Abstract
Streets of Memory is an original and nuanced ethnographic analysis of the consequences of national identity formation in Turkey. The book’s primary contribution is its scholarly analysis of a topic that is still mostly considered taboo in Turkey: the assimilation or expulsion of the Greek, Armenian, and Jewish minorities. It is a timely work that joins recent scholarship in Turkish and Ottoman history to question the tolerance narrative and to draw attention to the critical silences of Turkish national identity, particularly concerning non-Muslims. The paradox of ‘Turkishness’ as defined by the nation-state of Turkey takes center stage in Streets of Memory: despite the Republic’s secular and democratic ambitions, the primary index of Turkishness was being Muslim and non-Muslim minorities faced violence. Streets of Memory provides an analysis of this violence, which is not confined only to physically violent moments but also includes more mundane, affective, and epistemic forms of violence. Mills identifies the subtle expressions of these latter kinds of violence by the attention she pays to how research participants talk, and not simply what they say, when they lower their voices, shut the door, or pause for a long time.
Unlike state-centric analyses (that dominate existing scholarship on Turkey), Streets of Memory examines Turkish national identity and its narrations by focusing on the current residents of a previously non-Muslim dominated neighborhood in Istanbul, Kuzguncuk. Recently Kuzguncuk has been celebrated in popular books and television series in Turkey as the prototypically traditional and tight-knit, but at the same time cosmopolitan and tolerant mahalle (neighborhood). Yet, Mills shows that such nostalgia about Kuzguncuk does not face up to its controversial past. Her research participants tell stories about the past that are full of contradictions and structured by silences. One example that illustrates the significance of cultural memory is the current inhabitants’ denial that Kuzguncuk residents participated in the 6–7 September 1955 riots targeting Rums (Greeks). In rare cases when residents admitted that there was rioting in this neighborhood that night, outsiders (coming from other parts of Istanbul or residents of Kuzguncuk who had recently come from rural areas) were held responsible. Urban cultural landscape confirms this selective cultural memory; the popular image of an Armenian church standing next to a mosque – although the latter was built many decades later - suggests that no one from Kuzguncuk possibly could have been involved in violence.
The ethnographic details become essential in bringing Kuzguncuk to life: the smell of magnolia trees, the taste of shared sunflower seeds on a bench, the many ‘hello’s one hears when walking down the main street, and a woman’s knocking on the neighbor’s door for a session of reading coffee fortunes. But we also learn that life in Kuzguncuk includes strict expectations of propriety, silencing of dissent, and most strikingly, the gradual replacement of non-Muslim residents with waves of Muslim rural migrants and, more recently, urban gentrifiers. Although the main story is about national identity and ethnic cleansing, Mills meticulously demonstrates that no identity is singular and static; gender, class, and migrant status intersect with other axes of identity as residents negotiate their differences and belonging in a constantly changing neighborhood. Within the recent questioning of Turkish national ideology, Kuzguncuk’s urban landscape and cultural memory become the sites for reinterpretation and contestation.
Kuzguncuk, thus, provides the perfect case to tackle the myths of Turkish national ideology and to reinterpret history. But how does the current political context in Turkey, where Islamic identification has been redefined and is increasingly salient, shape Kuzguncuk’s identity and cultural memory? As much as I find the book’s intentional move away from the state significant, this research could more effectively help to redefine and theorize the state by viewing it not only as an outside institution instigating riots against minorities but also one that is the product of the neighborhood residents’ practices.
When I used this book in my classes, the stories immediately captured the students’ attention. Although both of my classes had a Middle East focus, I would recommend this book for classes that examine national identity, cultural landscape, memory and ethnographic methods.