Mapping the Changing [Political–Cultural-Religious] Landscape of Istanbul

In the last two decades, the political and cultural landscape of Istanbul has considered to be transformed and become communitarized along ethnic-religious lines. Combined with technocratic, modernist and neoliberal strategies, Islamist politics pervade the urban space. This project aims at identifying the changing political, cultural, and religious landscape of İstanbul in the last two decades, locating the transformation and fragmentation processes highlighted by many researchers and intellectuals in the recent years. In order to understand the transformation, it adopts a multi-level research, mapping the political orientation and elucidating changing spatial behavior patterns. While the former represents the political change of Istanbul neighborhoods in the 2000s, the latter involves interviews with young female students from a recently established university about upward social / spatial mobility, re/production of a new middle class and re-production of everyday spaces in the city.