Streets of Memory: Landscape, Tolerance, and National Identity in Istanbul

Kuzguncuk is considered a tolerant district where people of historically different religions lived together, and where a nostalgic neighborhood culture can still be experienced. However, the Greek, Armenian, and Jewish populations who once lived here were driven out of their district in the mid-twentieth century, leaving deep traces behind...

In her ethnographic study in Kuzguncuk, Amy Mills traces these marks left by the former inhabitants, street by street, and investigates what these marks mean for those living there today. In her own words, she examines "how people lived in this nationalized city and how they interpreted the state's national imagination after the impact of Turkification." The author engages in a discussion about nationalism hidden behind cosmopolitanism, through what memory forgets and remembers, the meaning attributed to being a Kuzguncuk resident, who is considered a Kuzguncuk resident, and the expressions of the theme of tolerance embedded in cultural memory.

While "Streets of Memory" narrates Kuzguncuk's past, transformations, and present, it also invites the reader to review the practices of remembering Istanbul's non-Muslim past and to reflect on how individual and collective memory paths are constructed.