Everyday Life In Turkey

[Raphaela Lewis] sketches the history of the Ottoman dynasty and shows how it fell heir to the Eastern Roman Empire and made its capital in the city of Constantine the Great, renamed Istanbul. She then describes the administrative structure of the Empire, with its extraordinary system of recruitment whereby membership of the civil and military establishment was in principle confined to the Sultan's Christian-born slaves. The dominant faith of the Empire was Islam, and there is a full account of its duties and practices, which moulded the life of the Turk...The author also takes us inside the great imperial mosques, the thronged and colourful bazaars, schoolrooms, palaces and private houses and takes us down fascinating byways, showing how the Sultan's cannon were cast, how children prayed for rain, how the people passed the nights of Ramadan, and how important a social occasion for women were the weekly visits to the hammam, the public baths...Lewis has not neglected life in Anatolia and the non-Turkish provinces, and she has also provided a glossary of Turkish terms used in the book. -- Dust jacket.

Fragments of Culture explores the evolving modern daily life of Turkey. Through analyses of language, folklore, film, satirical humor, the symbolism of Islamic political mobilization, and the shifting identities of diasporic communities in Turkey and Europe, this book provides a fresh and corrective perspective to the often-skewed perceptions of Turkish culture engendered by conventional western critiques. In this volume, some of the most innovative scholars of post 1980s Turkey address the complex ways that suburbanization and the growth of a globalized middle class have altered gender and class relations, and how Turkish society is being shaped and redefined through consumption. They also explore the increasingly polarized cultural politics between secularists and Islamists, and the ways that previously repressed Islamic elements have reemerged to complicate the idea of an "authentic" Turkish identity. Contributors examine a range of issues from the adjustments to religious identity as the Islamic veil becomes marketed as a fashion item, to the media's increased attention in Turkish transsexual lifestyle, to the role of folk dance as a ritualized part of public life. Fragments of Culture shows how attention to the minutiae of daily life can successfully unravel the complexities of a shifting society. This book makes a significant contribution to both modern Turkish studies and the scholarship on cross-cultural perspectives in Middle Eastern studies.