Midnight at the Pera Palace - Charles King

Subtitled "The Birth of Modern Istanbul"

Clever use of the Pera Palace as a focus to look at the emergence of modern Turkey and explore some of the rich 20th c history of Istanbul.
He looks at the Young Turk and Ataturk periods as well as the occupation at the end of WW I.  There is also quite a bit about the post-Revolution Russian community and what became of it.  There is a whole chapter on Trotsky's time on Büyükada.  You also get a glimpse of the intrigues during WW 2 when Turkey was neutral and every side had spies and agents operating in the city.  There is a chapter on the discoveries that led to the Haghia Sophia becoming a museum.  There are also several chapters on the role that Istanbul played as a transit point for Jews escaping Europe en route to Palestine during the later half of WW II.

One thing I found interesting is some of the detail on how Ataturk and the Republic used taxation and government seizure to push Jews and other ethnic groups out of their businesses (and by extension out of the city) and then sold their property and goods to the up-and-coming Turkish middle-class/party hacks.  In one instance a war tax of 150 to 200% of total value was placed on Jewish, Greek and Armenian businesses.  So after the Young Turks were chases from power, ethnic cleansing continued, just in a neater, tidier form...