FROM “PORT CITY” TO “CITY WITH PORT”: URBAN POLITICS AND TRANSFORMATION OF URBAN SPACE IN INEBOLU FROM 19TH CENTURY TO 20TH CENTURY

Abstract

The Tanzimat (reforms) in the Ottoman Empire, modernization efforts and intensification of trade relations clearly demonstrated its effects in port cities, which are areas of trade and cosmopolitanism, as of the first half of the nineteenth century. These effects emerged as transformations in urban space and new urban uses. As of the early 20th century, the ideal of creating a new nation-state with changing governance concept brought again significant spatial changes for cosmopolitan port cities. This article examined the interventions made from nineteenth century to twentieth century the port cities and the change in urban identities with a historical viewpoint via Inebolu, which is a port city in the Western Black Sea. As a result of historical reviews, it was observed that public space in Inebolu changed in stages. It was determined that modernist projects shaped by nation-state policies broke the city-port relationship in Inebolu especially in twentieth century, and Inebolu was transformed from a “port city” to “a city with port”. This determination was conceptualized as a modernist attack on the original tissue.