Suburban Sequestration and the Making of Alternative Localities in Kuzguncuk

This chapter considers whether Refah has indeed created an 'Islamized space' in its restoration of Ahmed Fetih Pasa's residence in the forest. The mosque in Kuzguncuk was begun only in 1952, a year or two before the infamous riots against Christians in the Beyoglu area on the other side of the Bosphorus led to an exodus of the Orthodox minority to Greece and the sudden availability of cheap housing in Kuzguncuk. Bektas has been a major figure in the production of an oppositional locality in Kuzguncuk, both in his writings about Kuzguncuk and in the activities of groups with which he has been associated. Local identity is ensured through the discourse of conservation, as alternative Kuzguncuk’s political and social vision is given built substance by its architectural intervention in the physical space of the suburb.