Post WWI Occupation Brings Additional Westernization
October 31, 1918—fighting between the Allies and the Ottoman Empire ceases because of of the armistice that the opposing forces signed (1). Signatures on paper would not put an end to the unrest within the borders of what was still known as Constantinople. Istanbul was then occupied by the Allied forces (remember also that the last time foreign occupation affected the city, the year was 1453 (2).
The very day that the Allied forces (French, British, and Italian soldiers) entered the city, the future founding president of the Turkish Republic, Mustafa Kemal, took rooms in the Pera Palace. The hotel then became the only real meeting place for the Ottomans and the “Westerners” to meet and discuss plans for the future of the nation.
Charles King tells the story of this period of time in his book Midnight at the Pera Palace: The Birth of Modern Istanbul and in it he tells the story of how, during this rather turbulent time in the history of Istanbul, the city went from the Ottoman capital to “a European city of refugees, jazz bars, muezzins and spies” (2). The Pera Palace was, in a sense, the house of a new Istanbul, a new Turkey, as the nation’s dignitaries congregated to determine the fate of a country with a dicey past but limitless potential.
1. "Collapse of the Ottoman Empire, 1918-1920." New Zealand History (n.d.): 9. Web.
2. Goodwin, Jason. "IMPERIAL CITY." New York Times Book Review, 2014.