Communications in Turkey and the Ottoman Empire

Communications in Turkey and the Ottoman Empire traces the country’s history of communications from the nineteenth to the twenty-first centuries. This history is explored by situating the means of communications within social and geopolitical relations and by contextualizing networks within the evolution of modernity and capitalism in the Middle East and in relation to the development of social struggles. In doing so, it aims to de-westernize and decolonize communications history by challenging the Anglo-/Eurocentric assumptions that render the non-West ahistorical and make it appear an imitation of or aberration from the generally defined development of Western communications. By showcasing an alternative development, the book in particular attacks the capitalism/modernity nexus and the perception that communications are a by-product of Western capitalist-modernity. This is a trajectory that begins with the rise of modern communications in the context of the noncapitalist modernity of the late Ottoman Empire and the early republican period and continues in parallel with the country’s transition to full-fledged capitalism in the early Cold War era to today. The book shows how this historical change brought about the commodification and militarization of communications in unprecedented ways and how this historical transformation has affected the production and practice of communications, especially for oppressed populations such as the working class, ethnic and religious minorities, and women.