eCard #117 – Istanbul
Funny.
I was first in Turkiye (the new, preferred way to refer to what we used to call Turkey) in 2005. I spent about six weeks in the country doing some sightseeing, mountain biking and kayaking, and saw quite a bit of it (eCards #50 & 51). I stopped in Istanbul two or three times as I went around. My memory was that I really liked Istanbul, but my conclusion in eCard #51 was that I didn’t care for it too much. After this most recent visit, I guess I can say that I left feeling neutral about it.
- Istanbul pictures from 2024
- Istanbul pictures from 2005
- … and don’t forget Cappadocia, and Eastern and Western Turkey from 2005
On this trip I was flying home from Uganda via Istanbul and decided to do a 5 day layover on the way. As Garden-of-Eden-like as Uganda was, Istanbul was a return to civilization. And as good as the food was in Uganda, they don’t do pastries …. Turkiye! The pastries! OMG!
Istanbul is one of those places you can truly say is a city of contrasts. Rich, poor, sophisticated, raw, laid back, bustling, serene, and in your face. It seems relatively safe to wander about, but the touts can be really annoying.
Great coffee. Great pastries. They have good ice cream, too. Did I mention the pastries? There are other nice snacks…
History and an Old Building
Pushing away from the table for a bit… The Romans had picked up the pieces from the Greeks who dominated the region from the 7thC BC until the empire began to splinter after Alexander the Great died in 323 BC.
Roman Emperor Constantine I (The Great) wanted an eastern center to help control the ever expanding boundaries of the Roman world, and the empire was formally divided in 395 with the eastern lands forming the Byazntine Empire with it’s capital, Constantinople.
The eastern empire outlived the Rome-centered empire by ten centuries. Rome fell in 476 after successive waves of Huns, Goths, Visigoths and Ostrogoths. Byzantium lasted until overrun by the Ottoman Turks under Mehmet II in 1453, and the city was re-named Istanbul.
To put his mark on his city, Constantine commissioned the building of a cathedral – the Hagia Sophya – but the first two churches built on the site were of wood and didn’t last very long. The present building was commissioned by Justinian I and was built in the 530’s.
At the time of it’s construction and for 1000 years afterward, it was the largest building in the world. (I think it still ranks 10th largest, and the 4th largest church.) So it was the cathedral of the eastern Christian church for 1000 years (Eastern Orthodox, then Catholic, and then Eastern Orthodox). The dome is 30m in diameter, and there are no central pillars to obstruct the sense of space.
- Homework:
- Find the 10 largest existing buildings on Earth.
- Find the 10 largest churches on Earth.
- Bonus question: Find the 10 largest pastry shops on Earth.
One of the first acts of Muslim conquerors is to occupy the most important building in a city and convert it into a mosque. This is what Mehmet II did. During Hagia Sophia’s conversion all of the frescoes and mosaics on the walls depicting people were either destroyed or painted over and remained hidden until the 1870’s. Some of the 10th C Byzantine mosaics are still intact, so you can get a feel for what the interior once looked like.
The building remained a mosque until after the Ottoman Empire fell during WWI when Ataturk was re-aligning Turkey toward the west and into a secular state. The building became a museum in 1935.
But wait. In 2020 the government under Erdogan turned it back into a mosque. For the tourist this now means denial of entry to the first floor from where the magnificence of the space is better appreciated.
There are hundreds of people waiting in line to get in at any time of the day. One day I got into line to buy tickets 45 minutes before the office opened. There were about 30 people in front of me. Once you buy tickets you have to get in another line to get it. I was told you can’t buy tickets in advance, but the line to get in was several hundred people long before the sales office opened…. I wasn’t getting the whole story. I got into a conversation with an Italian guy behind me in line. His wife was placed at the front of the line to get in, so I became his uncle and joined them going in.
Sultanhamet
When I first arrived after touring the east, I wasn’t much in the mood to run around and see the sights, so most of the time I ran a few errands and just wandered around – which means up and down the hills. The old town, Sultanhamet, is on a hill on a promontory poking into the Bosphorus Strait from the European side. The Golden Horn, a finger of water separating the old town from the new, bounds the peninsula on the north. Asia is across the Bosphorus and just a short ferry ride away.
A nice afternoon activity is to find a comfortable chair in one of the pier-side cafes and have a beer while watching the horde of ferries ply the waters of the Golden Horn.
Walking around in 2024 I didn’t have that feeling of knowing the place. I mean I recognized things, but nothing was really familiar. But one day as I was walking up the street I thought, “Oh. The Sublime Porte should be just around the corner.” And there it was undergoing renovation. The Sublime Porte refers to both the portal itself and to the sultan’s administration, offices for the government lie beyond the entrance.
In 2005 I stayed in the old town, Sultanhamet, but I wandered up to the area called Beyoglu (bay-OH-loo) which is a little more trendy than the touristic old town. The pedestrianized main street, Istiklal, is clogged with people out walking and dodging the historic tram that runs down the middle of the street. It is lined with all the big brand designer clothes stores as well as some of the other great brands like Dunkin’ Donuts, and, yes, Starbucks. This year I stayed in Beyoglu.
The 14th C Genoese Galata Tower is at one end of the street. It affords great views over the Golden Horn and the Bosphorus (closed for renovation in 2024). At the other end of the street is Taksim Square, the site of major protests in 2013.
Topkapi Palace
Topkapi served as the sultan’s residence and the political center of the empire. The palace was last used by the sultans in the mid-19th C. It is not your typical European palace, rather it is built as a collection of pavilions spread around several courtyards. The outer courtyards are more public, and as you move deeper into the palace the rooms are more for the intimate family.
The palace is sited overlooking the Golden Horn and the Bosphorus – great location. You can tour part of the harem. This word tends to be associated with gilt decorated rooms filled with young women waiting to do the sultan’s bidding, but “harem” literally means “private.” The harem is the private apartments of the sultan and his family (and concubines). The harem in Topkapi has over 400 rooms on six levels.
The sultan occupied 100 to 150 of these while his mother laid claim to 40 rooms, The rest were for the wives, children, eunichs, and concubines. Islam permitted a man to have four wives and as many concubines as he could support – a sultan could support many. But it was up to his mother to bestow favor upon a family by allowing their daughter to marry the sultan and produce a potential heir to the throne – a very powerful position, indeed.
The treasury building displays some marvelous gems, including that Topkapi Dagger and an 82 carat diamond. I noted in 2005 that the jam of tourists made it difficult to enjoy, but this year was fine. Another pavilion has relics of the Prophet – beard hairs, teeth, his footprint (one for my collection!)- that you view while a continuing parade of imams reads passages from the Koran as they have non-stop 24 hours per day for 400 years.
Film trivia: The exterior shots for the 1964 Academy Award winning film, “Topkapi”, (Peter Ustinov, Maximilian Schell, Robert Morley) were made on the palace grounds of this 15th C. Ottoman palace. The film’s plot revolved around the theft of the Topkapi Dagger. Apparently, the film was the inspiration for the “Mission Impossible” TV shows.
Mosques and Churches
I wrote in 2005 that “the Blue Mosque (Sultan Ahmet Camii) was underwhelming for me. I was expecting to be wowed by fantastic decor inside, but it was just a big place with blue tiles. This seems to be my general read on most mosques. I’ve remarked before that I like cathedrals because of the space they contain. The big mosques are big, and the domes certainly airy, but they leave me a bit cold. I like the vaulted ceilings and vertical stained glass of cathedrals much better.” Yeah. I’d generally agree with that assessment today.
The exteriors of mosques I find much more interesting. There are multiple intersecting domes which would be a challenge to design using a modern CAD system – can’t imaging how hard it was in the 17th century.
The elegant minarets are also appealing – The Blue Mosque has six – a scandal at the time of construction since the only other mosque to have six is The Great Mosque in Mecca. Most mosques just have one minaret – it’s where the muezzin traditionally stood to announce the call for prayers. Building more than one gives the sponsor of the construction a means of flaunting their wealth. The call to prayers these days is done with loudspeakers.
Down on the edge of the Golden Horn, Yeni Camii (the New Mosque) is only 400 years old. Its similar to most, but has the distinguishing feature of the spice bazaar just outside its doors. When mosques were built, outbuildings were also built with offices, schools, shops, etc. The rents generated revenue for the upkeep of the mosque. The spice bazaar served that purpose for Yeni Camii and it is in full swing to this day. It wasn’t quite as exotic as similar bazaars in Morocco, but I like wandering in these colorful areas where you can really buy just about anything.
Perhaps the nicest of the mosques was one dedicated to and is the site of the tomb of Suleyman the Magnificent – the Sulemaniye. It stands atop one of the “seven hills of Istanbul,” and overlooks the Golden Horn.
It must be a Roman thing, this seven hills business. I think every city claims to have seven hills. (I need to check on the tourist brochure for Kansas City….) But the view from the hill overlooking the Golden Horn and the Bosphorus is spectacular and the lofting of the mosque does make its interior the nicest. Most of the outlying buildings still stand and several have been converted to cafes/restaurants.
I didn’t remember it from my 2005 visits, but I walked in the old part of town to see the Kariye Museum (Chora church). The present building dates back to about 1100 and is known for it’s 14th C mosaics – some of the best late-Byzantine mosaics, anywhere. In a pattern that is now familiar, it was a church, then a mosque, then a museum and is now being converted back into a practicing mosque, and was closed this year, I think for renovations. I don’t know what the plan will be when it re-opens since the mosaics will only be viewable from the active mosque area where heathens are not normally allowed.
There are still standing some sections of the wall that surrounded the city as protection against invaders.
Other Neat Stuff
It was surprising to see the 6th C Roman Basilica Cistern. Apparently this was “lost” for about a thousand years until the 1540’s when investigations of people able to drop their buckets into basements to get water led to the discovery of an 80,000 m3 cistern supported by 336 columns. The columns had been recycled from other ancient sites.
The Archeology Museum is really excellent. They had fantastic displays of artifacts from Troy, but the centerpiece of the collection are sarcophagi unearthed in the necropolis of Sidon in Lebanon in the 1880’s. Their external relief carvings are exceptionally well preserved – some even have traces of their original paint. One called the Alexander sarcophagus (not his, but has a battle scene of him carved on the outside) dated from the 4th C BC.
The old Sirkeci (SEER-ka-chee) railroad station was the European terminus for the Orient Express. In 2005 the train didn’t do the whole run anymore except for an occasional tourist excursion. There was a Bosphorous Flyer that went to Bucharest (slowly), and you could still take the Orient Express from there to Vienna and Paris. (I did the run from Brasov, Romania to Vienna and on to Paris in 2004.) But now in 2024 there is no longer any international train service from Sirkeci. In 2005 I had coffee in the Orient Express Restaurant with the strains of Nat King Cole singing, “Unforgettable” in the background.
In 2005 I wandered over to Dolmabache Palace which was the home of the last sultans and where Ataturk died in 1938. This 19th century European style palace was supposed to be over the top – that was it’s intention as the Ottoman Empire was weakening and the sultan was trying to burnish his image with Europeans. I didn’t find it nearly as oppressive as the baroque palaces in Europe. Nice shack.
A Buck is a Buck
For the same price as a Big Mac, the McDonald’s in Sultanhamet had a McTurco sandwich available in lamb or chicken in 2005. The McD had a makeover in the intervening 19 years. Unfortunately the McTurco is no longer on the menu. Though it was never a church, then a mosque and then a museum, the government is rumored to be considering turning the McDonald’s into a practicing mosque. Food will still be sold there (no matter what religion you’re spouting, a buck is a buck), but McRibs are out.
A buck might still be a buck, but is a Turkish Lira still a Turkish Lira? Financial stability has never been a hallmark of any Turkish government. In the 1980’s and ’90’s soaring inflation required the issuance of banknotes with an ever increasing number of zeroes. From the early 1950’s through 1980 the largest banknote in circulation was worth 1000TL, and it cost about 60TL to buy a US dollar at the end of that period. A 5,000TL note was printed in 1981. In 1986, a 10,000TL note was issued. In 1998 a 20,000TL note. In 1989 a 50,000TL note, and it cost about 2,000TL to buy a US dollar. By the year 2000 there was a 20,000,000TL note and it cost 500,000TL to buy a dollar.
Erdogan was elected president in 2002 and was able to rein in inflation. By 2005 the economy was deemed stable enough to re-value the currency (the exchange rate was about 1,500,000TL per dollar), and banknotes were re-issued with six zeroes lopped off. I was in the country for this so was able to get the old and new bills from circulation. Both the 20,000,000TL and 20TL notes circulated together and were each worth about US$13. Newly designed banknotes were issued in 2009, and my new 20TL note is worth about US$0.75 with today’s exchange rate of 32TL/dollar, but in the current series of notes the largest denomination is 200TL, about 8 bucks.
Barber-ians at the Gate
Before going to Turkiye in 2005 I had read that getting a haircut and a shave was an experience not to miss, so I took part. The bizarre part of it was that after all the clipping was over the barber would take a long string of cotton dipped in alcohol, light it, and drag this flaming strip of cotton around your ears to sear off any little hairs. Quite a show.
I needed a haircut by the time I got to Istanbul this year, so I stopped in to see how this may have evolved. Well…. The haircut was great, and there was some neck and shoulder rubbing (reminiscent of the full back rubs I’d get in China). Occasionally the barber would stir something in a little pot on the counter. When all the clipping was done, he took a Q-tip and put it in the pot, coating it with molten wax. One of these was put in each ear, and one in each nostril. “Oh,” I thought, “This is good. If I close my mouth, my head will be watertight!” After a respectful wait, he yanked the Q-tips out of each orifice, ripping the, until-then-unnoticed hairs out and he gleefully showed me how the Q-tips yielded results . Youch! Ouch! Yeow! Oww!
becklectic Tales 