İzmir, which began to develop as an international trading port city in the Mediterranean from the late 16th century onwards, grew into an exceptional Ottoman port city known as the "pearl of the Levant" for its multicultural, polyglot, cosmopolitan urban society and its spatial development and physical transformations.

Scholarly research on Ottoman İzmir centres primarily on its urban society, social life and urban life, including European influences. However, very little is known about the presence of the Dutch. Studies on Ottoman-Dutch relations have focused on diplomatic and economic connections provide very little insight into ‘space’.

Based on this gap in the existing literature, Caner Yüksel aims to trace the Dutch presence in the spatial history of Ottoman İzmir between the seventeenth and early twentieth century. She will question how and to what extent the Dutch community was directly or indirectly involved in the making of space within the entanglement of actors and agents in the making of İzmir’s urban history, from their first settlement in the city until the foundation of the Republic of Turkey.