Beyond Istanbul's ‘Laz Underworld’: Ottoman Paramilitarism and the Rise of Turkish Organised Crime, 1908–1950

2010 ◽  
Vol 19 (3) ◽  
pp. 215-230 ◽  
Author(s):  
RYAN GINGERAS
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Organized Crime ◽  
Organised Crime ◽  
Drug Trade ◽  
General Survey ◽  
Turkish Republic ◽  
Global Context ◽  
History Of ◽  
Imperial Politics ◽  
Modern Turkey

AbstractAlthough the Turkish mafia is increasingly recognised as a powerful force in the ongoing trade in weapons, narcotics and people in Europe and beyond, there are few critical histories of organised crime's origins in Turkey. Rather than present some pedantic general survey of the history of organized crime in modern Turkey, this essay attempts to address two broader critical points of departure. First, how did Anatolia's journey from imperial to republican rule impact, and how was it impacted by, criminal gangs? Second, how do we situate the experience of modern gangs in Turkey in a global context? In attempting to answer these questions, this paper looks at the development of criminal syndicates among Laz migrants in the greater Istanbul area during the first half of the twentieth century. The case of the Laz shows particularly how war, migration, imperial politics, urbanisation and the rise of the international drug trade shaped the parallel development of organised crime and the nascent Turkish Republic.

A Brief History of the Underworld and Organized Crime, c. 1750–1950

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Heather Shore
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Organized Crime ◽  
North American ◽  
Criminal Activity ◽  
Criminal Organization ◽  
Street Gangs ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
History Of

This chapter explores the evolution of concepts and definitions relating to criminal organization since 1750. Terms such as the “underworld,” “organized crime,” and “professional crime” have increasingly become part of the criminal justice lexicon in the modern period. However, while there has been a strong tradition of criminological and sociological investigation into the structures and hierarchies of syndicated crime and street gangs in the first half of the twentieth century, much of this work has been dominated and implicitly shaped by North American contexts. The hidden nature of such criminal activity means that most attention has been paid to those offenders whose recidivism and notoriety brought them into public disrepute. Thus, historians’ investigations into organized crime have been characteristically limited. This chapter provides a broader overview of the historical chronologies and geographies of the “underworld” and explores the key historical studies into the organization of crime in the modern period.

Constitutional Revolutions and State Formations in Comparison

2019 ◽  
pp. 67-89
Author(s):  
Nader Sohrabi
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Ottoman Empire ◽  
Political Development ◽  
State Building ◽  
The Political ◽  
Building Projects ◽  
History Of ◽  
Similarities And Differences ◽  
Modern Turkey ◽  
Constitutional Revolution

The history of both modern Turkey and modern Iran have often been told through their founding figures, Atatürk and Reza Shah, whose state-building projects are often assumed to have been similar. This chapter compares the Young Turk Revolution in the Ottoman Empire of 1908 with the Constitutional Revolution in Iran in 1906 to point to both similarities and differences in the trajectories of these two countries in the early twentieth century. Both revolutions, it is argued, were foundational moments for the political development and processes of each country and are key to understanding the context in which Atatürk and Reza Shah emerged.

Working the Kodak Zone

2018 ◽  
Vol 2018 (132) ◽  
pp. 68-95
Author(s):  
Adrian De Leon
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Working Conditions ◽  
North American ◽  
Labor Relations ◽  
Labor History ◽  
Good Working ◽  
History Of ◽  
Imperial Politics ◽  
Fair Wages

AbstractThis article traces a labor history of colonial photography and the visual production of race in the Philippine Cordilleras, as well as its diasporic performances abroad. It argues that the ethnological visuality of Spanish and American imperialisms in the mountains of Northern Luzon, which produced discourses of race and indigeneity for the purposes of colonial occupation and imperial politics, amounted to various labor relations between Cordillerans in front of the camera, Americans behind and around the camera, and global audiences in European and North American fair midways. What became known variously as the “industrious savage” or the “dog-eating Igorrote” at the turn of the twentieth century crystallized in part out of workers’ assertions to fair wages, good working conditions, and collective dignity. This essay seeks to provide new labor history frameworks through critical readings of photographs, their subjects, and their larger economies of production and circulation.

Chicago Heights and Organized Crime

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Louis Corsino
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Organized Crime ◽  
Social Conditions ◽  
The Social ◽  
Look Back ◽  
History Of ◽  
Historical Developments ◽  
The City

Chicago Heights was a twentieth-century city. The defining movements of the century—urbanization, industrialization, and immigration—tell much of the city's history and provide an understanding of the social conditions leading to the emergence of organized crime. This chapter takes a brief look back at these historical developments as they played themselves out in the Chicago Heights context. Following this, it traces the history of the vice operations in Chicago Heights from their beginning in the early 1900s, to their union with the Chicago Outfit in the 1920s, to their ascendance and decline throughout the remainder of the century. The chapter suggests that the rise development and decline of the Chicago Heights Outfit run parallel in many ways to the fortunes of the city.

The Yemeni Uprising of 2011

2015 ◽  
pp. 608-624
Author(s):  
Atiaf Alwazir
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Ottoman Empire ◽  
Political Development ◽  
State Building ◽  
The Political ◽  
Building Projects ◽  
History Of ◽  
Similarities And Differences ◽  
Modern Turkey ◽  
Constitutional Revolution

The history of both modern Turkey and modern Iran have often been told through their founding figures, Atatürk and Reza Shah, whose state-building projects are often assumed to have been similar. This chapter compares the Young Turk Revolution in the Ottoman Empire of 1908 with the Constitutional Revolution in Iran in 1906 to point to both similarities and differences in the trajectories of these two countries in the early twentieth century. Both revolutions, it is argued, were foundational moments for the political development and processes of each country and are key to understanding the context in which Atatürk and Reza Shah emerged.

Robot Imams!

2019 ◽  
pp. 438-455
Author(s):  
Eve McPherson
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Sound Quality ◽  
Religious Practice ◽  
First Century ◽  
Turkish Republic ◽  
The Public ◽  
Early Twenty ◽  
History Of ◽  
Call To Prayer ◽  
Turkish Language

Since the beginning of the twentieth century and the establishment of the modern Turkish Republic, the Islamic call to prayer in Turkey has occupied a controversial space, sonically and culturally. Early on, the new Republic attempted to “Turkicize” the call by legally mandating Turkish language recitation, a practice that was maintained for nearly twenty years despite strong popular opposition. Although this particular practice ended in 1950, the call to prayer has continued to engender controversy. One of the more recent debates has grown out of the practice of centralization. Call to prayer centralization refers to broadcasting one muezzin, or caller, from one mosque to other area mosques in an effort to diminish “cacophony” and regulate the sound quality, ostensibly to beautify the call and make it more clearly audible. Although the goals of the centralization program have been to improve the sound quality and distribution of the call, opponents of the program have voiced concerns. Such concerns include the loss of mosque “personalities” and the possible substitution of recordings for live recitation, an especially worrisome prospect in the context of a religious practice that considers live human recitation a direct conduit to the divine. This chapter examines the early twenty-first-century history of centralization and how its implementation fits into the continuing dialogue on the public declaration of faith in the context of a politically secular republic, thus contributing to studies on the use and mediation of public sonic space.

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