Jews in Istanbul have learned and lost languages, moved between neighborhoods, emigrated from and returned to live in a city which itself has undergone major economic, architectural and population transformations. Istanbul's Jewish community has survived the changing political frameworks of the Byzantine and Ottoman Empires and the creation of the Turkish Republic. This dissertation investigates the historically changing definitions of Turkish-Jewish identity, assimilation and cultural citizenship.; In what reference book might we locate a definition of the Jews of Istanbul? Given the history of heteroglossia exhibited by the Jewish community in this multitudinous city, this study proposes that its members have built an encyclopedic knowledge of culturally significant (and, at times, oppositional) references which allow them to negotiate social and political change. Anthropological discussions of transnationalism, diaspora and cultural citizenship assume a flexible subject; however, despite many rich descriptions of these subjects and their surroundings, less attention has been given to the logic underlying the way in which subjects maintain such flexibility. Based on two years of ethnographic and archival research (2002--4), this dissertation maps the logic of Turkish-Jewish culture as it surfaces in speech, architecture and other symbolic domains. Through ethnographic description, text analysis and archival research, this account collects ephemera, stories and images from the lives of Jews in Istanbul in the beginning of the 21st century. The fragments, when assembled together as ethnography, reveal a collective whose survival relies on an ability to function within and between various frames of reference arranged through relations of intimacy and power.
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