European Istanbul and Its Enemies: Istanbul’s Working Class as the Constitutive Outside of the Modern/European Istanbul

Nomination of Istanbul as the 2010 European Capital of Culture probably made many Istanbulites feel proud of their city. After all, Istanbulites believe that they live in the Western/ized part of Turkey and this nomination could be considered as proof of that. Istanbul, as a city, was considered to be one of the important European centers even in the 1800s and has always represented the Westernized face of Turkey (Türeli et. al., 2010). This chapter discusses how the modern image of Istanbul is established by the ‘Otherization’ and exclusion of its working classes. First, attention is directed towards examination of the contemporary working-class history of Istanbul as the ‘constitutive outside’* of Istanbul as a modern city, and the ways in which Istanbul has been imagined as a Western city by continuously highlighting the differences between its legitimate and illegitimate residents are considered.