identifications, I will argue for a new set of concepts that will allow us to appreciate the continuing instrumental significance of same-sex intimacy in a wider discussion of friendship, masculinity and conduct. I will also interrogate the extent to which we might read historical narratives, in spite of their historicist, silencing effects, from a new perspective on subjectivity—a perspective that accounts for the potential of historical subjects to weave webs of identification and sociability, as well as to create relational modes that escape the regulatory, hetero-normalizing agenda of historicism.

In July 1910 a letter, signed by Şamlı Abdülkadir Hikmet'ul-Hatib, arrived at the ministry of Şeyhülislam (Bab-ı meşihat or Bab-ı fetva) in Istanbul. The writer notified the ministry about the death of his father, the former shari'a judge (naib) of Jaffa, Hatibzâde Ebu'n-Nasr Efendi, adding that before his father died, he had appointed him as executor of his will. Accordingly, he asked the officials to allocate him financial support on behalf of his father's dependents: two widows and three orphans, a son and two daughters (SA dos. 3720, 3 Temmuz 1326/17 IIV 1910). The letter was passed on to the Council for Orphan Affairs (Meclis idare-i eytam), the body in charge of supporting the widows and orphans of deceased ulema. From there, it was transmitted to other departments in the ministry with requests to provide information about the late judge's career path, apparently in order to calculate the financial support for which the judge's relatives were eligible (ibid., doc. 1852, 19 B 1328/27 IIV 1910; doc. 417, 4 Ş 1328/11 IHV 1910; list, 17 Ş 1328/24 IIIV 1910). This letter, with the comments and information added by the clerks, was the last document filed in the personal dossier of the late judge in the archive of Bab-ı meşihat.

A common error in historico-political analysis consists in an inability to find the correct relation between what is organic and what is conjunctural. This leads to presenting causes as immediately operative which in fact only operate indirectly, or to asserting that the immediate causes are the only effective ones … In the first case there is an overestimation of mechanical causes, in the second an exaggeration of the voluntarist and individual element (Gramsci 1971, p. 178).

On May 31,2010, Israeli Defense Forces raided the ship Mavi Marmara, part of a six-vessel flotilla aiming to break the Israeli naval blockade of the Gaza Strip and to deliver supplies to Gaza. Using comments posted on Turkish online discussion forums in the aftermath of the raid that resulted in the death of nine passengers, this article analyzes how the incident was appropriated to negotiate between Turkishness and Islam as two alternative, yet coinciding forms of collective identity. Particularly, the article will compare different discursive strategies that were utilized in “general-interest” and “Islamic-leaning” online discussion groups. A deductive thematic analysis of 585 posts in general-interest and Islamic-leaning forums found significant differences in how metaphors of the body—blood, sacrifice, and martyrdom—as well as in-group/out-group comparisons were used in order to support a territorial-based nationalism versus a religion-based identity. The analysis also discusses the rhetoric that enabled discussants in general-interest forums to negotiate the tensions between the two collective identities.

When the movie [Domu' al-hubb (Tears of Love) (Turkish title: Aşkın Gözyaşları) (Muhammad Karim, 1936)] was first released in Istanbul's Şehzadebaşı district, the movie theatre's windows were broken and the traffic was jammed [because of the crowd]. The audience, who had not been able to watch any Turkish films for the last three years, loved this type of movie, which was not much different from those made by our theatre artists, and starring some Arab singers, and people wearing the fez and local dress (Özön 1962a, p. 760).

After looking at this great empire of sin, and contemplating its strength and glory, I have been led to examine the predictions of scripture in respect to it […] And is it not probable that the success of these Christian operations will excite the rage of the enemy, and induce the beast, the false prophet, unconverted Jews, and hardened infidels, to. make one fatal struggle for the extermination of true religion […]? Woe to me if I ever leave this sacred calling, if I do not consecrate every faculty to my high profession. Ever may it be the language of my heart, ‘conquest or death.’

The gradual implementation of new pedagogical methods in Ottoman schools during the second half of the nineteenth century brought about significant changes in the organization of teaching time. The first part of this paper focuses on some of these changes and demonstrates that the adoption of time-tabled instruction facilitated increased levels of surveillance and centralization, and a more efficient pedagogical process. The same temporal constructs also served as an implicit curriculum, imbuing students with a keen time consciousness. The effect of the structure, I maintain in the second part of the article, was reinforced by time-related educational contents. Late Ottoman textbooks attached moral value to regularity, punctuality and efficiency and weaved such traits, now praised as virtues, into the ideological agendas of both the Hamidian and the Young Turk regimes. Thus, through the mutual reinforcing effect of form and content, the Ottoman education system contributed to the formation of new elites that identified temporal order with ideas of progress and patriotism, as well as authoritarianism. Similar time-related material was taught to female students in an attempt to mobilize them for the Ottoman project of modernization, while constantly reminding them of the limited roles they could actually play in that project.

The Ottoman-Venetian war for the island of Crete in the middle of the 17th century (1645-1669) was in some ways an anachronistic struggle. The era of imperial struggle in the Mediterranean had come to a close in 1578 when the Portuguese army, assisted by Spain, was defeated at Alcazar in Morocco by the army of the Ottoman protégé, Abd al-Malik. The Ottoman victory was followed by a Spanish-Ottoman truce signed in 1580 which, though it seemed tentative at the time, ushered in a long period of peace in the Mediterranean region. The Spanish acquiesced to Ottoman control of North Africa and turned their attention to their acquisitions in the new world. The Ottomans, for their part, occupied themselves with military conquests in the East and no new campaigns were launched in the Mediterranean.

In recent years. Turkey has initiated a proactive, multi-dimensional and constructive foreign policy in many areas, ranging from contributing to peace and stability in the Middle East, to playing an active role in countering terrorism and extremism, from becoming a new “energy hub” to acting as one of the architects of “the inter-civilization dialogue initiative” aiming at producing a vision of the world, based on dialogue, tolerance and living together. Thus, there has been an upsurge of interest in, and a global attraction to, Turkey and its contemporary history. Moreover, the global attraction to Turkey has stemmed not only from the geopolitical identity of Turkey, as a strong state with the capacity to function as a “geopolitical security hinge” in the intersection of the Middle East, the Balkans and the Caucasian regions, but also from its cultural identity as a modern national formation with parliamentary democratic governance, secular constitutional structure and mainly Muslim population. Furthermore, as the world has become more globalized, more interdependent and more risky, this new foreign policy identity entailed the employment of not only geopolitics but also identity and economy. Thus, geopolitics, modernity and democracy have become the constitutive dimensions of Turkish foreign policy today This paper explores the ways in which the increasing role and visibility of “soft power” in Turkish foreign policy operates, and suggests that to be sustainable, Turkish foreign policy, relying on soft power, should go hand in hand with the process of the consolidation of Turkish democracy, and also accept and put into practice Turkey-EU relations as the main axis of proactiveness and constructiveness.