Mehmet Kentel wins the OTSA Yavuz Sezer Prize
Mehmet Kentel has been named co-winner of the prize, which is given out yearly by the Ottoman and Turkish Studies Association, for his article “Ruin and Knowledge in Pera: Discovering Istanbul’s Genoese Heritage at the Moment of Its Destruction,” which was published in the fortieth-anniversary volume of the prestigious journal Muqarnas.
The article is on the destruction of Galata district’s medieval fortifications in the second half of the nineteenth century, which were originally constructed by Genoese settlers in successive stages, and were altered and reutilized in the Ottoman period. Through a meticulous study of late Ottoman archival and narrative sources, Dr. Kentel demonstrates that the moment of the destruction of the medieval fabric of Galata was also an occasion for initiating a long-lasting scholarly and public conversation about the district’s urban past. In a nuanced and well-structured account, he elucidates the ways in which the remaking of Galata as an international port district was informed by a complex dynamics of urban transformation involving processes of urban governance, land development, local heritage initiatives, scholarly production, as well as displacement and dispossession. Dr. Kentel’s minutely historical assessment also carries topical relevance as it unravels the very origins of resilient and still enduring historical narratives about Galata’s unique heritage and its cosmopolitan past. With the original, revisionary insights it provides, Dr. Kentel’s work stands as a major intervention to the study of Istanbul’s urban past and promises to be a primary reference work for future studies on nineteenth-century urban transformations.
The winning article can be found here.
(Text by the Ottoman and Turkish Studies Association)