Fighting Entropy to Salvage Istanbul’s Historic Bazaar

By SUSANNE GÜSTEN

ISTANBUL — When the rain began again in Istanbul this month, Osman Varli, a carpet seller in the city’s Grand Bazaar, cast an anxious glance to the vaulted ceilings outside his shop. “I’m really getting worried here,” he said, pointing to the moldy and decaying columns supporting the graceful vaults. When it rains, water streams down the pillars from the leaking roof and runs down the lane like a river through a ravine. “Those pillars won’t last much longer,” Mr. Varli said, poking at one of the columns with a disdainful finger. “Look, just scratch with your fingernail and it dissolves.”

Hasan Firat, president of the bazaar traders’ association, agrees that the leaking roof is the most urgent problem the historic bazaar faces in this, its 550th year. But there are plenty more.

“So many things are old and outdated here,” Mr. Firat said during an interview this month in his office overlooking the bazaar’s roof, which bristles with weeds and air-conditioning units. “From the roof to the foundations, from the electric system to environmental hazards, this place urgently needs an overhaul.”

Istanbul’s Grand Bazaar, built by the Ottoman sultan Mehmet the Conqueror in 1461, is visited by about 300,000 people most days, and half a million on busy ones. Approximately 25,000 people make their living in the bazaar, which boasts 3,600 shops selling items from Armenian antiques to tourist trinkets. It has its own post office, mosque and police and fire stations under its 39,000-square-meter, or 420,000-square-foot, roof.

Yet when it comes to maintenance and repairs, there is no one in charge of this city within a city.

“Yes, it is a world-famous cultural treasure,” said Mustafa Demir, the mayor of Istanbul’s Fatih district, which encompasses the historical peninsula on which the bazaar sits, “but it is also the private property of many individuals, and there is no organizational structure for solving common problems.”

“This huge bazaar was forsaken, abandoned to its fate,” he said.

Ownership of the Grand Bazaar is divided among some 2,500 shop owners, a majority of whom have held their deeds for generations, some dating to Ottoman times. Although most are members of the bazaar traders’ association, “we have no legal authority to raise money or award contracts,” said Mr. Firat, whose grandfather started as a bazaar porter in 1907.

As a result, traders have been left to improvise, with hazardous results that are perhaps most visible in the garlands of electrical cables festooning the walls of the bazaar.

“The market’s current power grid was installed in 1980, before we had high-voltage spotlights in the shop windows and refrigerators in the cafes and air-conditioners,” Mr. Firat said. “The bazaar is wired for 500 watt, but we are using 5,000.”

Traders have tried to bridge the gap by running cables in from outside the market. “There are wires everywhere,” Mr. Demir, the mayor, acknowledged. “But there is still not enough power.”

Inside the labyrinthine passageways of the bazaar, a couple of German tourists looked up to a rats nest of live wires dangling over a display of carpets.

“Those rugs would catch fire quickly,” one of the tourists, Ingrid Schütz, said. “And it would be difficult to get people out of here in an emergency.”

Fires have plagued the bazaar time and again over the centuries. The last major conflagration, attributed to an electrical problem, occurred in 1954. It burned for 28 days and destroyed more than 1,300 shops. The bazaar remained closed for repairs for six years, reopening in 1960 in its present-day state.

A fire broke out on the outskirts of the bazaar in February, but was quickly contained. An electrical malfunction was the suspected cause of the blaze in market stalls along an outside wall of the bazaar, according to the Ihlas news agency.

Still, the German couple said they would not let safety concerns spoil their enjoyment of the colorful market. Other western visitors seemed similarly unconcerned.

“We cannot worry about quakes all the time,” said Anders Thomassen, a Norwegian consultant in town to sell earthquake relief equipment to the Turkish authorities.

via Fighting Entropy to Salvage Istanbul’s Historic Bazaar – NYTimes.com.