ABSTRACT
On a recent stroll down ústiklal Caddesi, a popular shopping thoroughfare on Istanbul’s European bank where Jewish, Greek and Armenian businesses once lined the streets,1 I noticed a shirt displayed in the window of a clothing store. By replacing letters in the city’s name with a Christian crucifix, a Jewish star and an Islamic crescent, this cultural artefact captured a moment in which the symbols of cosmopolitanism seem increasingly fashionable in Istanbul.
