Silent Guardians of the Regime

This article examines the emergence of police stations as an architectural and institutionalnovelty that reflected the modernization and centralization of the Ottoman Empire duringthe nineteenth century. At the heart of this paper lies the Topkapı Palace, the traditionalresidence of the Ottoman dynasty, which was abandoned by the imperial family in thenineteenth century and then took on new meanings and functions. The symbolic, religious,political, and historical significance of the Topkapı Palace endured and new buildings andinstitutions were established within the precincts of the royal complex. Numerous policestations were also erected in the Topkapı Palace from the reign of Mahmud II (1808-1839)onwards, which manifested the visibility and authority of the ruler and emphasized thechanging military character of the state. Under the rule of Abdülhamid II (1876-1909) thenumber of police stations within the royal complex amounted to ten, which underlines theimportance attributed to the symbolic and physical protection of the Topkapı Palace. Thisarticle explores the ideological, urban, and architectural implications of these police stations,which reflected the public control mechanisms of the regime. Some of the police stations builtduring the reign of Abdülhamid II at strategic points of the Seraglio were later demolishedwithout any reliable documentation, and this article brings together textual, visual, andarchitectural information on the emergence and destruction of these ‘lost’ police stations

Computer security · Criminology · Political science · Computer Science · History · Law · Psychology · Turkey's Politics and Society

• Colonial Nexus

  Open Access•Kamuran Akın, Kamuran Akin•Studies in Ethnicity and…•2026

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