Note: Please excuse any odd timing here as I started this post several weeks ago.
I sit in front of a yawningly black and empty computer screen at our two bedroom rented flat in the New District of Istanbul, Türkiye. As our month in the country winds to a close, I’m lost in thought about how I can summarize everything that the city evokes. As with any part of the globe, there are innumerable fine travel guides available that cover the major sights; there’s no use adding fuel to those fires. The question is, what does the city and our time here mean to us and how did it change us?
Although we’ve had some great weather during our month, it’s drizzling on this late-April morning and our third-floor walk-up apartment has taken on a distinct chill. Even if the sun were to break through the clouds, the old stone and brick building would stay chilly for days.
When Rhett, Sunny, and rented a one-bedroom apartment in Paris for a month in the fall of 2022, it was just the three of us and we didn’t venture outside the city. While that was great, we organized our month in Istanbul a bit differently. First, it was marginally more expensive to rent a two bedroom apartment. So we jumped for the second bedroom and invited Jack and Jess, our son and daughter-in-law, for the second week of the month and Sarah and Mike, some of our best friends, for the third week. Also, when Jack and Jess came, the four of us took a several day side trip to Cappadocia in central Türkiye. The second and third week timing of family and friends was excellent in that it gave Rhett and me a chance to settle in and get to know the city a bit prior to entertaining, and the last week alone gave us a chance to clean up a bit and see some off-the-beaten-track sights of the city.
Prior to my month here, I never knew what to make of Istanbul. (Or is it Byzantium? Or Constantinople?). Is it European? Is it Asian? Is it predominantly Christian or Muslim? Just where did Türkiye come from anyway? And how do the Byzantine Empire and Ottoman Empire relate to Türkiye?
I’ll do my best to untangle a little bit of that here as well as describe how the city and its people changed Rhett and me during our month’s stay.
For starters, here’s brief but solid excerpt of Istanbul’s past 2,700 years:
For more than two millennia, Istanbul/Constantanople has been one of the world’s greatest cities:
1) The Greek city founded for its strategic location atop a hill surrounded on three sides by water (700 BC – AD 300)
2) The grand eastern capital of the Roman Empire (AD, 333 – 476)
3) Its thousand years as the greatest city in Byzantine Christendom (476 – 1453)
4) Its four hundred years as a Muslim capital of the vast Ottoman Empire (1453 – 1920)
5) The modern metropolis of today, encompassing Muslim, Christian, and secular residents (1920 – today)
Excerpted from Rick Steves’ Istanbul Guidebook
From a nomenclature perspective the city began as Byzantium (as it was founded around 700 BC by the Greek king Byzas). Around 333 AD the Roman Emperor Constantine moved the capital of the Roman Empire to the city and officially renamed it Nova Roma (“New Rome”) but everyone just called it Constantinople (“The City of Constantine”). That name more-or-less stuck for 1,600 years until finally being renamed Istanbul in the 1930s with the founding of the modern Turkish republic after World War I. (I say “more-or-less” as relates to “Constantinople,” as the Ottomans “Arabic-ified” it to a rough transliteration of Konstantiniyye or Qustantiniyyah.)
By the way, our adjective “Byzantine,” meaning something that is overly complex and unwieldy—especially a bureaucracy or government—derives from this history.
If, from reading all above, you’re now wondering (as I did), Why all the fuss and focus about this place? its worth going back for a quick read of our previous post—Autumn 2023: Planes, Ferries, and Automobiles—where we addressed thalassocracies (maritime empires), and specifically Venice’s thalassocracy. While the term “crossroads” is a bit overused in our parlance, it’s quite fitting for Istanbul. It truly sits at choke-point between East and West and between Europe and Asia.
At a macro level, while being at a crossroads of the trade of goods and ideas is important, it’s only half the equation of Istanbul. A sport’s analogy is helpful to understand the other side of the coin: “The best offense is a good defense.” Having everything means nothing if you can’t keep what you have and protect who you love. So, zooming in to the defensive micro level, Istanbul’s location is also ideal.
Given that Istanbul’s Old Town is surrounded on three sides by water (the Sea of Marmara to the south, Bosporus Strait to the east, and Golden Horn to the north), the west is the only unimpeded land route into the original city (more on that coming).
Also from the previous maps, note that while Istanbul’s Old Town is in Europe, a couple miles across the Bosporus lies Asia. Many Istanbulllus work in European Istanbul but live in Asian Istanbul, relying on ferries or the under-Bosporus metro tunnels for their daily intercontinental commute.
To close this chapter of the post, one charm of the city that everyone notices, especially sailors, it its seafaring feel. While great cities we’ve visited like London or Paris have much to be said for them and are situated on major rivers, they lack the maritime ambiance of a gateway to the world.
It’s now a week later, early morning on our second-to-last full day in Istanbul and I know I’ve got to get something out the door and posted. I know this because as soon as we return to Athens in a few days, Rhett, Sunny, and I will be launched into Greek Orthodox Easter celebrations and then a quick land trip so some Greek monasteries and then (hopefully) to launching Hazel James and starting our 2024 sailing season. While it’s not now-or-never for a proper blog post about Istanbul and Türkiye, it’s probably now-or-November and by then the distinct edges of the impressions, feelings, and memories will be dissolved and eroded like a Classical Greek column in a modern metropolis.
On this morning, I’m woken around 4:30 a.m. by the call to prayer emanating from our local mosque down the street. I know that if I’m not sleeping, I should rouse myself and start writing but I can’t bring myself to it. The bed is too warm and comfortable and Rhett is next to me and Sunny is sleeping on a pillow above Rhett’s head. It’s a compromise we’ve worked out with Sunny. If Sunny totally had her way she’d be snuggled between us. I lightly scratch Rhett’s back which causes her to sigh and stir. Occasionally, I pause and do the same on the underside of Sunny’s ears (provoking an eerily similar response). I drift in and out of consciousness, half dreaming (I think of brewing Turkish coffee), half thinking about writing. I bask in the warmth of our bed. On one hand it’s effective as I’m in a partial dream-state and my ideas all seem larger than life; on the other I know my mind is playing tricks on me. My mind knows that the better my thoughts appear, the longer I’ll stay in bed.
As the muezzin’s call to prayer continues, I’m reminded of our first couple weeks in the city which was during the last weeks of the month of Ramadan. During Ramadan and in addition to the before-sunrise call to prayer, a lone drummer would trot down our street (and every street in our neighborhood) banging away to a frenetic rhythm. The cobbled streets and brick-and-stone facades of the apartment buildings effectively placed him at the bottom of a giant sound bowl and each boom of the base and splash of the snare was amplified as it reverberated up to our windows. Although not a percussion expert, I was in high school marching band and have a deep appreciation for the drum corps. The first time I was awoken by this cacophony I assumed it was three or four drummers at work. Not until several days later (after I had gotten to bed early the night before) and I “sprung from my bed to see what was the matter” like Clement C. Moore’s guy in the cap, I threw open the window sash and was shocked to find that the magnificent clatter was made by one clearly talented and clearly caffeinated percussionist. And it wasn’t until a few days ago when I attended a military band concert did I discover the drummer’s polyphonic secret. The drummer’s in the military marching band all had large drums strapped to their chest canted from left to right (as the drummer looks at his drum). The right side of the drum was the bass side and the drummer held a mallet and boomed out the rhythm. On the left side, the drummer had a much smaller and quicker drumstick. With his left hand he clamped this riding-crop-like stick to the upper rim of the left and treble side of the drum. I imagine that side also had snares across the drumhead to accentuate the crackling high frequency. While the bass boomed a cadence, the squad of four military percussionists (or one lone Ramadan drummer) rattled out the off-beats with the snare side of the drum.
Why all this pre-dawn clatter you ask? It’s a legacy from pre-ubiquitous-alarm-clock days reminding observant Muslims to wake and eat and drink their fill before sunrise and the start of the day’s Ramadan fast (that lasts until sunset during the month of Ramadan).
Not only is Istanbul old, at a population of 15 million in the city proper, it’s also big. (As comparison New York City is 8.5 million in the city, 20 million including surrounding regions; Chicago is 3 million, 9 million total in the area; and Los Angeles is 4 million, 18 million total in the area.) All this is to say that there are a lot of people trying to get from one place to another—exacerbated by water, steep terrain, and ancient, narrow, cobbled streets.
While the city has some excellent public transport—busses, ferries, metros (subways), trams (streetcars or trolleys), and funiculars (an underground version of Pittsburgh’s “inclines”)—and we’ve used all of them in our month here, traffic in the city is nuts. It’s nothing like US-city traffic with wide segregated wheeled traffic streets and pedestrian sidewalks, but more a shaken cocktail with cars parked on sidewalks, motor scooters and motorbikes driving the opposite direction on one-way streets and on sidewalks whenever convenient, all while being ignored by pedestrians.
Istanbul city planners trying to stem the amount of wheeled traffic on sidewalks have installed iron posts and rounded concrete “tombstones” on curbs that would damage a car trying to drive or park on a sidewalk (of course the motor scooters and motor bikes just weave between them). It’s a nice touch but they’re a tripping hazard for pedestrians. Also, planners have installed one-way treadles to enforce one-way streets for cars (of course the two wheeled traffic just drives around them as well).
Within days of being in the city, Rhett and I had coined the term “Turkey trot” between us. The Turkey trot was that little stumble (hopefully just a little stumble) when one of us got careless and wasn’t looking down and caught a toe or heel on a tombstone or various other uneven steps and curbs.
When our two sets of guests arrived, we gave them the same “safety briefing.” While your eyes will naturally want to wander and take in sights, while you’re walking keep them down, anticipating the inevitable surprises that the next step will bring. When you want to admire the city, stop and do it from a fixed position. Always walk in a generally straight direction and at a constant speed. You can be on what you think is the most pedestrian-only thoroughfare in the city, only to have a motor scooter whiz past you from behind. Istanbul drivers will dodge the predicable pedestrian so the name of the game when walking and crossing streets is to be predictable.
It’s funny though, reflecting back as I write this post after a month of getting around the city, I didn’t see one traffic accident. Somehow it all works.
One trend that Rhett and I noticed is that, in general, homeless cats in Istanbul seem to receive better treatment than homeless citizens receive in the US. Single-minded Sunny didn’t concern herself too much with socioeconomics or fairness and just enjoyed the stalking…until the tables were turned.
It reminded me of a similar situation with a Parisian crow in the fall of 2022.
I spent a day walking the old city walls and another touring the Askeri Müze (Military Museum) and what I found most interesting is that the Christian city falling to the Muslims in 1453 marked not only the end of the Byzantine Empire (a.k.a., the Eastern Roman Empire), but also a fundamental change in siege warfare. Prior to the invading Ottoman’s victory, the name of the game for cities (and castles for that matter) was big walls, preferably with moats or natural water to make it more difficult for invaders to scale the walls. If the walls were big enough, and the few gates strong and well-defended a city with enough provisions could just wait out an invader’s attack.
Constantinople’s defensive walls were some of the finest in the world. Of the 13 miles of the city’s walled perimeter, about three miles stretched north-to-south across the land, from the Golden Horn to the north to the Sea of Marmara to the south. The remaining 10 miles of sea walls were smaller and not as heavily guarded as the water provided an additional defense. Although attacked many times, the walls were only breached once before 1453 and that was in 1204 (250 years prior) by the Fourth Crusade. If you’re wondering why the greatest Christian city in the world would be invaded and sacked by Christian Crusaders, and then the “Crusaders” stick around for 50 years of occupation, it’s a good question but beyond the scope of this post.
To take Constantinople, the Ottomans had built massive state-of-the-art cannons. The largest had a barrel diameter of 30 inches and could hurl a 1,200 pound granite ball a mile. After days of constant bombardment they were able to breach the walls and Ottoman troops flooded into the city.
One other thing if you look carefully in the above picture, you’ll see the cannons shoulder-to-shoulder with catapults. A juxtaposition reminiscent of a World War I battlefield with mounted cavalry and tanks on the same battlefield.
One closing note on the subject of siege warfare is that to outlast a siege, a city needs a lot of water. To that end, we toured the now-almost-empty Basilica Cistern the largest of several hundred underground water-storage cisterns that supplied the city’s then-population of 50,000-70,000 people. If 20 million gallons of capacity is hard to comprehend, how about 30 Olympic swimming pools? Or, over 300 columns? Or 150 yards long and 70 yards wide? Or—going to the darker side—the over 7,000 slaves who labored on building it?
When I lived in Bangalore India in the mid-2000s, I noticed that in Bangalore, and in virtually every other city, town and village I visited, there was an “MG Road.” When I asked an Indian friend who had travelled in the US what it meant and why so common, he responded at two levels, “First, ‘MG’ is the initials of Mahatma Ghandi, the father of our nation. Second, our ‘MG Road’ is akin to your ‘Kennedy Avenue’ or ‘MLK Boulevard’ or ‘Washington Street,’ you’ve probably got one of those in every town in the US.” I had to admit that he had a point, and there’s nothing like a comparison to set something in your mind.
One other quick side-note on the subject of Ghandi that relates to our story is that “Mahatma Ghandi” was not born “Mahatma Ghandi.” While “Ghandi” was his family (and given to him at birth), “Mahatma” was bestowed upon him later in life by the Indian public as a title of respect. (Mahatma is Sanskrit for “great soul” or “noble soul.”)
The Atatürk Boulevard in our story refers to Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, who—like Mahatma Ghandi—was not born Mustafa Kemal Atatürk and is seen as the father of the modern Turkish state. Also—like the ubiquitous Matama Ghandi Road in India (or Kennedy, MLK, Washington in the US)—there are literally thousands of Atatürk Boulevards and Streets in Türkiye. However, I’ve got to say that after living in India for a year and being a native of the US and now having lived a month in Türkiye, Atatürk’s modern-day presence in his native land far out-shadows Ghandi’s or Kennedy’s or Martin Luther King’s or even Washington’s. That’s not a judgement call at all, just an observation of real-life presence of a historical figure in a society.
He was born in 1881 in Thessaloniki and given the name “Mustafa”…just Mustafa. Thessaloniki is on the northwest coast of the Aegean Sea and at the time was a part of the Ottoman Empire (today Thessaloniki is the second largest city in Greece with the capital Athens as largest). It’s worth noting that not only is Thessaloniki an intended port-of-call for Hazel James this during this summer’s cruise, it’s also the eponym for the Christian Bible books First and Second Thessalonians (a “Thessalonian” being someone who lives in Thessaloniki, just like a Corinthian is someone who lives in Corinth).
Mustafa was given the additional name Kemal by a military academy teacher (Arabic for excellence or perfection). During World War I the expansive Ottoman Empire (which was declining in power and influence in the world) joined the Central Powers which also included Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Bulgaria. Although an often outspoken critic of his superiors, Mustafa Kemal served in many key military leadership positions after the war. With the Allied Powers victorious in WWI and the Treaty of Versailles taking center stage (which outlined the terms of Germany’s surrender and reparations), the Ottoman Empire fell and its expansive territories carved into smaller countries (e.g., Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Palestine, etc.) leaving roughly the modern-day Türkiye as the “rump state.” Greece seized the opportunity and invaded the Turkish territory in hopes of reclaiming its historic lands (including Constantinople/Istanbul). The three-year bloody and atrocity-filled “Greco-Turkish War” or “Turkish War of Independence” ensued (the name depending on what side you were on, and atrocities committed by both). In this war when there was basically no functioning Turkish government Mustafa Kemal came into his own and led the ultimately victorious resistance. Like the US’s General George Washington being elected as the first president, Türkiye’s first National Assembly elected Mustafa Kemal as the country’s first president in 1923 and dubbed him Atatürk (father of the Turks) and he effectively led the country until his death in 1938 (at the age of 57).
In studying his life and works, he appears to me as an emblematic “benevolent dictator.” Sure, after-the-face you could question some of his actions or methods but at the time, Türkiye was in such a bad situation a deliberate and drawn out democratic process could have sent the country into a civil war and yet more strife. He brought a clear and compelling vision to the war-weary Turkish people which included:
- Aligning Türkiye with the West
- Separating religion and state
- Adopting the Western calendar
- Decreeing that Turks should have surnames (as is in Western custom)
- Changing the Turkish alphabet from Arabic to modified Roman letters
- Outlawed the fez and the veil
- Abolished polygamy
- Instituted women’s suffrage
The net-net of these “recent” accomplishments (“recent” in relation to the long-view of history in this part of the world) and the success of the modern Turkish state, is that “Atatürk” (as he’s generally referred to) is an obsession in the country. In Greece in most small mom-and-pop shops or tavernas (restaurants) somewhere up high and behind the cash register, you’ll see a small Orthodox Christian shrine complete with Byzantine-style icon of the Madonna and child, whereas in Türkiye most likely you’ll see a shrine but it will be to Atatürk. Town squares are adorned with Atatürk’s stern visage, alternating with Turkish flags. His signature is well-known as it’s a popular tattoo with the younger set.
The final thing that must be said about Türkiye is…the people. While we’ve found every country we’ve visited just full of good people, the Turks are over-the-top. To a person we found them open, friendly, always willing to help, and honest (sure, no price is ever fixed and they expect you to bargain). Although we were out at most all times and in all places, and walking and riding public transit, we never felt uncomfortable or threatened in any way.
I’ll finish with a vignette that illustrates the people: We cleared out of our apartment on May 1, what we didn’t realize was that the first of May is International Workers’ Day in Türkiye. While it’s roughly akin to our Labor Day, the Turks take this day seriously. So seriously that all public transit is shut down and, to minimize public demonstrations, the police prohibit any traffic (including taxis) from entering the downtown areas of Istanbul (long story there). What was pertinent to our story is that it was nine in the morning, we had all our luggage and Sunny and expected to easily catch a cab for the 45-minute trip to the airport. Instead, we were met with streets that were so empty, if they’d been in a cowboy western movie, there would have been tumbleweeds rolling down them. We were were starting to despair about getting to the airport and wondering if we could delay our flight to Athens and stay in our apartment another night, when a policeman flags down a private car, says a few words to the two guys in the car, then turns to us and says, “These are my friends, they will take you to the airport for 1,000 lyra (the same price as a taxi).” The next thing we know, we’re speeding though deserted city streets doing our best to communicate with two new friends.
Fair winds and following seas!
I love that you have continued and you look so happy. Safe journeys…K
Thanks Kevin. Solid first day of sailing today and still afloat!
Thanks Kevin!