Istanbul and Chicago, Sister Cities?

Imre Azem’s directed a documentary about Turkey called “Ekumenopolis: City Without Limits.” And the flick popped the image of a romantic Istanbul for some folks:

Director Imre Azem said audiences at foreign film festivals were surprised at what they saw on the screen.

“It shatters their image of Istanbul. They have this nostalgic kind of image of Istanbul, with its mosques and all this tourist stuff,” Azem said. “For Turkish people, it’s kind of saying things that they already know because they live in this city and they know its problems.”

Sultan Ahmed Mosque, Blue Mosque in Istanbul, Turkey. The backstreets of Beyoglu, the worn facades and sharp-angled shadows recall the city that Nobel-prize winning Turkish author Orhan Pamuk described in his memoir.

Azem, 36, grew up in Istanbul and went to the United States to study, but returned often to find a frenzy of change.

“One time I come here, there’s a park. And then the next time, six months later, the park has become a building,” Azem said. “I really just started questioning where this is heading.”

He said Istanbul was so vast that he had met some poor residents who had never seen the Bosporus Strait even though they had lived in the city for years. A common Turkish term is “gecekondu,” or “built overnight,” a reference to the shoddy apartment buildings that authorities in Istanbul condoned over decades, but now talk about replacing.

Hmmm, you know what? Istanbul sounds a lot like Chicago. Except in South Side Chicago they don’t call it ”gecekondu,” or “built overnight.” But “gone-kondu” or “gone overnight.”

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