This article explores how Islamic art was produced and used in Turkey within the context of modern warfare during World War I, the War of Independence, and the nascent Republic – a subject still relatively understudied in Turkish history, as well as in international cultural histories of modern warfare and histories of modern art in the Middle East. Drawing on previously overlooked visual and textual sources such as calligraphic panels, miniature paintings, war posters, and religious timetables produced during the years 1914–1924, we examine the ways in which Islamic arts were articulated with the experience of war through both individual actions and official policies, revealing how Ottoman artists tried to make sense of war and how Islamic genres and motifs were appropriated, and sometimes subverted, in the service of the nationalist cause. We show that far from exhibiting a sharp discontinuity, the transition from Ottoman–Islamic to Republican–nationalist artistic content was gradual, involving the reappropriation and repurposing of Islamic motifs and techniques in a manner that reflected the religious mindset of the elites and masses in the early twentieth century.

The Allied occupation of İstanbul after World War I had a transformative impact on the city’s musical entertainment sector. The arrival of large numbers of military personnel created additional demand for music halls, cabarets, cafe-chantants, and concert venues. Servicemen’s musical preferences were catered for by resident İstanbulites and others who found refuge in the city, creating opportunities for musicians and entertainment entrepreneurs to benefit from new and existing patrons. This buoyant market was further harnessed for charitable causes directed at new categories of people in need. The distinct political climate introduced with occupation also made its mark on musical performance, with nationalist and socialist groups using concerts to promote messages of salvation. The end of the occupation led to the dispersal of these musicians to new locations, such as the new Republican capital of Ankara, which attracted talents intent on staying in Turkey, and Athens and Thessaloniki, which received Greek Orthodox musicians fleeing the new Turkish nationalist regime, and still further afield. Using British, French, and Ottoman government documents, memoirs, and newspapers, the article investigates this process of musical convergence and divergence and analyses the local and global impact of the aural encounters of this overlooked period in İstanbul’s cultural history.

This article studies how Allied archaeological activities in Ottoman lands between 1918 and 1923 were part of the post-war negotiations over those territories. It uses the occupation of İstanbul as a reference point to understand the larger reconstruction of the Middle East through the inspection of practices and policies used by the Allies in the realm of cultural heritage. It explores the changes that World War I brought to this realm and asks what kind of practices were used and why. Using archival documents and archaeological literature, it argues that the Allies used institutions like museums and schools of archaeology, scholarly activities such as excavations and publications, and laws and regulations on cultural property to make geopolitical claims in the region and legitimize their occupation while acquiring as many antiquities as possible. By comparing the motivations, practices, and results of Allied archaeological activities in the capital to those elsewhere in the Ottoman Empire, this study shines a light not only on the making of the post-war cultural heritage regime but also on the emerging geopolitical system in the Middle East.

This article looks at Topkapı Palace as a showcase reflecting the changing cultural heritage policies of the Allies, as well as of the İstanbul and Ankara governments, during the occupation of İstanbul from 1918 to 1923. It analyzes the military, archaeological, and cultural facets of the occupation, focusing first on the military takeover of the Topkapı gardens, then on the French archaeological mission at the Seraglio, and finally on conflicts over the possession of the imperial treasures and sacred relics. Drawing on primary sources from Ottoman, Turkish, French, and British archives, memoirs, letters, newspapers, and visual material, this article explores the versatility of cultural heritage policies during the occupation and the entangled relations among various power groups, institutions, and actors. The military, strategic, cultural, and historical significance of the royal complex, together with its invaluable imperial collections, made the historic palace a place of rivalry and contestation, as well as deception and cooperation, among various agents and actors, including the Ottoman military and bureaucratic officials, local and foreign archaeologists, the dynastic family, the Interallied government, the occupation forces, and the Turkish resistance forces, ultimately reflecting the military and political empowerment of Ankara.

İstanbul was the only one of the capital cities of the defeated Central Powers to suffer a military occupation for almost five years between 1918 and 1923. The question posed in this Postscript is whether occupied Istanbul resembled cities within the orbit of the British and French empires of the time? The tentative answer we propose is that Istanbul was a cosmopolitan city turned into a colonial outpost of the British and French empires. Within this context, aspects of the cultural life of Istanbul took on a number of political colourations, examined by the authors whose essays precede the Postscript.

Although there are numerous studies showing the significance of clientelism in the electoral mobilization of the poor in Turkey, scant attention has been paid on the specific clientelistic strategies employed by the Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi; AKP) among the Kurdish population in İstanbul. Addressing this gap, this study focuses on the AKP’s clientelist politics among Kurdish voters in Bağcılar, a lower-income district on the European side of İstanbul. Drawing on fieldwork, this study argues that the AKP successfully mobilizes Kurdish voters through machine politics and relational clientelism, which are facilitated by co-ethnic brokerage and intermediary linkages. By analyzing different modalities of Kurdish brokers – Kurdish (male) entrepreneurs, Kurdish housewives and Kurdish associations – the study discloses the intricate dynamics of the AKP’s clientelist–machine politics at the local level. It reveals that the AKP’s co-ethnic brokers not only distribute material benefits but also cultivate enduring personal relationships with Kurdish voters, providing problem-solving networks for the Kurdish poor in everyday life. The AKP’s co-ethnic brokerage relations foster trust, care, solidarity, and affectivity among Kurds. The study concludes that the AKP employs both material and symbolic dimensions of clientelism to mobilize the Kurdish electorate in İstanbul.

This article analyzes how the Justice and Development Party’s (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi; AKP) 2023 election propaganda utilized political homophobia as a populist tool to construct and reinforce political antagonisms and carry out a crisis-driven politics in search of continued hegemony. Relying on critical discourse analysis of qualitative data, it demonstrates that during the 2023 election period the AKP’s antagonistic operationalization of anti-LGBTI+ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and intersex) discourse unfolded in three modalities: as a culturalist rhetoric and a nativist technology of othering at the intersection of Islam and anti-genderism; as a tool of defining and vilifying political opponents as “inner enemies”; and as a policy perspective and path towards legal action and institutionalization of political homophobia. Within this frame, the article demonstrates that the gendered performance of crisis-driven politics is a core mechanism of the current democratic erosion in Turkey. It argues that homophobic propaganda is a key tool for the AKP not only to enact the processes of othering through fearmongering and scapegoating, but also to restructure politics through crisis-driven imaginaries, post-truth epistemologies, and emergency legislation that lacks political responsiveness.

This study builds on an analytical framework of access to healthcare and, using notes from interviews conducted with 110 migrants of different categories, it discusses the fit between migrant patients and Turkish health services. There is an overall mediocre fit between migrant patients and the Turkish healthcare system, which varies for different migrant groups, and is influenced by the dimensions of awareness, availability, affordability, and accommodation. Migrants’ social capital and socio-economic statuses affect the degree of fit, while irregularities in their legal statuses do not necessarily create a misfit. The existence of many private healthcare institutions offering various services to patients with different incomes and operating in informal ways has improved accessibility, availability, affordability, and accommodation and thus affects the fit positively. Therefore, the health reforms that paved the way for privatization, marketization, and commodification of health services in Turkey in the early 2000s also help explain the degree of fit. Migrants suffer most from language barriers in the health system, and there is an alarming decline in acceptability especially for Syrian refugees, who have reported facing discrimination while seeking healthcare.

Düzgün Türkçe (proper Turkish) is an expression used to refer to well-formed linguistic structures and orthography. On Twitter, where the digital language is visible, language users, by employing the expression, comment on others’ spelling styles about what is “true” or “false.” In the context of Turkey’s ongoing conflict on the use of Latin scripts after Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi; AKP) policymakers’ voices over the alphabet, I argue that the expression has gained social meanings associated with two diametrically opposing ideologies: Kemalism and neo-Ottomanism. Further, I also assert that there is a semiotic contrast between these two ideologies in the context of orthography. Thus, by being aware of this contrast and operating on the semiotic resources available to them, language users deploy their language ideologies. Drawing on interactional data on Twitter, this study brings an understanding of the process of how language users deploy their language ideologies by commenting on others’ spelling styles. In explaining the outworkings of this process, the study builds on the concept of indexical order.