The history of communications in the Ottoman Empire and Turkey contradicts the widespread belief that communications is a byproduct of modern capitalism and other Western forces. Burçe Çelik uses a decolonial perspective to analyze the historical commodification and militarization of communications and how it affected production and practice for oppressed populations like women, the working class, and ethnic and religious minorities. Moving from the mid-nineteenth century through today, Çelik places networks within the changing geopolitical landscape and the evolution of modern capitalism in relationship to struggles involving a range of social and political actors. Throughout, she challenges Anglo- and Eurocentric assumptions that see the non-West as an ahistorical imitation of, or aberration from, the development of Western communications.

Ambitious and comprehensive, Communications in Turkey and the Ottoman Empire merges political economy with social history to challenge Western-centered assumptions about the origins and development of modern communications.

Acknowledgement

Acronyms and Abbreviations

The Ottoman Empire Map, 1830

Introduction

1. Empire Versus Imperialism: Communicative Struggles over Reproduction of the Empire
2. Nation-Building by Communications
3. Developmentalism and the Militarization of Communications
4. Neoliberal Militarism
5. Wiring a New Turkey through Neoliberal and Islamist Populism

Epilogue

Notes

Index