Stretching from Taksim Square to the Tunnel (Tünel) area, İstiklal Avenue is 1400 m in length. Its midpoint is considered to be Galatasaray Square, where the “50th Anniversary of the Republic” monument is located. An area closed to traffic since 1990, the avenue is crowded at almost all hours of the day and remains vibrant despite its changing profile. Currently home to many clothing stores, restaurants, cafés, banks, consulates and cultural venues, the avenue has undergone serious transformations over the years.
Its name prior to 1927 was “Cadde-i Kebir” (i.e. “Grand Avenue”) in Ottoman Turkish, and “Grand Rue de Pera”, meaning the main road of Pera, in French. “Pera” is the Greek word for “the other side”, “across” or “beyond”. It took on this name for being located across the Golden Horn, on the other side of the historic peninsula. “Beyoğlu” (literally, “Son of the Lord”), which is the name used by Turks, most probably comes from the fact that in the time of Sultan Suleiman, Gritti, son of the Venetian ambassador, had a mansion in this area full of orchards and vineyards.
A Byzantine neighbourhood, Pera gained its historic importance as a Genoese colony. Starting from the 14th century it became the point of Eastern passage for the Western Mediterranean and remained as such after the city fell into Ottoman hands. The Ottomans relocated a couple of Latin Catholic churches within the city walls to Pera, and, as diplomatic relationships with Western states developed, gave them land here to establish consulates. Business places, religious and educational institutions, and more were constructed in the vicinity of these consulates, and as the West strengthened its position following the industrial revolution, Pera became the point of entry for goods – and, in fact, customs – coming in from the West. Pera – Beyoğlu, that is – was at the heart of innovations brought by the Imperial Edict of Reorganization (Tanzimat Fermanı -1839), and of the increasing influence of non-Muslims and Westerners in general within Ottoman society. Grand Rue de Pera was, therefore, the most “Western” face of the empire both architecturally and demographically, and in terms of lifestyle. Two great fires in the district in 1830 and 1871 resulted in the destruction of more than 3 thousand structures, giving the newly rich an opportunity to have fancy mansions built.
A view of Istiklal Avenue after pedestrianization. SALT Research, Çalıkoğlu Family Archive.
İstiklal Street, Photograph by Gençer Yurttaş.
The avenue experienced its heyday in the first thirty years of the Republic. Filling up with restaurants, patisseries, cafés, theaters, cinema halls and hotels, it became the symbol of modernization and Westernization. Then, the avenue’s “European” and cosmopolitan character began to suffer due to the government’s intensifying anti-minority policies in the wake of World War II, the pogrom of 6-7 September 1955, and rising tensions between Turks and Greeks in Cyprus. As internal migration increased and the newly arriving poor settled in abandoned buildings in this area, İstiklal Avenue came to be associated with poverty, crime, drugs and prostitution. Pedestrianized and closed to vehicular traffic in 1990, the avenue began gentrifying once more as the tram operating between Taksim and Tünel (Tunnel) until 1961 was brought back into service, as well as with the influence of artists taking up residence in the neighbourhoods of Asmalı Mescit, Galata and Cihangir. This gave rise to its revitalization, and entertainment venues, cafés, restaurants and boutiques sprouted up all over again. With a combination of this dynamism, the heavy migrant population in its environs and urban poverty, İstiklal Avenue took on a unique and distinctively heterogeneous identity of its own.
Impacted by global urbanization processes in Istanbul, İstiklal Avenue underwent yet another spatial transformation in the 2000s. This area, seeing almost 2 million people daily, attracted domestic and foreign real estate investments. Big name brands opened showcase stores and cultural centers were established with corporate sponsorship. Resulting in the closure of many shops and spaces that had become emblematic of the neighbourhood, this process brought about the rapid disintegration of the avenue’s unique, hybrid constitution. The construction of the Demirören Shopping Mall, the clearing out of the Cercle d’Orient building and demolition of the Emek Movie Theater, the forced relocation of İnci Patisserie and Robinson Crusoe bookstore, the closure of Rebul Pharmacy along with the evacuation of century-old second-hand bookseller Librairie de Péra located in Tünel square, of Kelebek Korse (corset shop) and Rumeli Inn (arcade) became the most prominent markers of the transformation taking place. The number of shops from the old days on the avenue dwindled down. AKP’s gain-oriented policies expediting the eviction of tenants over ten years, when combined with regulations restricting alcohol and bans on outdoor tables and chairs for restaurants and cafés, became one of the factors sparking the Gezi Uprising, and it was İstiklal Avenue that ended up most directly affected by all of this. As it was from the Gezi Uprising as well…
In the immediate aftermath of the Gezi Protests, the avenue retained its liveliness for a while longer and even hosted the most crowded Pride Parade of its history. Yet, later on, the government’s forceful interventions in every slightest gathering for a press declaration of the social opposition in Gezi, Taksim Square or İstiklal, immersing the area in tear gas, began deterring people from coming to these places. Frequent terror attacks – with links to the war in Syria – occurring after the Suruç Massacre of July 20, 2015, led to the further desertion of places that risked being targets such as Taksim and İstiklal, and certain businesses closed down as a result. A suicide bomb attack taking place on the avenue on the 19th of March 2016 took the lives of four people, and 39 were injured.
It was 2010 by the time Taksim Square was reopened to 1st of May celebrations, to which it had remained closed off since 1977. Even then, the AKP government only allowed May 1st to be celebrated here for three years, and the ban was re-imposed in 2013. The harsh police intervention that took place that year was among the incidents sparking the Gezi Uprising. The fact that the square and all streets leading to İstiklal are blocked off by heavily armed police officers and their vehicles on every 1st of May and the anniversaries of Gezi since 2013, and on the day of the Pride Parade as well since 2015 has seriously damaged the avenue’s identity as the site for the self-expression of the social opposition.
Terror attacks, the apparent clampdown on all kinds of opposition, and the 2016 coup attempt resulted in stopping the flow of tourists from the West to Turkey and to İstiklal Avenue as well. They were replaced by Arabs: the middle-class tourists mostly from Gulf countries, Lebanon, Iran and Iraq and the Syrian refugees serving them all came to be lumped under the general category of “Arab” by many a resident of Turkey, and for some their presence became a reason to altogether avoid Taksim and İstiklal.
The transformation of spaces so as to meet the expectations and demand of Arab tourists, the concretization of the square with its potted trees, weird-looking fountains, and crude led lighting, the obvious disregard of public interest in projects such as Demirören, Grand Pera and Narmanlı, the closing down of the Atatürk Cultural Center, the City Theater, Muammer Karaca Cultural Center, and cinemas such as Alkazar, Emek and Sinepop as well as certain long-standing entertainment spaces caused university youth and upper-middle classes hanging out in Beyoğlu to shift towards Beşiktaş and Kadıköy instead. For those attempting to overcome police barriers to take part in Pride Parades and for feminists participating in exuberant Night Marches on every 8th of March, on the other hand, İstiklal continues being the one and only address despite this destruction of its identity, accumulated experience and social memory.
İSTİKLAL AVENUE AND FEMINISM
The Gezi Protests beginning towards the end of May 2013 was a social movement in which the presence and voice of women found considerable space. One of the tents set up in Gezi belonged to feminists, and women wrote their demands on a board put up here: “Stop at home, stop the world”, “AKP keep your hands off my life”, “Don’t swear at women, fags and sluts”, “Resist with tenacity, not with swear words”. These slogans were also chanted in the march that took place on İstiklal during the Gezi Resistance.
Not only in Gezi but all over Turkey at least half of the millions participating in the resistance were women, and these women with different identity backgrounds, part of organized groups or simply there as individuals, all struggled together against the AKP’s increasing pressure. The AKP government had been drawing adverse reactions for quite a while with its rhetoric and policies negatively impacting women’s lives. The precautionary measures necessary were not being taken even though approximately three women were murdered by male acquaintances on a daily basis, and the government was discursively reproducing legitimizing grounds for this violence. In 2012, a near-total ban on abortion had been brought up, and though the government backed down on this due to pressure from women serious barriers to access were imposed in practice, thus effectively enforcing the government’s call for ‘three children’. Approaching women’s labour from a neoliberal perspective, policies such as foregrounding flexible work were generalized in order for women to work as cheap labour outside the home as well as inside as traditional caregivers. In addition to all of this, the government’s rhetoric dismissing gender equality from a religious perspective, and the increasingly definitive role played by religion in shaping the educational system and life of society became main points of objection for women in marches on İstiklal Street during and after Gezi.
Women were also important symbols of the Gezi Resistance as in the examples of the “Woman in Red” and “Woman in Black”. Not only did they struggle against police violence, but they also took initiative in order to transform the patriarchal language of the protests. On the 4th of June, they erased sexist, homophobic slogans off of the walls around Gezi Park and İstiklal Avenue, painting over swear words and drawing the feminist symbol instead. Upon news that a woman wearing a headscarf had been harassed in Kabataş – later turned out to be a hoax – they gathered on the 7th of June and marched from Kabataş to Gezi Park chanting “Resist with tenacity, not with swear words”, “Keep your hands off my body, my headscarf, my identity”, and “The nights, the streets, the squares and mosques are ours”. On the 8th of June, they held a workshop to generate alternative, non-sexist swear words. On the 13th of June, after statements by Hüseyin Avni Mutlu, Governor of Istanbul at the time, and then Prime Minister Erdoğan for mothers to “pull their children out of Gezi”, they formed a human chain and carried a banner saying “Dear mothers of cops, pull your children out of the park”. With this alternative approach to motherhood, which is the only role the state sees fit for them, they elaborated on the role of motherhood as an active part of the resistance.
İstiklal Avenue. March 8, 2014. Feminist Night March. Photograph by Serra Akcan, NarPhotos.
The second wave women’s movement in Turkey (the movement organized in the late Ottoman period around certain publications demanding education and employment rights is known as the first wave) started with a group of women coming together in consciousness-raising groups in the oppressive environment of the 1980 military coup to discuss feminist literature. In these groups meeting in Istanbul, Ankara and İzmir in particular, women first began questioning the patriarchal structure of the leftist movement they themselves were part of. This is when Kaktüs (“Cactus”) and Feminist (“Feminist”) started coming out as independent feminist magazines. The first large protest was held against violence to women held in Kadıköy’s Yoğurtçu Park in 1987 under the heading “Campaign Against Battery”. This was also the first mass protest to take place in the wake of the 1980 coup. The opening of women’s shelters in the early 1990s also became one of the driving forces behind the women’s movement. Initially limited to large cities, the movement later spread to many towns across Turkey and grew with organized structures such as non-governmental organizations, independent groups, and publishing houses. Organizations working on violence against women, abortion, rape, sexual harassment, and women’s political representation achieved important amendments to the criminal and civil code as a result of struggles waged over many years.
The spaces in which women voice their demands for rights regarding their bodies and identities are and have mostly been Taksim’s İstiklal Avenue and Kadıköy. As the only women’s group formed out of the Gezi Resistance and as one that meets at the site of Turkey’s very first feminist protest – i.e. in Yoğurtçu Park, the Women’s Forum still continues its weekly gatherings in 2018. The largest mass marches to take place on İstiklal Avenue, on the other hand, occur on the 8th of March International Women’s Day and on the 25th of November, which is the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women. Though transformations in Taksim and İstiklal have affected women’s organizations as well and despite the fact that they have preferred Kadıköy or at times Beşiktaş for certain demonstrations, İstiklal has always been the singular address of the Night Marches on the 8th of March. The 16th Feminist Night March held in 2018 became a powerful and collective objection voiced together by women against the repressive atmosphere in the country. New York Times featured on its front-page an image of the jubilant feminist crowd filling the avenue. The presence of a growing crowd over the years, and especially the spirited participation of young women have renewed hopes of an exit from the current authoritarian regime.
İSTİKLAL AVENUE AND LGBTI+ MOVEMENT
Beyoğlu and İstiklal Avenue have always been an important gathering spot for LGBTI+ individuals. The bars and clubs in Taksim, Gezi Park and İstiklal itself were socializing spaces and “cruising” areas for gays. Hence, resistance and self-organizing naturally also took shape here. The first instance was in 1987 when a couple of gay men and a trans woman started a hunger strike against police violence on the steps of Gezi Park facing the Tarlabaşı Boulevard. This hunger strike was organized in response to acts of torture perpetrated in the second half of the 1980s by the Beyoğlu Police Department, as it forcibly cut the hair of, undressed, and revealed to the press the identities of trans women taken under custody during police operations in Sormagir, Kazancı and Pürtelaş streets in order to drive them away from the Taksim area.
A more visible LGBTI+ movement emerged in the 1990s. The movement’s first organization, LambdaIstanbul was established in Istanbul in 1993, and the second, Kaos GL, in Ankara in 1994. Lambda mobilized in response to a ban by the governor’s office preventing an international gay lesbian conference planned to take place in Istanbul on July 2-4. That same year, the group began holding meetings in Club Prive for a sharing of ideas between non-heterosexual individuals in order to develop a common discourse based on their experiences. Yet these meetings were usually cut short due to police repression. Despite all of this pressure, weekly meetings held in different venues kept bringing together LGBTI+s. The Pride conference was once again banned in 1995.
The first Istanbul Pride was held on the last Sunday of June 2003, with Lambda’s efforts. Participation remained limited as around 50 people showed up. Turkey was the first majority Muslim country to have a Pride Parade organized. The LGBTI+ movement gradually increased in visibility, and participation in the march in following years rose exponentially. In 2010, 5 thousand people were at the Istanbul Pride Parade. In 2011 this number reached 15 thousand, and that year İstiklal Avenue ended up being the scene of the most crowded Pride in all of South Eastern Europe. As of 2009, Trans Pride Parades also started being organized, once again on İstiklal.
Taksim Square. June 30, 2013. 11th İstanbul LGBTi+ Pride March. Photograph by Serra Akcan, Nar Photos.
The most heavily attended Istanbul Pride Parade up to date, on the other hand, was the one that took place on the 30th of June 2013, right on the heels of the Gezi Uprising. With a hundred thousand people participating in the march, the chants of the Gezi protests and those of the LGBTI+ movement blended in with each other. It was a combination of the motivation sparked by Gezi and the active role this movement had taken there that led to the participation of such a multitude of people. As of 2015, the Governor’s Office began denying permission to these parades. The march in 2015 was banned on grounds that it was Ramadan, and the police attacked tens of thousands of people using tear gas, rubber bullets and water cannons. The Istanbul Pride Week Committee called on the crowd to remain in Beyoğlu and make noise banging pots and pans wherever they may be. Similarly, resistance against the ban in 2016 took the form of everyone reading the press release in their own location. In 2017 the police yet again prevented the parade blocking off all streets leading onto İstiklal. Some LGBTI+ activists gathered in side streets and chanted “Love, love, freedom; hate, stay away!” Though the parade in 2018 was once again banned by the governor’s office on grounds of “the possibility of undesirable incidents” hundreds of people assembled on Mis Street, and the statement to the press was read out.
Beyoğlu, Taksim and İstiklal Avenue have always constituted a space in which LGBTI+ individuals excluded from society have felt comparatively more comfortable, and been able to exist and struggle together in solidarity. Lambda’s office was, until recently, always located in some street close to İstiklal Avenue. Organizing meetings used to take place in cafés, homes and the spaces of other political entities within this neighbourhood. The banning of the Pride Parade since 2015, the pressures faced by the social opposition, and the changing scene in Beyoğlu have resulted in a transformation of both the movement as a whole as well as in terms of its presence in Beyoğlu. LGBTI+ activism has spread across other neighbourhoods and universities, hence assuming a more fragmented character.