The Politics of Istanbul's Ottoman Heritage in the Era of Globalism Refractions through the Prism of a Theme Park

The current resurgence of interest in Istanbul's Ottoman past, and its transformation into a key site of political struggles, cannot be divorced from transnational trends. In the world of late capitalism that we experience today, large metropolises figure prominently as core settings for the display and promotion of 'cultural heritage' as a marketable commodity. The symbolic and economic comodification of 'history' for display and consumption can be theoretically located in what Sharon Zukin has called 'the new symbolic economy' of cities, 1 or what Allen Scott has referred to as the 'culture generating capabilities of cities' in transnational markets. 1 Invoking continuities with a legendary past, however ambiguous, enhances a city's attractiveness in the new global game and gives it cultural cachet in the competition for foreign investments and tourist trade. In many parts of the world, ranging from Southeast Asia to Europe, transformations of metropolitan space and urban culture are currently driven by the deliberate creation of cultural-historical packages and marketable pastiches that offer 'entertainment value'. There is now an extensive literature on how this process both reinforces prevailing inclusions and exclusions in the social fabric of cities, and also produces new ones. The segmentation of tourist enclaves in urban space is perhaps the most immediately recognisable and widespread imprint of mass tourism on a global scale. Susan Fainstein and Dennis Judd 3 use the term 'tourist spaces' to encompass both the historic/cultural attractions designed for