Gender and Mahalle (Neighborhood) Space in Istanbul

Abstract

Studies of gender have an important place in studies of Turkey because the discourses of Islamism and secularism, and modernity and tradition, make the bodies and practices of Turkish women the site of debate. However, few studies have used a spatial analysis to examine the production of gender in daily life. This article is simultaneously a study of how gender is produced through space and of the creation of various kinds of spaces in an Istanbul mahalle (neighborhood). The mahalle is the space of intimate daily life in the Turkish urban context, and narratives of and ways of life in the mahalle articulate competing notions of what it means to be a woman in Turkey. This study of gender and mahalle space reveals the linkages between space and gender to be multiple and shifting and the boundaries between private and public spaces to be fluid. Furthermore, this reading of gender and urban space, when brought back to the Turkish context, also contributes to research which interrogates the idea of modernity at the core of national identity in Turkey, of which gender is a central and constitutive element.

Los estudios de género han tenido un lugar importante adentro de los estudios turcos porque los discursos del Islam y secularismo, y de la modernidad y tradición, hacen que los cuerpos y las practicas de turcas sean sitios de debate. Sin embargo, unos estudios han utilizado un análisis espacial para examinar la producción de género en la vida cotidiana. Este artículo es un estudio de cómo se produce el género a través de espacio y también de cómo se produce varios tipos de espacio en un maballe (barrio) de Istanbul. El maballe es un espacio de la vida íntima diaria en el contexto urbano de Turquía, y las narrativas y costumbres de la vida en el maballe articulan ideas conflictivas sobre el significado de ser mujer en Turquía. Este estudio de el género y espacio del maballe revela que los vínculos entre el espacio y género sean múltiples y móviles, y que las fronteras entre los espacios privado y público sean fluidas. Además, esta lectura del género y los espacios urbanos, cuando se vuelve al contexto turco, también contribuye a las investigaciones que interrogan la idea de modernidad que queda en el centro de la identidad nacional de Turquía, en lo que género es un elemento central y constitutivo.

Keywords:

• Gender
• neighboring
• urban space
• private space
• Turkey

Keywords:

• Género
• el barrio
• espacio urbano
• espacio privado
• Turquía

Acknowledgements

Many thanks to Anna Secor, Liana Vasseur, my three anonymous reviewers, and especially Linda Peake for their careful reading and valuable suggestions. This project was support by a Fulbright-Hays International Dissertation Research Grant, and a University of Texas at Austin Population Research Center Mellon Foundation Fellowship. The dissertation write-up was funded by the University of Texas Graduate School and the Institute of Turkish Studies. Any remaining errors or faults are, of course, my own.

Notes

 1. Similarly, desire for a place where people know each other, where families visit each other, where people greet each other—in short, for the mahalle—is invoked in advertising for new gated communities in Istanbul which describe themselves as mahalles. In a seeming paradox, however, these gated communities are not inclusive but are, predictably, limited to the upper class (Bartu, 2002).

 2. Farha Ghannam's ethnography of Cairo makes a similar claim about the gendered nature of spatial practices in everyday life. According to Ghannam (2002), women in the popular quarter she studied also prefer to be with other people rather than to spend time alone. The space of nearby apartments in the development is an intimate one much like the Turkish mahalle.

 3. All names used in this paper are pseudonyms.

 4. I became a ‘tanıdık’, one who is ‘known’: a neighbor.

 5. In her article questioning the idea of an Islamic city, Janet Abu-Lughod describes a sense of ‘otherness’ she feels walking along a residential street of a historically Muslim city in India. For her, there is a semi-private quality distinct in such cities which is not characteristic of the neighborhood in Mayol's study, for example (Abu-Lughod, 1987).

 6. Farha Ghannam, in her Cairo study, describes the difficulty of explaining how privacy works in Cairo, for example, where cultural practice excludes an understanding of privacy as it is understood in the American context.

 7. In 2001, a radio talk show hosted by two women and whose callers were all women was devoted to the topic of the advantages of the single-family private home. The most desired aspect of the home was the ability to live according to one's desires and not have to think about neighbors’ perceptions and judgments. This notion of private space is derived from an American ideal; single-family homes in Istanbul are extremely unusual and accessible only to the elite (see Öncu, 1997ncu, 1997).

 8. This is a newer, more ‘modern’ (and more expensive) neighborhood along the Asian side of the Marmara coast.

 9. Gentrification, and a corresponding elevation of property value and rents, is happening throughout Kuzguncuk. However, while prices are also rising for rents in 1950s- and 1960s-era apartment buildings on side streets which are yet to be renovated, these rents are not yet as high as the rents in buildings which have been renovated or which have exclusive views or prime locations.

10. Christina Marouli (1995) cites a similar phenomenon in Athens, where an increase in class status in neighborhoods correlates to the loss of semi-private residential space as well as systems of support among women.