Shared Activities, Increased Visibility, and Communal Boundaries: Physical Culture in Late Ottoman Istanbul’s Theatres, Gardens, and Clubs

During the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, the emergence of new social venues and the improvement of public transportation in urban centers throughout the Ottoman Empire significantly expanded the public sphere and indelibly altered the cultural, social, and political landscape of cities. Three spaces in particular, theatres, gardens, and clubs, served as sites in which Muslim, Christian, and Jewish inhabitants of Istanbul created and participated in shared activities, like athletic exhibitions and competitions. This paper explores how these venues and shared activities led to increased levels of public visibility and facilitated the reinscription and erosion of communal divisions separating Muslims, Christians, and Jews in Istanbul.

The argument advanced is based on multi-lingual archival research, and is part of a broader doctoral dissertation project, which examines the interconnection of national and imperial identity, the body, masculinity, and nation building through the lens of a shared physical culture in late Ottoman Istanbul. This paper seeks to accomplish two goals: first, to explore how athletic competitions and exhibitions in novel urban spaces enabled Ottoman subjects to enter the public sphere; second, to demonstrate how this increased visibility reconfigured traditional conceptions of communal, national, and imperial identity and produced communal anxieties. The paper will draw from a diverse array of sources in Ottoman, Turkish, Armenian, French, German, and English from a number of private and public archives. These sources include journals, newspapers, memoirs, and vernacular photographs.