Between Kurds, Turks, and Queers in Tarlabaşı, Istanbul

Istanbul, Turkey - Reza - Tuesday, June 19th, 2012 : goo

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The view from my new apartment in Tarlabasi, Beyoglu, Istanbul:

Although quite close to Istanbul's commercial heart, this neighborhood was largely vacated after the population transfers between Greece and Turkey in the early 20th century and since then has been largely occupied by various migrants from the countryside. In the 1970's (or 80's? I forget) a highway was built alongside it, demolishing a large number of historic dwellings but conforming the area to the citywide transportation reforms. As a result, however, the area was cut off from Taksim, the neighborhood that today comprises the heart of the "success story" of neoliberal, commercial Istanbul.

Today the neighborhood is host to those who are marginalized and neglected by the nationalist and sexual codes of the Turkish secularist regime but have also managed to find a niche within it- here live Kurds, Arabs from the Iskenderun province, and Anatolian Turks who work in menial labor as well as transgendered folks who find both freedom as well as jobs as artists and entertainers in the modern city. Although transgenderism is quite stigmatized in modern Western culture, traditionally in Turkish (and other Middle Eastern societies) there has generally existed a place for transgender folks within the mainstream (especially in the cultural professions) and even as gender norms shift and harden within the aspirationally 'European' neighborhoods of Istanbul this place holds firm in unpretentious, cosmopolitan Tarlabasi.

Despite being only a few blocks from the main street of commercial Istanbul (Istiklal Caddesi), few venture this way, deterred by the highway or the reputation. On days like today, when violence flares and bombs go off in Turkey's Kurdish regions, military and police checkpoints block the roads into the neighborhood, pre-empting a chaos that never comes...

The street level:

I moved in earlier this afternoon. The whole day kids played outside, yelling in turkish and kurdish, and when evening came families left their homes to have dinner- some ate on the balconies, others brought the home cooked food onto the sidewalk to eat together in the alleyway...

currently listening to the sounds of a distant wedding, loud darbake (drums) and mezmar (bagpipe-ish instrument) playing at full blast...

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zink: life is how you perceive it to be.

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