Tag: Finkel

  • Pop Goes Istanbul

    Pop Goes Istanbul

    One of the world’s great cities is growing too big for its britches.

    BY ANDREW FINKEL

    istiklalcaddesi

    View photos of the dark side of Istanbul.

    ISTANBUL — Istanbul famously straddles two continents, but pity the working stiff who commutes to Europe in the morning and home to Asia at night. The journey along the feeder roads funneling into the city’s Bosphorus Bridge is a bumper-to-bumper ordeal.

    Once onto the bridge itself, the view is suddenly extraordinary. To the south, across the water, is the skyline forged by the rulers of the Byzantine and Ottoman empires. To the north are the summer palaces and the stately waterfront homes of Turkey’s elite. But beneath the picturesque vistas lies a city growing dangerously out of control.

    In many ways, Istanbul is thriving. A joint study by the Brookings Institution and the London School of Economics named it the world’s best-performing city, in terms of income and employment growth, over the past year. Meanwhile, Istanbul came out on top of an informal survey of the cities that New York Times readers most want to visit.

    A provincial backwater that reinvented itself in 330 A.D. as the New Rome, Istanbul now serves as Turkey’s own New York. It produces well over a quarter of the country’s GDP, its businesses generate 60 percent of Turkey’s trade, and its citizens and businesses pay 40 percent of the country’s taxes. Districts covered with mulberry orchards little more than two decades ago have now sprouted bank towers and high-rise corporate headquarters. In the gardens of the Istanbul Stock Exchange, the statue of a vast marble bull is poised in a perpetual charge.

    But even while Istanbul is already on the way to becoming the commercial capital of a region well beyond Turkey’s frontiers, the city’s ambitions know no end. Recessions in Europe and rebellions in North Africa have only strengthened the conviction that the tide is drifting Turkey’s way — that, if it plays its cards right, Istanbul can become the new London or Hong Kong.

    Yet the city’s confidence may turn out to be its curse. Relentless urban expansion threatens to lay siege to the former imperial capital and scrub away its natural beauty.

    Istanbul is a city under construction. From the faux-Ottoman housing estate on the Thracian approach to the city — with its own mock Bosphorus canal — to the $2.5 billion conversion of a government office block into a sprawling office complex at the entrance to the first Bosphorus bridge, the feeding frenzy over Istanbul’s relentless expansion has also transformed the city’s politics.

    Istanbul has always been a magnet for the Turkish countryside. And as it has become ever more closely integrated into a global economy, the pickings have become all the richer. “The incorporation of Istanbul into the international real estate market has changed all the rules,” says Ilhan Tekeli, emeritus professor of the City and Regional Planning Department at the Middle East Technical University.

    For some, those rules were there to be broken. Kemal Kiliçdaroglu, now leader of the opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), made his name in national politics in 2008 when he charged the deputy head of the governing Justice and Development Party (AKP) with accepting $1 million to arrange for the rezoning for commercial use a piece of land on the western approach to Istanbul. The site, which had been purchased for $3.5 million, was sold one year later for $13 million to the Turkish arm of a British supermarket giant.

    At the heart of Istanbul’s transformation is not just the surge in land values, but in population. In 1945, the city had less than a million inhabitants; by the end of the Cold War that figure had risen to some 6.5 million. In the past 20 years, the population doubled to 13 million.

    New urban settlements have eroded the boundaries of areas earmarked for water reservoirs, and gnawed away at forestry and green spaces. Istanbul is not only a meeting point of continents, but of Black Sea and Mediterranean climate systems. The result is a unique micro-environment that sustains some 2,000 species of plant life — 500 varieties more than in all of Britain, according to Andrew Byfield, co-author of Important Plant Areas of Turkey.

    And as Istanbul grows, it is also growing warmer. NASA satellites reveal thermal pockets where the city has expanded that are up to 1.4 degrees Celsius warmer than 25 years ago — a result of urban settlements replacing ancient landscapes. Istanbul’s new prosperity ensures that its carbon emissions will increase at a far greater pace in the years to come, putting its special ecosystem in jeopardy.

    It’s not just the flora that is in danger. At some time, the city will reach a limit for people, too. “Beyond 16 million, there is no future for Istanbul; there is no future for anyone,” says Ibrahim Bas, head of Istanbul’s planning department.

    via Pop Goes Istanbul – By Andrew Finkel | Foreign Policy.

  • WikiLeaks in Turkey — Cui bono?

    WikiLeaks in Turkey — Cui bono?

    My study window used to provide a view of the steps outside our house, which meant that I could see through the net curtain anyone trying to ring the bell. This was particularly bad news for a little girl with a mischievous streak who thought it great fun to creep up the stairs, ring the bell and then run away.

    One day my own mischievous streak got the better of me and I waited by the door and opened it just as she tried to play her prank. I almost felt sorry for her as she stood there, finger still in mid-air, caught red handed her mouth gulping like a gold fish as she gasped for something to say. But sympathy turned to admiration as she collected her wits and used that finger to point to what I can only assume was an imaginary friend. “O yaptı,” she said in a matter-of-fact tone. “He did it.” She walked back calmly down the steps, leaving her invisible accomplice to face the music.

    Since then I have noted various instances when even quite senior public figures have used the “He did it” reflex to get themselves off the hook. And it is a reflex which some of my colleagues appear all too eager to adopt to explain away, perhaps not so much their faults as a sense of cognitive dissonance and the uncomfortable sense that what they are seeing is not what they assumed was the case. It is, of course, the drip, drip, drip of WikiLeaks which has caused all the problems. For reasons I myself do not entirely understand, WikiLeaks has caused a major sense of humor failure in Turkey. You might think that the press and politicians might unloosen their ties, put up their feet and enjoy the amusement of seeing American diplomats caught with their trousers somewhere near their ankles. Instead it is Turkey which is feeling the pain. One of the leaked telegrams describes the Turkish prime minister is thinned skin — and true to that description, he has threatened to sue goodness knows who for defamation and is demanding the resignation of ambassadors long since retired. None of this is going to happen. If it is revenge he wants, he will find himself joining a very long queue.

    Which is why one particular opinion that seems to have gained some currency in Turkey sounds so bizarre. It was published as an assertion in this newspaper that, “The main target [of WikiLeaks] is Turkey and its ruling Justice and Development Party [AK Party].” This is solipsism and paranoia tipping over the edge. It implies that those doing the leaking are controlled by a very narrow, Turkey-centric political agenda. Ask The New York Times or Julian Assange the key question, “Cui bono?”(Who benefits?) from the disclosure of so much confidential information, and the answer is citizens throughout the world who have a right to know what their public servants really think. Whether this answer is correct is open to debate. Some would argue that it is one thing to expose government misdeeds or the abuse of power and another to undermine a nation’s ability to deal with other nations. Is WikiLeaks satisfying our right to know or our innate love of gossip?

    But ask the Turkish government spokesman Cemil Çiçek “cui bono” and he insinuates the answer is Israel — a nation determined to throw a spanner in the wheel of Turkish foreign policy. It is an answer that is either foolish or patently dishonest. Others suggest the culprit is Ergenekon, arising like Freddy Krueger from the grave.

    Yet when all is said and done, WikiLeaks has not so much damaged Turkey’s reputation as informed a Turkish public that reputations are not as shiny as they are sometimes led to believe. This too will lead to productive discussion. Is Turkish policy towards Iran correct and nuanced or is it as some in the State Department believe, blinkered and naïve? It is an argument worth having. It does no one any good, however, to react to criticism by saying “he did it” or treating Ergenekon as a mischievous imaginary friend.