Abstract
A teneke mahalle, mostly consisting of shacks constructed of collected waste materials, is a late Ottoman and early Republican phenomenon that parallels its global counterparts such as the Corralones in Peru or the Indian slums. Although occasionally mentioned in the pioneer studies, the long history of the teneke mahalles has been overlooked until recent times, and in the mainstream discussions on urban poverty, these neighborhoods have almost wholly been invisible. However, informal settlements came to the agenda of the state and society, right after the massive eviction in 1883 of the refugees of the War of 1877-1878 from the free temporary settlements. They created teneke mahalles, and over time, the local poor also adopted their creative solution for cheap and relatively safe housing. Drawing on both archival and oral records, the author establishes the actual presence of the category and traces the development of the idiom in the late nineteenth century.
The teneke mahalle 1 (tin-can neighborhood) has been a sub-category of the late-Ottoman and Republican informal settlements. The term itself was a public, oral invention that denominated settlements consisting of dwellings constructed out of collected waste materials, particularly gasoline tins. This article is an initial attempt to reveal the actual presence of informal settlements in the late-Ottoman Istanbul and to chart the development of the idiom teneke mahalle, drawing on both archival and oral records.
The concept of urban informality was initially used in a Latin American context, but it has also been functional in African, South Asian, Middle Eastern, and European urban issues and history. 2 Instead of assuming an absolute duality between formal and informal, this article adopts a more dynamic understanding of informality, viewing it as a complex mechanism in which formal and informal forces intermingle in the production of cities, and various actors permanently negotiate the line between formal and informal settlements as a phenomenon of high-level diversity. 3
Informality is not a marginal phenomenon but characterizes a common form of urban expansion in many cities of the global south. In these cases, informal settlements, constructed mainly on government land, house the majority of city dwellers. The occupiers benefit from the support of government services as they attempt to regularize their tenure on the occupied land. 4
Informality arises from the discrepancy between the modernized formal frame for the production of human beings’ daily existence and the actual realities of the human beings themselves. The requirements of modern existence are very expensive, and it is not possible for everybody to adhere to or display the behavioral characteristics that modernity requires. 5
The establishment of the presence and the development of informal settlements in the nineteenth-century Ottoman context will necessarily require defining the development of the formal frames of urban planning in the Ottoman Empire. In the nineteenth century, a new rationality of governing arose in the Ottoman Empire, 6 along with the modern state apparatus itself and its essential elements. 7 This overall transformation had a considerable influence on the development of the discipline of modern planning in the Ottoman context, the establishment of new means of urban governing, and the introduction of new regulations, particularly in Istanbul. While the development of the new municipal institutions and subsequent laws regulating the formal ways of building and the legitimate pattern of city layout was establishing the urban formality in the nineteenth-century Ottoman Istanbul, 8 the traditional agents, forms, and relations of Ottoman urban environment persisted to a degree in hybrid appearances. However, irrespective of their limited scale of applicability, 9 the regulations determining the line between formal and informal were present after all. From that time on, the Ottoman subjects would be able to get permission for only dwellings meeting the required conditions, and thus, only their presence would have a complete legitimacy. 10
While the Ottoman bureaucrats, Levantine, and local traders settled in new, regular and modernized neighborhoods, the traditional Ottoman neighborhoods became less attractive for the elites, and the urban fabric in these places gradually became dilapidated in Istanbul. 11 Although the deteriorating neighborhoods were less desirable for the modernizing Ottoman elites, their presence was still justified by a long tradition, and the discrepancy between their conditions and the newly regulated formal frame of urbanization was tolerable to a degree. However, the development of teneke mahalles as neither formal nor traditional, but as informal settlements, was a new phenomenon, 12 and their presence indicated the limits of nineteenth-century Ottoman modernization in terms of formal urbanization and highlighted the capability of ordinary people to fill the gaps of urban formality with an informal way of place-making. 13
The literature on informal settlements in Turkish cities has had a long history. However, the actual mention of the teneke mahalles in the masterpieces of the era or contemporary examples rarely exceeds a few descriptive sentences. Pioneer scholars such as Zadil, 14 Güney, 15 Tütengil, 16 Eldem, 17 Georgeon, 18 and Ortaylı 19 see a continuum between the teneke mahalles, which were initially established by the refugees of the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-1878, and the more recent phenomenon of gecekondus, a term which has been used to refer to diverse phenomena 20 or simply to describe the architectural distinctiveness of teneke mahalles. 21 The assumption of a continuum between teneke mahalles and gecekondus reflects the administrative understanding of the latter term, which allows the labeling of any informal dwellings as gecekondu. 22 However, since the 1950s, the term gecekondu has been perceived as something directly related with rural newcomers and the squatters around the city and, more precisely, with the massive rural migration that created a considerable housing demand for these former peasants. 23 Unlike the rapid displacement of the refugees of the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-1878, the newcomers in this era became a part of chain migration, which provided an opportunity for the migrants to benefit from the enduring links between rural and urban areas 24 and from the gradual and voluntary character of population movement. 25 This chain migration was not something entirely new for Turkish cities. 26 However, its relative social effect on urbanization considerably increased after the 1950s. Many scholars, such as Keleş 27 and Karpat, 28 who emphasize this point, tend to make a distinction between teneke mahalles (or the kale mahalles—literally, the neighborhoods on and around old city ramparts and another term for teneke mahalles) and gecekondus, or they establish the same duality as an internal differentiation between the gecekondus built in the inner city and those in the suburban, or varoş, 29 locations 30 (see Figures 1 and 2).
A shack painting from the 1930s. 31
A shack painting from the 1930s. 32
Similar dual terminologies for informal settlements are not rare in the related world literature. While gradual physical improvement is typical for the Barriadas in Peru 33 and the squatter settlements in Mexico, 34 the Corralones in Peru 35 and shantytowns in Mexico City 36 have been more stable. The Corralones in Peru, 37 the Ciudade perdidas, the shack yards, in Mexico City, 38 the slums in India, 39 all such settlements occurred in sociospatial gaps that were rarely far from the city center, such as small land parcels or empty lots near sewerage, railroads, rivers, garbage dumps, cemeteries, or abattoirs. However, the Barriadas 40 and Gunthewaris in India 41 appeared generally on less central places and frequently on ex-agricultural lands, and they were considerably more extensive than the Corralones or the slums. The Corralones, 42 dwelling clusters constructed of mud, brick, or waste materials, and the Indian slums in Akola, Maharashtra, 43 constitute a relatively small portion of the urban population. However, Gunthewaris have been one of the significant forms of city expansion. 44 Stokes’s 45 “slums of hope”/“slums of despair” and Porter’s 46 “slums”/“squatters” were initial attempts to develop more abstract conceptualizations to handle the diversity of informal settlements as a universal phenomenon. 47
The extensive literature in Turkey draws a portrait of gecekondus that is similar to the Barriadas or Gunthewaris from many aspects: the development of gecekondus, the physically improving, informal settlements built by the ex-agriculturalist rural migrants on the less central areas of the cities have been one of the significant patterns of urbanization since the 1950s. 48 However, there are almost no studies about the development and spread of teneke mahalles, which was the primary form of informal settlements in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This article focuses on the early formation of teneke mahalles in the order to fill the gap in the literature drawing on the archival 49 or oral records.
Late-Ottoman Strategy to Welcome and Resettle Refugees after the 1877-1878 War
During the second half of the nineteenth century, alienation of Orthodox groups from the Ottoman state accelerated, and various actors such as the European states and the Russian Empire vied for the management of this separation process. This growing tension culminated in the revolt of Christian subjects in Herzegovina and rapidly reached beyond regional borders to include Serbia, Montenegro, and Bulgaria. 50 In 1876, a weak rebellion, in which the Russian Empire had at least an inspirational role, took place against Ottoman rule in Bulgaria. Rebels targeted Muslim civilians along with officials and a disproportionate retaliation followed imminently. 51 Following the declaration of war and the defeat of Serbia and Montenegro, the Russian Empire intervened in the crisis in the Balkans as the protector of the oppressed. 52 The defeat of the Ottoman Empire brought an undeniable diplomatic superiority to Russia. After the Congress of Berlin, held between June 13 and July 13, an agreement was signed in Berlin leaving Macedonia under Ottoman control and establishing two autonomous regions—Bulgaria and Eastern Rumelia—and three independent states—Romania, Serbia, and Montenegro. 53
The Russo-Turkish War of 1877-1878 54 triggered a mass migration from the lost Ottoman territories. This migration would provide a base for the formation of the teneke mahalles. 55 The wave of migration after the War was not the first demographic challenge that the Ottoman ruling elite had to handle. The nineteenth century was a time of turbulence. Along with the influx of Muslim refugees from eastern Europe and southern Russia, about 100,000 non-Muslim foreigners arrived in the Ottoman capital to take advantage of newly occurring opportunities for Western traders. 56 The deterritorialized subjects of the empire were extremely numerous in the period following the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-1878. In the first two years of migration following the war, the number of forced refugees reached 378,804. 57 After January 15, 1878, the average number of daily refugee arrivals to the city was around 10,000. 58 Karpat 59 evaluates the overall demographic shift of the period at about 1.5 million who left their territories in the Balkans. More than 1 million refugees had settled in the Ottoman domain between 1877 and 1890. 60 The management of such a crisis was a very complicated issue, and the Ottoman government had to develop a very pragmatic policy to overcome the challenge of this refugee influx.
These refugees were an agglomeration; among agriculturalists and artisans could also be found wealthy and well-educated individuals who, prior to the migration, had belonged to the ruling elite.
61
They were also ethnically heterogeneous; however, the shared trauma of the war and the difficulties of non-voluntary migration blurred the ethnicity and class borders between the refugees.
62
Hüseyin Râci, the former mufti of Stara Zagora (Zaġra-i Atīk), who himself was a middle-class refugee, describes this development: “Türk, Pomak, miserable Kibtī were heaped upon the ship mercilessly.”
63
The state contributed to this process of integration by introducing the muhācir identity as a legal title. For example, irrespective of their ethnic background, all the refugees were registered as muhācir in the first census following the war.
64
In particular, it was the Ottoman “Gypsies” who benefited primarily from this policy as the state registered them as muhācir instead of Ḳibṭī, a term which indicated the formal segregation of Muslim “Gypsies” from other Muslims. Ḳibṭī, along with Çingāne, was the formal designation for Roma people and other peripatetics
65
in the Ottoman Empire and was also a head tax category.
66
In traditional Ottoman society, peripatetics, including the Roma,
67
occupied a disadvantaged position, and the most specific indicator of this subaltern status was their lack of opportunity to escape from cizye (Islamic poll tax) liability with a conversion, unlike ordinary non-Muslim subjects of the Empire. The state classified them under a specific legal category, Ḳibṭī-i Müslim or Ḳibṭī-i ġayr-i Müslim.
68
However, developments in the late nineteenth century challenged this status. Even before the war, the Ottoman state had abolished their exemption from conscription and the policy of collection of specific Ḳibṭī poll tax.
69
After the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-1878, while the refugee “Gypsies” registered as muhācir in the census instead of Ḳibṭī, the majority of local “Gypsies” were classified with their religious communities, except for a small minority who somehow constituted the category of non-Muslim “Gypsies” in the census.
70
This policy to decrease the visibility and the formal segregation of “Gypsies,” especially Muslims, was in effect until the census in 1905 when the state reintroduced the category of Muslim “Gypsies” to the census terminology.
71
However, even before 1905, as they were among the most impoverished and had preserved their sociocultural distinctiveness to a significant degree, they were distinguishable from other refugees. The accounts of war correspondents written soon after the war (1878) reflect the external observers’ awareness of the presence of Muslim “Gypsies” among the refugee masses and their unique way of dealing with the challenging conditions that complicated their survival in the capital: Amid the crowds in the streets are numbers of groups of Gipsies. . . . Passing along we see them crowding into every hollow which gives protection from the weather. Here it is an old cellar, the superstructure of which has been burnt, which they have occupied. Their tents are pitched wherever there is a plot of spare ground.
72
Consequently, the state bodies had to handle the resettlement of a very complex agglomeration of different ethnic groups and classes. Therefore, it would not be easy to determine an effective strategy for each refugee family, and it would take considerable time in any case. Until a permanent settlement and relative stability was fixed, the refugees benefited from the privileged legal status of muhācir, at least since the 1850s, which meant exemption from some taxes and conscription liability for a significant while. 73 Before making an ultimate decision on the permanent settlement of each refugee household, the state welcomed a majority of the first-come refugees in public or suitable private buildings without cost. 74 The Ottoman officials then planned the permanent settlement of each refugee household considering their profession. They would settle agriculturalists on unoccupied agricultural lands following the orders of a publicly declared regulation. 75 The wealthy refugees and artisans, who would find an appropriate path to housing and workplaces with their internal resources, got permission to stay. 76
The stay of the non-agriculturalist and the poorest refugees 77 including Muslim “Gypsy” refugees registered as muhācir in the free temporary settlements extended necessarily. It would be illogical to settle them forcibly on empty agricultural lands, and their resources were not adequate for finding appropriate housing or workplaces. However, as they stayed longer, their relations with the state and ordinary locals became considerably conflicted. The purpose of the buildings used for the free temporary settlements was not public housing. The refugees had to alter these structures for their urgent needs and did so without considering any aesthetic or architectural priorities; thus, they unintentionally damaged them. 78 Hüseyin Râci Efendi tends to differentiate this category from the other refugees, denominating them as Ḳibṭī and condemns them for embarrassing the name of refugees. 79 In any case, the pressure on the government heightened as the refugees’ stay in the free temporary settlements extended. The present situation could not be maintained forever.
Therefore, the governmental attempts to reduce the density of refugees in free temporary settlements intensified in 1881.
80
Ultimately, the government initiated a campaign to complete the present refugees’ permanent resettlement at the beginning of 1883. The first step was to analyze the structure of the refugee population staying in free settlements. In the archives, there is a record book dated March 3, 1883, that demonstrates the demographic and socioeconomic features of the refugees in ᶜAḳarāt-ı
The attempt to analyze the refugee population was a visible sign of a policy change concerning the issue. Indeed, the government began to evict all the refugees who wanted to stay in the capital from the temporary settlements in the summer of 1883. Only the ones who accepted settlement in the country were allowed to stay temporarily until their transport. 82 The justification of this decision depended on both financial and medical concerns. Keeping refugees in free temporary settlements was a considerable financial burden for the Ottoman treasury, and the living conditions of the refugees in this place were also unhealthy and miserable. Furthermore, an outbreak of cholera 83 in Egypt directed the local states in the Ottoman Empire to take some protective measures against the spread of the disease. Thus, the Ottoman government declared its primary duty to make the temporary settlements less populous. 84
Two documents in the archives contain the quantitative data on the process of the refugees’ eviction from the temporary settlements. According to the document of July 1883, a total of 2,501 refugees who wanted to stay in the Ottoman capital were evicted from the temporary settlements in various locations.
85
The next massive eviction is documented in August 1883. According to a table in this document, ultimately 2,314 refugees were evicted from the temporary settlements in the Beyazıt, Fatih, Beşiktaş, Üsküdar, and Eyüp branches of the Commission of Refugees.
86
Only the refugees waiting for transportation to the country were staying in these locations and the eviction of the rest, including 1,041 refugees registered in the record book dated 1883 in ᶜAḳarāt-ı
The evicted refugees were not wealthy ones. Buying or renting a house on the formal housing markets would have been an extreme burden on their budget. However, the only way to retain their presence in the city and to subsist on the professions they were familiar with was the declaration of an assumed financial sufficiency for this.
The Production of Teneke Mahalles
The state had given the evicted refugees the option of being settled in the country, but since staying in the capital was their own decision, they were given permission to stay under the condition that they would buy or rent dwellings legally and that the state would not support them during the implementation of this decision. It is possible to learn what happened soon after the eviction from the archival documents, record books, and oral records.
Government officials prepared record books in 1888, 88 1892, 89 1901, 90 and 1904 91 to establish the socioeconomic profile of the settlers on Balmumcu Farm as well as their settlement history. Balmumcu Farm was located on a territory of 5,051 dönüm (approximately 1,248 acres), 92 which today is in the Şişli 93 and Beşiktaş 94 districts. Farms in the Ottoman Empire belonged to the private treasury of the Ottoman Sultan (Ḫazīne-i Hāṣṣa), foundations (waqf), or to individuals. Individual family units had tenure of a small piece of land that they cultivated on farms belonging to sultans or foundations established by the dynasty. However, on farms belonging to individuals who were generally members of the administrative elite with titles such as bey, paşa, or ağa, seasonal or permanent workers were employed. 95 Balmumcu Farm belonged to the private treasury of Ottoman Sultan 96 and was accordingly cultivated by renter family units. There are many entries in the record books that allow us to trace the trajectories of evicted refugees: for instance, one is Lovechian (Lofçalı) 97 Abdullah and his seven fellow families (Map 1), who were the earliest founders of Nişantaşı 98 —Taşocağı Teneke Mahallesi (Map 2).
Lovech (Lofça).
Mentioned Teneke Mahalles.
Nişantaşı-Teşvikiye was among the rising new settlements of modernizing Ottoman Istanbul. An area of 174 dönüm (approximately forty-three acres) in the Nişantaşı location was separated from Balmumcu Farm to establish a new neighborhood for the ruling elites. 99 While the formal establishment dated 1859, 100 it became densely populated by the elites during the reign of Abdulhamid II (1876-1908). 101 The most privileged portion of the local elites inhabited the neighborhood during the Republican era, and its image as a highly prestigious locality has persisted up to now. 102 Surprisingly, the distance between Nişantaşı and the Teneke Mahallesi was no more than 400 meters.
A comparison between the record book dated 1883 and subsequent records indicates that the teneke mahalle founders were staying in ᶜAḳarāt-ı
Nişantaşı in the middle nineteenth century.
Nişantaşı Teneke Mahallesi in 1920s.
Balmumcu Farm, in general, was agricultural land and renters were using the pieces of land for that purpose. However, the Lovechian refugees were not agriculturalists but porters (ḥammāl). 111 They used the land as a residential area instead of as a means of production, constructing eight houses on it. Although they were paying yearly to the administration of Balmumcu Farm following the legal procedure, 112 they had not applied to get permission for the construction of their dwellings from the fourth municipal area. 113
The housing regulations in the Ottoman Empire have a long history, and in the second half of the nineteenth century, according to these regulations, only dwellings meeting the required conditions would be given permission (ruḫṣat). 114 According to a regulation dated 1863, before the construction of a dwelling, the owner had to pay the required taxes, and for this, he would be given deeds. 115 Only the buildings constructed on agricultural land for occupational reasons such as barns or lodges would be given exemption from the housing taxes. 116 Although the Lovechian refugees rented a piece of agricultural land, they were not farming it but instead built their residences on it without paying housing taxes. Their decision was realistic considering their financial situation and the average level of prices in the formal housing market. According to a regulation dated 1889, the owner of dwellings at a price of fewer than 5000 ġurus had an exemption from the garbage collection tax, in that they were considered as entirely helpless (ᶜaceze). 117 Thus, while the eight Lovechian households would have to pay at least 40,000 gurus for the modest houses in the formal housing market of the city, they succeeded in reducing the overall costs to an insignificant level. 118
Although there is no apparent sign of their self-identification, relatively recent records, such as the occasional mention of the settlement in novels, travelogs, short stories, and oral testimonies, reveal that the surrounding population had called them “Gypsy” (Ḳibṭī or Çiñgene) since the establishment of the settlement. 119
Two Armenians, 120 named Oseb (Hovsep’) 121 and Kiġorḳ (Gevork-Kevork), 122 applied to the government with a petition (ᶜarż-ı ḫāl [arzuhal]) 123 in 1889, demanding the demolition of shacks on their territory in Göztepe Kireç ocaġı in Nerdubān (Merdiven). 124 Göztepe, which located by the Marmara coast on the Asian side of Istanbul, was one of the newly developing residential zones with a high concentration of mansions or kiosks housing the ruling elites and wealthy Europeans. 125 According to the documents dated 1889, the legal owner of Nerdubān village was the Sulṭān 126 Cāmiᶜi Vaḳfi. 127 Although further research is needed for clarification, Oseb (Hovsep’) and Kiġorḳ (Gevork-Kevork) probably had bought the usufruct of the territory applying to long-term leasing procedures of Ottoman “waqf” lands (such as icāreteyn or muḳāṭaᶜa) and saw the shack invasion as the violation of their legal rights. 128
The shacks in Göztepe had been constructed by a group of refugees, who refused to move to another place. 129 They had not sought any legal permission for settling on the land. While they were welcomed temporarily in various mansions around, they found this land unoccupied, and without investigating whether it was possessed or not, they built their shacks on it. According to a record book dated 1892 regarding the shacks all around the city, the shack dwellers in Göztepe were refugee draymen (yük arabacısı) and agricultural workers (rencber) who had migrated from Malko Tarnovo 130 (Tırnova). 131 Shortly after the construction of the earliest shacks, other people came, looking for a free opportunity for housing. 132 The recent records indicate that the settlement remained for a long time and the new refugees who arrived in the capital following the Balkan Wars (1912-1913) also settled in this place (Map 5). 133
Malko Tarnovo.
In the fall of 1889, a group of residents living in Kadırga, Kumkapı, 134 one of the oldest localities in the intramural Istanbul, sent a petition (ᶜarż-ı ḫāl [arzuhal]) to the government complaining about the refugees who constructed shacks in their neighborhood. The shacks were built around Ḳule-i Zemīn, 135 an Ottoman expression for the surface on and around the dilapidated or almost collapsed city walls 136 and the railway line. 137 The construction of the railway line, which required annexation and demolishment of more than 1,000 buildings between Sirkeci and Çatalca 138 between the years 1869 to 1872, 139 divided the land in Kadırga, Kumkapı and provided a spatial gap between the line and the ramparts (Map 6). As the walls lost their prominence for the defense of city due to the innovations in war technology, in the second half of nineteenth century, the state intended to demolish or sell (furūḫt) the tenure of the land around the walls, particularly in the places with a commercial prominence such as Galata demanding an affordable cash amount (muᶜaccele-i munāsibe) and thus attempted to regulate the use of that space. 140 However, the land between railway line and the wall in Kadırga, Kumkapı was too marginal even for the most adventurous investors as the regulation for railways dated 1867 prohibited the construction of buildings in five arşın (approximately three meters) and location of combustible materials such as straw or grass in twenty arşın (approximately sixteen meters) from the line (Figure 3 and Map 6). 141
Kumkapı Teneke Mahallesi. 142
Kumkapı Teneke Mahallesi in the 1920s. 143
The petitioner locals were discontented because of the inappropriate (uygunsuz) behavior of the shack dwellers and requested the government to evict them. 144 The refugees sent their petition in response to the claims. They explained that they were just twenty-five refugee households and that they had been living in a very appropriate way (kemāl-i ādāb). However, it was a few Tatar refugees in their midst whose uygunsuz behaviors created the trouble, not themselves. 145 Thus, they raised a counterargument on the same moral basis and victimized others to save themselves. According to the record book dated 1892, there were twenty-three refugee households in the neighborhood, and the household heads were working as porters (hammāl), coachmen (yük arabacısı), cart drivers (araba sürücüsü), fishers, grinders, shoe-repairers, bath attendants (hammāmda nāṭır), servants (ḫidmetçi [hizmetçi]), rag pickers (pāçāvracı), and so on. 146 The most numerous subgroup of the refugees were from related kazas and towns of Plovdiv-Bulgaria such as Chirpan (5), 147 Haskovo (1), 148 and Plovdiv center (1). Although relatively small in number, families from Varna (3), 149 Lovech (4), and Karnobat (2) 150 had constituted groups. The rest were individual family units from Sofia-BG (1), Malko Tarnovo-BG (1), Vidin-BG (1), Babadag-Romania (1), 151 Edirne-Turkey (1), 152 Oryahovo (Rahova) (1), and Crimea (1), for whom the settlement of the bigger groups had probably made the locality attractive (the numbers in parentheses refer to households originated from the given location). The founders are mentioned as “Gypsies” in the oral testimonies, although no evidence is present for their self-identification (Map 7). 153
The origins, Kumkapı settlement.
The cases mentioned above are crucial to understanding the sociospatial phenomenon of teneke mahalles initially built by refugees as small shack clusters. Kumkapı Teneke Mahallesi was located on the empty lot between the railway and decayed ramparts, which constituted a sociospatial gap in one of the ancient districts of historical peninsula. Although the settlements in Nişantaşı and Göztepe were quite far from the historical center, they positioned themselves around the newly developing centers with a high concentration of the rising elites. Therefore, like inhabitants of the Corralones in Peru, 154 the Ciudade perdidas in Mexico City, 155 and the slums in India, 156 the founders of teneke mahalles considered the spatial proximity to the present central locations, where the job opportunities were relatively higher than in the more peripheral ones.
Considering their resources and external conditions, the inhabitants of teneke mahalles obtained their land in various ways. While the founders of Nişantaşı Teneke Mahallesi did not follow the new urban regulations for dwelling construction, they somehow obtained the consent of the Balmumcu Farm administration and paid an annual tax for the land, and thus they manipulated the legal gaps or uncertainties to create a basis of justification for themselves. However, the inhabitants of the settlements in Göztepe and Kumkapı occupied the land they used without any legal title and depended on the image as refugees and war veteran Muslims to prevent any legal action for evicting them. According to Soliman, 157 semi-informal housing dwellers in Egypt have a kind of tenure and get formal permission for land, but the conditions of housing do not conform formal regulations, and squatters 158 settle on land without having any legal title. It is reasonable to argue that teneke mahalle founders adopted both semi-informal and squatter strategies in the late-Ottoman era.
The structural characteristics of the refugee shacks deserve special attention. According to Lloyd, any waste that is functional for insulation is the primary construction material for the generally small-sized inner-city shacks in the Third World. 159 This description fits for teneke mahalles as well. However, they were never homogeneous, considering the construction materials and their physical appearance. The founders of the shack clusters by the railway from Ahırkapı to Yedikule, including the one mentioned above in Kadırga, utilized any waste, including old gasoline tins for construction. 160 The difficulty of obtaining mainstream construction materials due to the financial inadequacy of the evicted refugees had forced them to find unorthodox means for dwelling construction. 161 However, whenever they found some way to obtain mainstream construction materials, they never hesitated to utilize them for construction. The eight dwellings of Lovechian refugees were single-floor houses but still constructed out of wood (ahşap). 162 During the reign of Abdulhamid II (1876-1908), many mansions were built around Nişantaşı. 163 For example, the construction of the mansion of Hayreddin Paşa began in 1878, four years before the formation of Lovechian Refugees’ Neighborhood. The mansion was a magnificent wooden palace with thirty-four rooms. 164 Although further research might result in more accurate results, it is possible to assume that the waste wood left from the construction of such mansions could have been collected and utilized as construction material by the refugees.
The layout of teneke mahalles makes them conspicuous in an urban environment that is primarily comprised of formal settlements. Due to the lack of regular intervals between shack clusters and the irregular size of the dwellings, it is not hard to notice the teneke mahalle on the Pervititche insurance map that reflects northern Nişantaşı, which was founded by the state administration, taking into consideration the newly developing formal regulations (Map 4). Teneke mahalles that emerged in hybrid localities (historic quarters in which both the traditional and formal, or regularized urban patterns cohabit such as Kumkapı) 165 are less apparent in visual representations but never invisible. Both the size and position of dwellings still function to distinguish the formal-traditional mixture in quadrilaterals from the informal (see circles on Map 6).
Although the evicted refugees constructed the earliest shacks, the local poor perceived the formation of teneke mahalles as an opportunity for free or cheap housing. According to Portes, the most common pattern of slum formation is the construction of a few shacks by the family units, and then when the threat of eviction is over, others participate, filling the lot with newer ones. 166 The formation of teneke mahalles fits this scheme. A diverse community of non-refugee poor constructed their shacks around the refugee encampments according to the sociospatial features and the economic advantages provided by the location. This process triggered the transformation of the perception of the settlements from refugee shelters to permanent and heterogeneous neighborhoods.
Kumkapı had been a historic settlement for Armenian and, to a lesser degree, Greek subjects of the Ottoman Empire. Poor and middle-class Armenians concentrated in the various parts of the location. The impoverished local Christians built some shacks very near to the refugee settlement on and near the decayed ramparts of Kadırga, on land that was between the refugee settlement and the railway. In 1891, one of the local Armenian churches demanded ownership of the land and the parishioners applied to the government for the demolition of the dwellings.
167
According to the record book dated 1892, there were twenty-seven Christian households. Twenty-six of them were Armenians, twenty-one of which were born in Istanbul, and seven from Anatolian towns such as Van or Erzincan. There was just one Greek family among them. Like the refugees, they subsisted on petty trades and small-sized craftsmanship.
168
An unexpected testimony from late 1880s on the railway construction implies how the urgent need for housing directed them to the shacks: For several miles the line passes through Stambul, skirting the Sea of Marmora, and presenting lovely peeps at classic walls and exquisite scenery; but it is sad to see the hovels on either side—skin huts, wooden cabins, and dilapidated tenements, some of them inhabited by refugees from Bulgaria, others by those who once owned comfortable homes on this very site, which were demolished at the making of the line.
169
The Lovechian refugees’ settlement became a center of attention for the other refugees who were similarly suffering from the lack of permanent housing opportunities. It is possible to compare the data concerning the residents in Taşocağı registered in the record books dated 1888, 1892, 1901, and 1904. There were seventeen refugee families from different cities, which are in Bulgaria today, besides the eight Lovechian founders in 1888. The total number of refugee families reached forty-four in 1892. By 1904, their number had increased to eighty-three.
Furthermore, there were also non-Balkanian families among the dwellers, and the most numerous sub-category of them in 1904 were twenty Kurdish families. Most of them were from Şirvan-Siirt, and they constituted the second most numerous group among the dwellers in Taşocağı, while the total number of the households in the location was 186. The agricultural lands around the Balmumcu Farm provided a significant opportunity for waged employment for the refugees and also for the Kurds. There were also some low-ranking officials among residents of the Taşocağı shacks, as the mansions, palaces, and the government institutions around were their workplaces.
Since the massive eviction of refugees from free temporary settlements in 1883, the dwellings constructed out of any waste materials spread all around the city. In 1892, the government researched the shack dwellers but also other residents such as those who inhabited the poorly conditioned, cheapest inns (han), and published the results in a record book. According to the results, there were almost 1,000 shacks all around the city, the historical peninsula, and suburbs (dersaādet ve bilād-ı
The Development of the Idiom Teneke Mahalle
The Meclis-i Maḫṣūṣ, 174 in a meeting dated August 17, 1892, decided to conduct a comprehensive investigation of the shacks all around the city. The refugees who engaged in crafts or trades and thus could be assumed able to buy or rent their dwellings would be separated from the others and forced to abandon their shacks and find more appropriate housing. The others, consisting of widows, orphans, or desperate, helpless ones (bīkes), needed the care of the government and so would be a financial burden on the budget. The first thing to do was to determine the size of their population, locations, and the number of shacks where only miserable ones (ᶜaceze) stayed. 175 It was up to the local municipalities to conduct the investigation and to prepare a record book of the details. 176
The record book, including the records of the shacks from the ten districts (dāire-i belediyye) of the inner city and suburbs (Dersaādet ve bilād-ı
In March 1893, an imperial decree (irāde-i
The idiom teneke mahalle, registered for the first time in the record book dated 1892 for the shack clusters in Kumkapı, spread to a wider area by the end of last decade of nineteenth century. The settlement in Nişantaşı, Taşocağı, which had been founded by the eight Lovechian refugees, turned into a massive cluster of 168 shacks by 1901, 180 was mentioned as a teneke mahallesi in a document dated 1899. 181 Similarly, there was another settlement denominated with the same term near Pera, Elmadağ Teneke Mahallesi, where the government initiated a public circumcision campaign for needy children in the same year. 182
Relatively, recent oral records indicate the prevalence of teneke mahalles. The shack cluster in Feriköy, which consisted of fifty-four dwellings, according to the record book dated 1892, was mentioned as a teneke mahalle in one of the travel writings of Kaygılı in 1931. 183 Almost a decade later, there would be an eviction, which the press announced to the public as the demolishment of the teneke mahallesi in Feriköy. 184 There are also some examples in which authors considered teneke mahalles as a prevalent sociospatial phenomenon. A travelog by Ahmet in 1939 is among most comprehensive of them. According to the author, in each locality, there were teneke evs, the dwellings constructed out of tins, as small clusters or single shacks, and teneke mahalles, more visible and densely populated clusters, in many different parts of the city. The conditions of the teneke mahallesi in Kasımpaşa, between Tophane and Kalyoncu Kulluğu, around Fatih and by the beginning of the railway were heart-rending. Someone traveling around these places could forget that he was in Istanbul. The traditions, foods, and life of teneke mahalle dwellers were entirely different from the ordinary citizens. 185
Although the author mentioned above implied a fundamental distinction between the inhabitants of teneke mahalles and other locals, the basis of this differentiation is uncertain in the text. However, there are other observers, who emphasized this point more frankly. Turkish novelist, Refik Halit Karay, mentioned Nişantaşı Teneke Mahallesi of the 1910s as a “Gypsy” Quarter (Çingene Mahallesi) in one of his most famous novels. 186 Similarly, an interviewee whose testimony reflects the perceptions about the locality shared by the wealthy residents of Nişantaşı before the 1950s indicated the same point: “That place completely belonged to the poor. What we call a teneke mahallesi. More precisely, completely, teneke mahalle, is a place where Çingenes live.” 187 Another interviewee, a local low-middle-class Armenian in Kumkapı, does not hesitate to express how his community perceives teneke mahallesi in Kumkapı: “When we say ‘teneke mahallesi,’ we mean largely Romen citizens (‘Gypsies’) 188 live there . . .” 189
The examples above indicate that the external observers have intended to exaggerate the presence of the “Gypsy” element among the founder refugees and preferred to ignore the non-“Gypsy” and non-refugee inhabitants of teneke mahalles to the extent that they frequently equate teneke mahalles with purely “Gypsy” quarters.
Although the idiom teneke mahallesi was first documented in Istanbul, it did not take long for people in some of the other Ottoman (and later Republican cities) to refer to shack clusters constructed out of waste as such. For example, there was a settlement called teneke mahalle in Kavala Town of Salonica province in the first quarter of the twentieth century. 190 Teneke mahalle also became a popular term for newly developing informal settlements in Altındağ, Ankara, 191 Tepecik, İzmir, 192 and Canik, Samsun 193 in the first half of the twentieth century.
Conclusion
The modernizing Ottoman state in the nineteenth century developed formal frames for urbanization modeled on Western cities and therefore reinvented urban formality in a given local context. While some parts of the Ottoman capital fit the requirements of the new era, a considerable portion of the urban fabric failed to adopt to ongoing transformation and underwent a process of decay with the migration of relatively wealthy inhabitants. Coexistence of the newly developing localities that conformed to the formal regulations and the deteriorating traditional neighborhoods was typical for the nineteenth-century urban environment. However, those refugees with the least resources who had been forced to leave their former land in Bulgaria and Romania by the turbulence following the 1877-1878 war, and who were neither able to find a place for themselves in the traditional urban fabric nor obtain housing in accordance with newly developing formal frames, developed a new residential category, neither formal nor traditional, but informal: teneke mahalles.
The majority of the refugees mobilized by the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-1878 settled on empty agricultural lands in the country or were allowed to stay in the capital and other cities under the condition that they would find an appropriate or formal path to housing with their own resources. The rest were still in the temporary settlements, such as public buildings, private mansions, mosques, and madrasahs.
They were partly constituted of Muslim “Gypsies” and partly from the most impoverished of other Muslim Ottoman subjects. They were neither agriculturalists nor were they wealthy enough to buy or rent housing formally. Furthermore, their professions, such as coachman or porter, required them to be in the central locations of the urban environment. However, the government was not willing to allow them to remain in the free housing situation forever and evicted a few thousand refugees from the temporary settlements in 1883. Then they created a practical solution for housing: they would construct their dwellings out of waste general and mainly, gasoline tins, on the decaying city ramparts, by railways; on owned but empty lands without any legal permission; or on public lands manipulating legal gaps. Therefore, they employed either semi-informal or squatter strategies considering their resources and the external conditions surrounding them. Formation of these informal settlements was also an opportunity for the local poor.
Teneke mahalles have never constituted as big a portion of the urban fabric as gecekondus. However, this does not mean that they do not deserve scholarly attention. Before the formation of gecekondus, they were the actual informal settlements that welcomed the most disadvantaged strata of the urban poor, whether refugee or local. The invention and the popularity of the term teneke mahalle, with its reference to tin as main construction material, was itself an essential indicator of the fact that the state and ordinary Ottoman subjects perceived their presence as a significant urban issue. According to the archival records, it was the shack clusters in Kadırga, Kumkapı that the term first denominated. However, the anonymous authors of the archival documents mentioned the settlements in Taşocağı, Nişantaşı, and Elmadağ, Pera as teneke mahalle at the end of nineteenth century. In a period of no more than forty years, many locations all around Istanbul and other Ottoman and early Republican cities joined the list of teneke mahalles.
The inhabitants of surrounding settlements often preferred a one-sided representation of teneke mahalle dwellers as “Gypsies” instead of a diverse agglomeration of the most disadvantaged refugees, including Muslim “Gypsies” and impoverished locals. Thus, the term teneke mahalle frequently became synonymous with the “Gypsy” quarter. However, although “Gypsies,” whom the surrounding population intended to denominate as Çingene or Ḳıbṭī, have been present among the founder refugees or the inhabitants of teneke mahalles, the opportunity of accessible and affordable housing for the poorest citizens provided by teneke mahalles has never been confined to “Gypsies.”
Footnotes
Acknowledgements
The first version of this article was presented at the workshop, Neighborhoods at Times of Change and Crisis on May 17-18, 2018. I appreciate Nazan Maksudyan and Hilal Alkan for their kind invitation. I am grateful to the anonymous reviewers for all their remarks. Finally, I would like to thank Lynne Giallombardo and Editage (
) for English language editing.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.