ABSTRACT
This chapter compares two different narratives about Istanbul’s Eyüp neighbourhood that present it as significant to an imagined Islamic-Ottoman or ethnic Turkish community. Relating to rivalling general identity narratives and to the neighbourhood’s particular socio-political constellation, the narratives differ in their periodisation and framing, and reflect competing claims to the neighbourhood in the context of shifting class formations. Based on analysis of publications by the Justice and Development Party-led Municipality of Eyüp and the Foundation of Eyüp’s Friends, in-depth interviews with the actors involved, and the foundation’s museum exhibition, the chapter shows how the two actors’ ways of authenticating, communicating and engaging with their narratives vary relative to their motivations and possibilities within the current socio-political constellations. The two actors’ different interpretations of the same material structures to support their narratives point to the palimpsest, or layered, nature of places, which makes possible multiple constructions of identity in constantly changing processes.
