Talk
Chamber Talks
Silahtarağa Archive and its Potential: Tracing Electricity and Urbanization in Istanbul
Amed Gökçen, Başak Koşanay, Ece Balkan, Erol Ülker ve Alaaddin Tok
07 April 2025 / 19:00
Istanbul Bilgi University Energy Museum's Silahtarağa Archive holds a collection containing more than two million documents from the Silahtarağa Power Plant, which operated between 1911 and 1983. These documents provide comprehensive information about Istanbul's urban history. The documents in the Silahtarağa Archive offer the opportunity to examine Istanbul's modernization and urbanization process, capital transformation, and industrialization steps on political, economic, sociological, ecological, and technological levels, with the city's special position during the transition from the Ottoman Empire to republican Turkey.
In the talk titled Silahtarağa Archive and its Potential: Tracing Electricity and Urbanization in Istanbul, Istanbul Bilgi University lecturer and Silahtarağa Archive director Amed Gökçen and archive specialists Ece Balkan and Başak Koşanay will explain the sociological and political economic aspects of Istanbul's rapid urbanization and modernization process in the 21st century through electricity and infrastructure, while also sharing the journey of the Silahtarağa Archive. Discussants Alaaddin Tok and Erol Ülker will talk about the archive's potential contributions to historiography, from economic history to environmental history, energy history to social history.
The talk will be broadcast live on the YouTube channel of the Istanbul Research Institute.
Amed Gökçen received his bachelor's degree from Istanbul Bilgi University's History Department and his master's degree from Istanbul Bilgi University's Cultural Studies Department. He completed his PhD in History at Leiden University under the supervision of Erik-Jan Zürcher. He led the international study titled "Comparative Research of (Y)Ezidi Culture" at Istanbul Bilgi University. Gökçen is a lecturer at Istanbul Bilgi University and serves as the director of the Istanbul Bilgi University Energy Museum and the founding and executive director of the Silahtarağa Archive.
Başak Koşanay received her bachelor's degree from Işık University's Political Science Department and her master's degree from Istanbul Bilgi University's International Political Economy Department. She is continuing her doctorate at Istanbul Bilgi University's Political Science Department. She coordinates projects at the Silahtarağa Archive and works on archiving processes.
Ece Balkan received her bachelor's degree from Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University's Archaeology Department. She is continuing her master's education at Marmara University's Information and Document Management Department. She currently coordinates projects at the Silahtarağa Archive and works on archiving processes.
Erol Ülker is a faculty member in the International Relations Department at Işık University. He graduated from Istanbul University's Faculty of Economics, Department of International Relations in 1999. He received master's degrees from Boğaziçi University's Political Science and International Relations Department in 2003 and from Central European University's Nationalism Studies Department in 2004. He completed his doctoral education at the University of Chicago's History Department in 2013. His main academic interests include nationalism, migration, socialist and communist movements, and labor history in the late Ottoman period and early republican Turkey. Ülker's latest book, titled Istanbul at the Threshold of Nation State: Allied Occupation, National Resistance, and Political Conflict, 1918-1923, was published by Berghahn Books in July 2024.
Alaaddin Tok completed his undergraduate education in the Political Science and International Relations department at Boğaziçi University. He received his master's degree in 2010 and his doctorate in 2017 from the same university's Atatürk Institute. In his doctoral thesis titled From Wood to Coal: The Energy Economy in Ottoman Anatolia and the Balkans (1750-1914), he examined the Ottoman energy economy. He has been continuing his academic work at Yıldız Technical University's Economics department since 2009. In his studies, he addresses the late Ottoman Empire period from economic history and environmental history perspectives. His research topics also include Istanbul's urban history and Ottoman-Turkish history of economic thought.
