Search

If it is claimed that, socially and architecturally, Istanbul has been getting uglier by the day, it should be noted that one of critical breakpoints of the deformation process was the deportation event between Turkey and Greece in the 1960s. That resulted in profound and essential changes in the urban, social and demographical form of Istanbul, and is dealt with in this paper through a film, Politiki Kouzina (A Touch of Spice, 2003). This film that is about a Greek family who were deported from Istanbul and moved to Athens by virtue of some political disagreements during the first years of the 1960s, deals with this change by examining the deportation process which catalysed the large-scale demographic and cultural transformation which has ethnically made Istanbul more homogenous and monophonic. The deportation, which is a reflection of the nation-oriented State, 'disinfected' Constantinople of strangers and destroyed a multi-coloured notion of the city. As a result of the deportation, the ethnic Greek population of Istanbul was reduced from 135,000 to a mere 7,000. This situation can be accepted as being one of the most influential events to affect the urban culture of contemporary Istanbul. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]