Impressions of Istanbul, Part 1

I had never been to Istanbul before coming Koç University. Although I had heard wonderful things about the city, and barely considered the notion that I might not like it, I had very little on which to base my expectations. Most of what I knew about the city came from pictures, Wikipedia articles, and Orhan Pamuk novels. I imagined minarets soaring above narrow, picturesque streets of thousand-year old buildings; rows of ornate wooden houses lining the shores of the Bosphorus; throngs of elegantly dressed Istanbulites congregating on city squares late at night; and quiet yet exotic meyhanes nestled in remote corners of the city. What I imagined was something romantic, exotic, and cosmopolitan at the same time. In some ways, Istanbul has met these expectations, but in other ways, it has defied them. The real Istanbul is more authentic and modern, yet less exotic and romantic, than what I had imagined.

When traveling through Europe before I arrived in Istanbul, I sometimes lamented that the old cities of Europe feel almost too well preserved, too much like a Disney version of reality. As a tourist, you see a Prague and a Vienna and a Milan that are filled with perfectly restored buildings along immaculately clean, car-free streets crammed with restaurants and souvenir shops where English is the lingua franca. It's wonderful, but it's not an accurate snapshot of what Prague and Vienna and Milan were really like for most of their hundreds of years of history, or even what life in these cities is life for the average resident today. By contrast, Istanbul is a city that seems unconcerned with presenting a polished image to the outside world. It's a pragmatic place where things exist to serve the needs of ordinary residents. Immediately around Hagia Sofia, you see perfectly restored buildings and wonderfully manicured parks and streets lined with English-speaking cafes, but only a few blocks a way the city gets back to its everyday business. The Bosphorus is visually stunning, but it's also a major working waterway. Its harbors are filled with fishing boats and ferries, not yachts and tour boats. Istanbul today is what I imagine Chicago or New York or Vienna was like a hundred years: living, breathing, and working without pretense.

Although the citizens of Istanbul seem proud of their city's 1700-year history as the capital of three empires, they do not seem inclined to preserve the city as a museum piece. In reality, there is little that remains of Istanbul from before the Ottoman conquest in 1453, because the Byzantine Empire and Constantinople were then in a state of severe decline and were unable to maintain the grand Roman structures: the city's population had plummeted from over half a million in 530 AD to just 36,000 when it was conquered by Sultan Mehmet. With a few exceptions, those structures that remain are integrated into the fabric of daily life: modern roads run underneath Roman aqueducts and out of the Byantine city walls. This attitude has occasionally run afoul of UNESCO, which prefers ancient sites to be pristinely preserved for a eternity: the city's ancient sites are routinely placed on its list of most endangered sites, and restoration work has progressed slowly even on the Hagia Sofia. Yet there's something fascinating about seeing satellite dishes protruding from a 13th-century house built by Genoese traders, and who wouldn't want to stay in an Ottoman prison converted into a five-star hotel?

The authenticity of Istanbul is invigorating. Unfortunately, it comes at a price: while Istanbul has some architectural and natural wonders it is not, one the whole, a beautiful city. Browse through the pictures on the Istanbul Wikipedia article and you'll see something as stunning as any old European city. What these pictures don't capture is that, even in the wealthy parts of town, the historic buildings are mixed in with drab concrete structures and the side streets could use cleaning. Sultanahmet, the area surrounding Istanbul's great sights, is residential, working-class, dirty, and thoroughly unremarkable. The posh center of contemporary Istanbul, Beyoglu, has a bustling square, but it's probably the ugliest square you've ever seen: bisected by a major road, lined with horrendous 1970s architecture, and terminating in a blank wall at the west end. In Levent, the high-rise business district north of the center, the sidewalks in front of the 30-story glass towers could use repair. It's only once you step inside the ornate mosques of Sultanahmet or the chic restaurants of Beyoglu that you truly experience the elegance and wealth of Istanbul.

There's more I want to say about my impressions of Istanbul, which I will cover in Part 2 of this post. Istanbul is truly a city at a crossroads, between the East and West and between the first world and the third, and between modern and ancient, and this merits greater elaboration. But at the moment, I'm practicing what I like to call productive procrastination: doing something worthwhile (blogging) to avoid doing something else more pressing (studying for tomorrow's Turkish quiz). I will hopefully have a chance to return to this subject this weekend.