The making of a national city: From Mezre to Elaziğ

Abstract

This chapter tells the story of an imperial town’s transformation into a national city. It will start with the emergence of Mezre as a government suburb in proximity to Harput in the nineteenth century. With its Armenian majority, Mezre was the product of a unique combination of bourgeois suburbanization with military authority. Then, the nationalization of the town in the early twentieth century is laid out, by visiting key events in the life of the town, like the Armenian deportations, the war of independence, the Sheikh Said Rebellion and Operation Dersim. Last, the chapter uncovers the process of modernizing and ideologizing of the urban space: The symbolic reconstruction of the town centre in the 1930s will be followed by the abandonment in the 1940s, nostalgia for the old town in the 1950s and creative destruction for tourism in the 1960s. Conceptually, the chapter will challenge the top-down perspective in the existing literature and demonstrate the ebb and flow in the process of nationalization and modernization. Extensively using local sources, it will show the mostly reluctant attitude of the local elite and the largely failed attempts of national homogenization.