ABSTRACT
This chapter situates Turkey vis-à-vis its neighboring countries, and provides a brief geopolitical and historical overview of the republic, commenting on its geostrategic importance. It shows the new republic’s program of modernization as focused on articulating Europe as a normalizing narrative. Emerging from post-Tanzimat regulations, European architects and designers were invited to compete for the project of regularization of Istanbul. Baron Haussmann, who redesigned Paris, was granted the initial commission. The chapter links Haussmann’s work on Istanbul with Paris, and the resulting incomplete gentrification. Traditional wooden houses were replaced with kargir (cut stone or brick) residences which resulted in a changed cityscape. Connecting dominant narratives with Pamuk’s use of color in the titles of his novels helps fit this hybrid architecture in with his postmodernist framework. The chapter presents Istanbul through the lens of shifting and subversive everyday architecture as depicted in Pamuk’s fiction, and opens up its portrayal as a fantastic city.
