“Each generation has a Beyoğlu of its past to yearn for,” observed Enno Maessen in his recent book Representing Modern Istanbul: Urban History and International Institutions in Twentieth-Century Beyoğlu. The most cosmopolitan and fabled neighbourhood of a cosmopolitan and fabled city, since the mid-nineteenth-century Beyoğlu has played host to a range of European communities: German, French and British societies, clubs and schools have served as beach-heads, refuges and places of encounter. In this conversation, recorded on 16 February 2023, Enno and Jonathan discuss the shifting associations of the Teutonia Club and the post-WW2 appeal of German and other foreign High Schools to the city’s Turkish elite, which led the latter to bend some of the restrictions imposed on those institutions by the Treaty of Lausanne. Finally Enno turns to Emek Cinema, ground-zero for any discussion of how modernisation and gentrification interact in twenty first-century Istanbul: sometimes erasing traces of a neighbourhood’s multi-ethnic heritage, sometimes repackaging them as kitsch.

Episode 28 – Invisible Cities

Podcasts are published by TLP for the purpose of encouraging informed debate on the legacies of the events surrounding the Lausanne Conference. The views expressed by participants do not necessarily represent the views or opinions of TLP, its partners, convenors or members.