Elise Massicard on muhtars, the state and society in Turkey
Turkey Book Talk
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The Office of Muhtaars
The office of Muhtaars basically existed as you describe it in the book since the 1830s actually. They obviously originated in Istanbul, the Ottoman capital at the time and you describe it as perhaps the oldest functioning public institution in Turkey. What is interesting to me is that this creation of that Muhtaar institution has been broadly interpreted in a broader movement of modernization and bureaucratization but they have always been very much embedded in society.
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