Turkish Forum

Tag: Istanbul

  • Istanbul: Beautiful and affordable

    By Khadijah Bawazeer

    As time goes by, we abandon old affiliations and develop new ones. Due to the Arab Spring in Egypt and Syria and its repercussions in Lebanon, the three most favorite tourist destinations in the Middle East have become undesirable, so people are discovering Turkey. Istanbul is witnessing flocks of tourists from neighboring areas, mainly Arabs. European tourism has been going on for some time, and European tourists come to Turkey almost all the year round but especially when their countries are very cold. They come to Turkey for its relative warmth, which is still too cold for people from hot countries. However, from May to September, the weather in Turkey is just cool enough and if you prefer very warm weather then you should go in June and July.

    Istanbul is the only city in the word divided between two continents.

    It is the juncture between two worlds; no wonder everyone in history wanted to occupy it. The European side of Istanbul has the historic palace of Topkapi, the Blue Mosque, and the old historic area of Sultan Ahmed.

    This area constitutes the essence of Istanbul. You will find many of the great mosques there, the Egyptian Bazaar and the Grand Bazaar, which dwarfs all other souks both in merchandize and magnitude. Yet the Asian part of Istanbul is the place you may want to stay in because it is quieter and less expensive than the European part.

    When visiting Turkey, you can start with Istanbul then visit some of the beautiful islands nearby, go to the beach and walk around the beach parks or visit other Turkish cities such as Bursa and Izmir.

    Turkey seems to be a country of rich beauty and refinement even in the countryside. The country, in general, and Istanbul, in particular, have a lot to offer from beautiful beaches to great museums and from affordability to great food.

    However, it is more expensive than one might think; so though prices are not too expensive, they are not cheap either. Local merchants and tour guides can spot tourists and ask for more than they would ask from locals. It would be great if you knew someone Turkish so that they could help you. However, there is something to appreciate about Turkish people anywhere. They do not nag, neither do they beg. If you say that you are not interested, they will let you be.

    My trip to Turkey, much overdue, was unforgettable. I have been around the world and if not for the cold winters, this is a place I would not mind to be. I was overwhelmed by the historic grandeur of Istanbul. Yet I could not stop myself from thinking that the Sultans must have been too rich for words, which necessarily means that someone else must have been very poor. I am not sure, but this seems to me a possible, if not a plausible, conclusion.

    The writer can be reached at khadijah_bawazeer@yahoo.com.

    via Saudi Gazette – Istanbul: Beautiful and affordable.

  • Exploring another era

    Exploring another era

    By Isabel Conway

    IstanbulTHERE are places one loves before ever seeing them. Istanbul, an ancient metropolis astride two continents, is a good example, conjuring up romance and mystery, a marriage of east and west, both exotic and familiar to western eyes.

    So I was already half in love with Istanbul as our minibus lurched across chaotic lanes of traffic from Ataturk International airport. Gleaming high-rise office complexes, crumbling ancient walls, threadbare neighbourhoods clinging precariously to hillsides, and a multitude of minarets looking like finely pointed giant pencils looming in the distance, flashed past.

    There are surprises around every corner. One minute you may be window shopping next to stylish young women in micro skirts and 10-inch heels, the next downcast shrouded females in black burqas are hurrying past. The Istanbul ‘Luas’-style public transport crammed with commuters is but a street removed from the hamals (porters) hired to carry enormous loads on wooden pack frames trudging through narrow, cobbled lanes as they have done for centuries.

    A former stomping ground of wildly extravagant Sultans — one kept more than a thousand women in his harem — aristocrats, adventurers, and spies, this last great city of the ancient world was also the final destination for the old Orient Express.

    Nowadays Turkey is a global player — one of the world’s top 16 industrialised nations — exuding confidence and prosperity as much of western Europe battles economic malaise. I saw no abandoned development sites nor shuttered-up bankrupt businesses during a recent visit, either. A feature of Istanbul’s shoreline are multi-million-euro villas and penthouses, and five-star luxury hotels, in one of which guests actually fork out €30,000 a night for a suite.

    Insiders rave about the precious legacy of Byzantine churches, opulent Ottoman palaces, majestic mosques and the Bosphorus which slices through the city, dividing Istanbul between Europe and Asia. In days gone by, travellers, drawn by Istanbul’s classical wonders, would arrive in style aboard the Orient Express. The A-list VIPs were hauled uphill to the iconic Pera Palace Hotel in a sedan chair, on display for posterity in the foyer of this very grand establishment (perapalace.com), which has undergone a facelift lately.

    The merely famous, who would have included Agatha Christie — she plotted Murder on the Orient Express there and has a suite named after her — were dispatched by horse and carriage to the hotel overlooking the Golden Horn. Worth a visit to view belle époque grandeur and splash out on the most lavish afternoon tea on the planet, celebrity guests like Ernest Hemingway and Greta Garbo enjoyed Istanbul’s exotic Turkish baths, fabulous retail therapy and cuisine reflecting the rich Ottoman legacy. By night they hung out in smoky cellar clubs gambling, sampling the pleasures of the water pipe, and enjoying belly dancing.

    Nothing much has changed and today’s travellers pour into Istanbul for similar attractions, increasingly so from Ireland thanks to daily direct flights operated by Turkish Airlines and good value city break packages.

    I could have cheerfully spent a week exploring all the neigh-bourhoods, doing more shopping and sampling the nightlife, munching my way through miles more mezes — delicious hot and cold starters. Though I did suffer slight mosque malaise after a short sojourn. My erudite guide, Murat, who led me straight to a pashmina paradise called Zaida in the Grand Bazaar, managed to save me from the carpets, swatting off the salesmen, pointing at my strapped up fractured shoulder (from a ski fall in Erzurum in north-east Turkey a few days earlier) explaining that nothing less than a magic carpet would do.

    via Exploring another era | Irish Examiner.

  • ‘Istanbul’: A Twisted Tale Of Foreign Espionage

    ‘Istanbul’: A Twisted Tale Of Foreign Espionage

    The big war is over, and the Cold War has just begun. Leon Bauer, an American tobacco man, wonders how to fit into this new world.

    9781439156414 customBauer and his wife, Anna, a German Jew, made it to Istanbul just before World War II began. With his U.S. passport and fluency in German and Turkish, the tobacco man became useful to allied intelligence.

    But before he picks up a more peaceful life, Bauer is given a last big job. He’s supposed to slip Alexi, a Romanian defector with important Soviet secrets, out of Istanbul. Alexi’s secrets might help old allies — but the defector once helped massacre Jews in Romania.

    Bauer is being asked to help a man in this new war who represents what he fought in the last one.

    The storied, intricate, contradictory city of Istanbul is a fitting backdrop for Joseph Kanon’s new book, Istanbul Passage. Kanon tells NPR’s Scott Simon that he set the novel in Istanbul after visiting as a tourist. “I fell in love with it and thought this would be a great excuse for coming back again and again to do research,” he says.

    Interview Highlights

    On the city of Istanbul as a protagonist in the novel

    “Istanbul was, in a sense, how the book started. But the larger answer, of course, is that the period that particularly interests me, which is the war and the immediate aftermath — it had long been known for derring-do and intrigue — but during our time it had become a neutral city, right on the fringe of the war, and as a result, it was a magnet for spies. It was one of those places where Germans and Russians and British could actually meet in somebody’s drawing room — all during the war. It was, in essence, all a kind of Casablanca. But now that time is coming to an end.”

    On how Kanon’s novels are inspired by places

    “It’s really the place. It began with Los Alamos, and I went there as a tourist and became so intrigued and fascinated, and I wanted to know what it was like to have been one of the scientists — what was it like to be part of the Manhattan Project. And one thing leads to another; Berlin fascinated me because of the American occupation about which I knew relatively little, and I wanted to know more. So you follow your interests. Once you saturate yourself in the place and its layering of history, the characters suggest themselves; and once you have the characters, then you’re there.”

    On Leon Bauer’s transition to a tobacco man

    “To have been an expatriate businessman at that period had a fair amount of money and glamour attached to it. It was interesting to have lived in Istanbul for Leon. The job wasn’t drudgery. He wasn’t dragging himself to the office every day. It was fairly easy. There was almost that neo-colonial life that the European community was leading in Istanbul. And it had its pleasures; he enjoyed it. What he didn’t want, particularly, was to be transferred back to Raleigh into a cubicle or what would then have been a small office.”

    On loyalties and compromise

    Joseph Kanon is also the author of Los Alamos, The Prodigal Spy and The Good German.

    Atria Books

    Joseph Kanon is also the author of Los Alamos, The Prodigal Spy and The Good German.

    “I mean, I find that ultimately what you want to talk about is: How do we live? How do we make these moral choices, and where do we draw the personal line of your own moral limits? In this particular instance, I wanted to set up a situation for him early on where he has a choice, but both choices seem to him wrong — whatever you do isn’t right. What do you do in that kind of situation? And I find that it’s more and more this sense of moral compromise, [and it’s] very much part of the world that we’ve inherited.

    “You know, people often say, ‘Why write about this period?’ And I think the immediate postwar period is the beginning of our time. If we want to use a movie metaphor for it: The world begins with the black and white clarity of Casablanca. You know where you’re at. It’s romantic. Ingrid Bergman walks in and looks wonderful, and things are very clear. But the war ends with The Third Man and the kind of muddied, gray moral compromise that I think really was the world that it ushered in, and the world that we’ve inherited.”

    On being called the next Graham Greene

    “I think it’s a flattering comparison, and you know you could be compared to other thriller writers, but I think it’s being said — when people pigeonhole you this way — is that there’s a certain level of seriousness, of purpose, I hope of fine writing.”

    On moral reasoning and making bargains

    “We all tell each other stories so we can understand more of the variety of experience that’s around us, because we’re going to have to make these decisions. I think day by day — often we’re taking them in very small steps; they’re not certainly as dramatic or highlighted as they would be in this sort of novel, which is one of the reasons we have these novels. But we’re nevertheless making them all of the time ourselves. We’re always making personal, moral decisions.”

    via ‘Istanbul’: A Twisted Tale Of Foreign Espionage : NPR.

  • AS HE LAY DYING by Cem Ryan

    AS HE LAY DYING by Cem Ryan

    AS HE LAY DYING

    By Cem Ryan

    As he lay dying in those autumn afternoons of 1938, Atatürk had one abiding desire. He longed for those distant days on horseback, just one more afternoon riding in the hills above the Bosphorus. He would go again with his military academy classmate, Ali Fuat, to the sultan’s hunting lodge in Alemdağ. They would once more picnic in that nearby meadow. Oh those cadet days, those days of youth. To be twenty-one again, rejuvenated. But by then the lodge was in ruins and Ataturk could barely walk.

    Such is Turkey today. The nation of Atatürk is in ruins, his legacy near death. Think otherwise? Go see the ruination that today is Alemdağ. Go see where once grew the forests on the hills above the Bosphorus.

    An emasculated army, a captive media, a politically compromised judiciary, and incompetent political opposition have sealed the fate of secular Turkey. These are the hammer blows to Atatürk’s dream.

    Like Alemdağ, Turkey is a ruined landscape. Political corruption and environmental plunder have risen to the level of popular culture. Hundreds of those opposed to the ruling power are in jail. Listening devices and wire taps abound. Comments and demonstrations are stifled. The tone of public political discourse remains rancid. Insults, sex tape disclosures, threats and arrogant boasts are the fare fed to the passive Turkish public. The prime minister and his business cronies propose vast and bizarre infrastructure plans. They will dam all the rivers in order to generate electricity. They will dig a ridiculous canal from the Black Sea to the Mediterranean. And they will do it, the Turkish public being what it is. Money. Money. Money. Capitalism on amphetamines.

    Meanwhile the needs of the vast armies of the unemployed and the impoverished go unaddressed. The ruling party presents outlandish schemes as fait accompli, so confident is it of an election landslide. Imagine a canal that circumvents the Bosphorus. Imagine two new cities built to extend the already polluted and seething Istanbul. Why? To make Istanbul safer from earthquakes, they say. Such is what passes for logical thinking. Bizarre? Yes, well then consider the prime minister’s plan to build a nuclear reactor along a fault line. Dangerous? Not to worry. It’s no more dangerous than the cooking gas container in your kitchen assures the prime minister at the top of his lungs. So much for the land that Atatürk started on the path to science and knowledge. Turkey lies dying, its natural resources plundered, its brain lobotomized.

    Even Atatürk’s Address to Turkish Youth is attacked by the media jackals. Undemocratic, intolerant, authoritarian mentality, illiberal, paranoiac, racist, fascist, are some of the labels that these hacks use to describe Atatürk’s words. How sensitive these petty scribblers are to his cautions about internal enemies, and those in power collaborating with foreign governments. They throw their words, these so-called journalists without being aware of time, history or treacherous religious underbelly that has always prevailed in Turkey. It is no mystery why the Turkish society has been so violent. Just observe the way they drive their cars, cheer on their favorite football teams, conduct their political discussions. It is really ludicrous.

    Among many other things—military leader, tactician, strategist, political scientist, social philosopher, educator—Mustafa Kemal Atatürk was a revolutionary thinker. He placed his trust in education and science. He trusted the future. For him, the future resided in the nation’s youth, not only in age but in mind. Such “youth” saw the way to a better world through the enlightened, founding principles that Atatürk embraced and applied to the new, revolutionary Turkey. That Turkey is dead.

    The Turkish War of Independence was a great struggle for survival. The improbable victory was against all odds. The occupying great and not-so-great powers were sent away as they came. The backward, repressive five-century rule by religious dictators called sultans was consigned to the garbage dump of history. Youth was served. Instead of dark-minded ignorance there was the promise of education and enlightenment. Turkey was a young, revolutionary country, rid at last of the exclusive claims of religion, structured and heading towards a democratic future. But guess what? Turkey has a new sultan now, one with a sour face and an attitude to match. And the likes of him and his army of business jackals and covered women have the field to themselves. The treacherous political opposition works for its archaic itself. Turkey heads headfirst into the abyss, sleeping all the way.

    A parting word on the political opposition. On Election Day, 12 June 2011, twenty-three separate parties stand in opposition to one party, the ruling party, the AKP. Representation in parliament requires gaining at least 10 percent of the total vote. The leading opposition party, the CHP, the party of Atatürk was the only opposition party sure of gaining some representation. It takes a special brand of ineptitude to be unable to find common ground to unify the opposition, an opposition that represents the majority of the total vote. The CHP, like Nero, fiddles around in nonsensical internal fights and petty arguments. But take a bold, active stand?  Never! Rally the people? Impossible! It has been the best friend AKP. Who could imagine, a political weakling bearing the name “Ataturk’s Party.” Shameful!

    Atatürk’s Turkey is in an existential struggle against the forces of fascist Islam. The Turkish army, the guarantor of Atatürk’s legacy, licks its wounds in silence. It’s generals run to America for help and instructions. The political opposition is doomed by its smug, selfish arrogance. The Turkish people, Atatürk’s beloved people, stand paralyzed, like the sheep on the eve of Kurban Bayram. Whither Turkey? Don’t ask.

    Atatürk’s close friend, biographer and confidant, Falih Rıfkı Atay, wrote in 1968: “What would Atatürk do if he were alive today? Shall I tell you? He would curse the lot of us.” *

    Cem Ryan

    Istanbul

    15 May 2012.

     

    *Atay, Falih Rıfkı. The Atatürk I Knew, Yapi ve Kredi Bankasi, Istanbul, 1973, p. 252.

    ata horse back

     

     

     

     

     

     

  • Homesick for Istanbul

    Homesick for Istanbul

    It happens every time I go to Istanbul. I visit for a few days and the city embeds itself so far under my skin that I find it emotionally distressing to leave. This is how it used to feel when I left Rome during my bright college years when I was coming and going for thesis research. But back in the early 2000s, I was ballsy and my brain was more malleable, so I could see myself moving abroad (I did!) and learning the language (did that, too). Now, a move doesn’t seem so easy and the complexities and financial sacrifices of relocating makes the pangs of homesickness I feel for Istanbul that much more acute.

    This trip was particularly special, as it is springtime in Istanbul and my friend Şemsa and I made the most of it with daily breakfasts and dinners on her balcony. We both enjoyed the ridiculous view of the Bosphorus Bridge and I felt particularly pampered by her extraordinary artichoke-driven cooking.

    I had a few really wonderful meals out, including lunch with Tuba at Çiya, a place everyone freaks out over, but which I sometimes find disappointing (world’s worst içli köfte, anyone?). This was not the case on Wednesday. We had some amazing seasonal kebabs like sarımsak kebabı (garlic kebab) and yeni dünya kebabı (loquat kebab).

    Lunch at Kasap Osman in Sirkeci was downright disgusting…they put melted cheese on my doner! Vomitous. So I went across the street to Namlı Rumeli Köftecisi for a nice plate of redeeming, palate-cleansing köfte.

    Another meaty highlight were the köfte at Ali Baba in Arnavutköy, my ideal comfort food.

    I also enjoyed strolling along the Bosphorus admiring the houses I will never be able to afford.

    Back in the thick of it all, I spent an afternoon in the Grand Bazaar, something I never do because the hawkers are so profoundly obnoxious. But this time I went after a good lunch at Şeyhmus Kebap Evi with my buddy Ansel of Istanbul Eats.

    Sufficiently nourished and armed with headphones and a stone face, I braved the hey ladys and where you froms shouted by the tchotchke vendors and hightailed it to the antiques section where I window shopped for sugar bowls, marble mortars and copper samovars.

    Then it was back to Şemsa’s for another fabulous meal. With a spread like this, leaving seems like a crime against good sense.

    Source :

    arnavutkoy

  • Will İstanbul Become a Global City?

    Will İstanbul Become a Global City?

    istanbul1İt was odd to go straight from the London elections to an academic conference on multiculturalism in İstanbul, organised by the İslington-based Dialogue Society, but at least London was the subject of the paper İ presented at it at Fatih University. The precise topic was ‘How successful a multicultural model is London?’ I showed how London had developed its multicultural nature empirically through immigratıon over the centuries from the Empire, as well as through refugees from central and eastern Europe and more recently migrants from the New Commonwealth and other EU member states. But London’s multiculturalism is normative as well, in the sense that successive governments — at national, regional and local level — since the 1980s have stressed the need to celebrate diversity as well as extending service provision to take into account the diverse population. That remains true despite comments by Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron in Germany last year, subsequently contradicted by his Liberal Democrat Deputy Nick Clegg. İn my paper, İ judged that London has become a successful example of multiculturalism, though whether it can be a model for others is maybe a different matter. To an extent London is sui generis, not least because it is now an indisputably global city, whose inhabitants can see themselves as not only living in the UK but also as being global citizens. Therein lies much of the city’s economic and financial success. But which other cities in the world might emulate that? New York, possibly, and, interestingly, İstanbul. During Ottoman times, İstanbul was the captital of a multicultural empire embracing many peoples, religions and languages. Everything changed after the dismemberment of the Ottoman Empire and the establishment of a new Turkish Republic with its capital ın Ankara and a state-driven policy (in the interest of nation-buıldıng) of One Country, One People, One Language. But despite the departure of signifıcant numbers of Turkey’s minority inhabitants — not least the Greeks — Turkey is still de facto multicultural. The question now is whether the AKP government headed by Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has the courage and the confıdence to not just acknowledge this but follow through the consequences. İstanbul meanwhile has become empirically more multicultural, with many foreigners, including Arabs – as well as a huge number of Kurds from Anatolia – setting up homes here. So maybe indeed it can aspire to being a multicultural global city, as well as Turkey’s largest urban centre. The benefits would be considerable.

    via Will İstanbul Become a Global City? « Jonathan Fryer.