Tatavla Conflagration, 1929 and Tatavla “Liberation”

Aytek Soner Alpan is observing the way Turkish nationalism weaponised the conflagration that turned into ashes an entire neighborhood through his study Tatavla Conflagration, 1929 and Tatavla “Liberation”. Debating the multidimensional reflections of the fact that Tatavla, a place fully related to its Greek identity, was considered a threat for the national story, Alpan reveals that the fire was considered as a chance for the Turkification policy.
In the first chapter called “How was Tatavla saved”, Alpan presents the process of stigmatization of the neighborhood as “the national other” with the mobilization of the national memory’s codes after the fire and the change of the name from Tatavla to Kurtulus.
However, in the second chapter called “Community’s sexual imagination”, Alpan is investigating the way Tatavla enters the dominant national identity’s imagination from the relationship between nationalism and sexuality through a short story that was published a few months after the conflagration.