Kurtuluş/ταταύλα
- yasmineakaki
- Jul 17, 2023
- 5 min read
Updated: Aug 2
Kurtuluş, formerly known as Tatavla (ταταύλα), is a neighborhood in the Şişli district of Istanbul, bordered by Beyoğlu in the South. The neighborhood was a bustling example of nineteenth and twentieth-century industrialization and urban life while simultaneously boasting a rural and agricultural landscape, as it remained a suburb on the outskirts of the city into the twentieth century.
The dual nature of the neighborhood is also reflected in its urban planning, with the neighborhood divided between the older quarter with its organic sprawl of streets and gardens surrounding the Hagios Dimitrios (Άγιος Δημήτριος) Church, and the newer portion northeast of the old quarter developed in the nineteenth century, reflecting a European-style grid-like street plan. The demographics of Tatavla were mostly poor and working-class Greeks, with many of its inhabitants working in the local shipyard, taverns, and in handicrafts until the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, when wealthier Greeks working in banking, commerce, and education began to move into the edges of the neighborhood.
Settlement in the region predated Ottoman conquest, founded around the Hagio Athanasios (Άγιος Αθανάσιος) church. Prior to the sixteenth century, the neighborhood was known as Kersohori due to the abundance of cherry trees in the area. Under the reign of Sultan Suleiman, the original Hagio Dimitrios church in the neighboring Kasımpaşa was converted into a mosque. Consequently, the Hagios Athanasios church became the Hagio Dimitrios church, and its parish transferred to what would become Kurtuluş. The open pastures of the neighborhood had previously been major grazing lands for Genoese horses whose stables gave a new name to the neighborhood: Tatavla.
The Greek population of Tatavla was composed mostly of sailors and pirates who had been taken as prisoners of war to work in the Kasimpaşa shipyard following the empire's significant push into the Mediterranean under Sultan Suleiman. Many of these shipyard workers elected to stay in the city after release, settling in Tatavla. Another portion of the Greek population of Tatavla was made up of migrants from the island of Chios or the Peloponnese. Outside of the Greek community, a strong Jewish and Armenian presence was maintained in the neighborhood, having migrated from Anatolia or other parts of the city. The neighborhood benefited from a fair amount of legal autonomy, as there was no state police force presence in Tatavla. This stemmed from it being under the protection of the Kaptan-ı Derya (Chief Admiral) until 1821, when it was revoked due to the worsening Ottoman-Greek relationships before and during the Greek War of Independence (1821-32).
Tatavla was a working-class neighborhood with a reputation for its liveliness, nightlife, and organized crime. It was famous for its Baklahorani carnival, celebrated on Clean Monday, the Monday before Lent, by the Greek Orthodox community. It was celebrated until 1943 when it was banned. The festival truly cemented itself into the culture of the neighborhood in the second half of the nineteenth century, with street celebrations and parades growing to massive proportions. The festivities would begin with masked performers arriving from Galata-Pera in a large procession of musicians, group performances, and dancers that attracted audiences from other neighborhoods in the region.
The festival drew not only Greek audiences but also ethnic groups, especially lower and middle-class spectators. The procession would then converge at the Hagios Dimitrios Church, where the carnival would continue for three days in the square across the church. With the carnival’s visibility came an increasingly negative association with the festival and heightened police surveillance. In the twentieth century, due to worsening conditions for Greeks in Istanbul, the festival disappeared altogether from the public sphere, although private, at-home celebrations continued.
Some notable residents of the neighborhood include Hiristo Anastadiyadis, a gang leader and murderer accused of killing 21 people, Basil Zaharoff, a representative of the arms manufacturer Vickers’ referred to as the “Mystery Man of Europe” and “Merchant of Death”, and notable athletes associated with Herakles Sports Club of Tatavla: Georgios and Nikolaos Alimbrandis (gold medalists in the 1906 Intercalated Olympic Games in Athens), Diyonis Sakolakis (the captain of its 1936 national basketball team), Dimitri Zafiroğlu (first Turkish shot-put champion), and Naris Halepoğlu, (Turkey’s leading Olympian in 1940s and 1950s). The Heraklis Gymnastics Club was founded in 1896 and is often viewed as the birthplace of athleticism in Turkey.
Beyond the Herakles Sports Club, another major landmark is the Rum School of Tatavla, opening in 1896 and running until 2003. The school was one of the more prominent Greek schools in the city and was considered to be in better condition than many of its neighboring counterparts. The main churches of the neighborhood are the Hagios Dimitrios Church located on its tallest hill, and the Hagios Athanasios. The Hagios Dimitrios Church was transferred to the original structure of the Hagios Athanasios in the sixteenth century. A new church dedicated to Hagios Athanasios was constructed in 1885 and was one of the first domed churches built in the empire after the Tanzimat Reforms.
The official renaming from Tatavla to Kurtuluş - Turkish for liberation - occurred after a fire swept through the neighborhood in 1929, destroying 207 houses. The name change was a way to mark the rebuilding of the neighborhood as well as to remove its Greek association in the new Turkish nationalist era. Kurtuluş remained a mostly Greek neighborhood with a population reaching 20,000 until the 1955 Pogroms, which forced most of its Greek residents to leave Turkey.
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