More Istanbul

There are a few museums that we should not miss while in Istanbul. One of them is Istanbul Modern, located close to Istekal Caddessi where the the current protesters have planted themselves. A shipyard wear house has been converted into a fantastic museum where Turkish art (painting and other installations) and film (contemporary documentaries and short films) are exhibited. While the tourist sites primarily focus on Ottoman Turkey, this museum gives a peep into Republican Turkey, its aspirations, ambitions and problems. It gives one a sense of the sizable secular middle class that constitutes republican turkey. Of particular interest is the film section where films are screened (exhibited) in six to eight rooms. I saw at least four extremely interesting films on gender and sexuality as well as art. The museum was holding a photography exhibition on the theme of 'personal memoirs' and a special one on Renaut Art Collection. 

What delighted me also was the unexpected treasure that I found in the shop attached to Bascillica Cistern - a whole section on contemporary cartoons in Turkey. I spent more than an hour pouring through the collection one of which I ended up buying. The one that you see is the collection of the individual cartoonist. But the Association of Cartoonists also publishes best cartoons from International Nasreddin Hodja Cartoon Contest which has cartoonists from the entire region - Bulgaria, Iran, Romania, Turkey, Greece etc. participate. Globalization, region's fascination with Ottomans, the shallowness of religion, state and other institutions are recurrent themes in the cartoons.




The cartoonist is a symbol of the secular, republican turkey, which is currently on defensive. The character of 'persecuted cartoonist' Elif Shafak's novel 'The bastard of Istanbul' gets slapped with cases for insulting the national parliament while he thinks that the citizen's ability to lampoon is the basis of the republic. He initially depicts them as sheep. Despite the Court's strictures against repeating the mistake, he depicts them as ..., which to his delight, lands him in prison!

Istanbul

Anzac Wooden House! A tiny guest house tucked away in the narrow by lanes in Sultanahmet (Old city area) of Istanbul behind the iconic Blue Mosque. You expect authentic Turks to run the place, right? Wrong. The two people who run it are Rashid, a Kurdish Muslim and Melissa, daughter of a Romanian Muslim family, and the wife of a Kurdish man, a friend of Rashid. The small grocery store next to it is also run by two young Kurdish men. You ask a random waiter in a nearby cafe where he is from. He happens to be be from the border of Iran, not Kurdish, not Armenian, a mixture of both and other identities. Turkish republic seems to have been hospitable to a multi-ethnic society - an inheritance from the Ottoman empire that it succeeded. 

Simit! The food that the Istanbulites seem to love. Sesame tinted, hard but tasty. It is everywhere, ready to be eaten with cheese or dollops of chocolate sauce. A simple simit costs 1 Turkish lira. Stuffed ones cost 2 to 4 lira, depending on where you are eating. It is also fed to the fish under the Galata bridge (do they eat bread?) and the sea gulls on the Marmara sea. 

Istanbul is a city of seven hills, with one crore seventy lakh population and 39 districts (or divisions) in a 100 square km area. Jews, Christians, Greeks, Kurds, Armenians, Romanians and probably several other Slavic peoples have made it their residence. Apparently, there are different and distinct residential areas where they have settled. Would have loved to find out more on this!

It is a city of sea gulls (and fat, beautiful cats). They are noisy, crafty and competitive. Fed on fish, simit and god knows what, they are great in number along the sea coast. They catch the fish that the fishing enthusiasts on the Galata bridge throw to them; fly along the ferries, catch the bread that the tourists throw them and scream horribly in the nights. But, they are ready to be photographed so we ended up with a hundred photoes of them!  

Turkey's European lineage is nowhere more apparent than in Istanbul. It may be poorer (with $10,000 per capita) compared to France, UK and Germany; more in tune with Southern European countries such as Greece or Italy. But, make no mistake, the roads are perfectly clean; the municipality sweepers look healthy, wear all protective gear and move around confidently, taking care of the menial jobs. The tourist buses that you see in the picture are Mercedes-Benz make with Bosch headphones. And there are lines of fishing enthusiasts on the Galata bridge right through the day (watching them is an 'unconventional' way of enjoying Istanbul that the Lonely Planet doesn't mention). And its public transport.

The trams, buses and ferries carry the substantial number of commuters and tourists through out the city. They are cheap, safe and easy to access. Istanbulkart - an instant pass that gets you access in all these forms of transport can be bought in a pan-shop in tourist places. It is easily rechargeable, usable and surrender-able. One can't miss the tram journey in the old city and ferry trips across the Asian and European continents. Trams have a no-nonsense ambiance while ferries (especially across Bosphorous) have a more relaxed atmosphere. 

And the cafes!! They are everywhere, between monuments, alongside the streets, along the Bosphorous straits, in Beyoglu, on the Prince's islands, in the premises of the museums. You can get your chai (apple, green) and coffee (Italian and Turkish), and food. You relax, meet friends, gossip, catch-up in Turkish, English, Malay, Greek and howmanyever languages that the locals and the tourists seem to speak. You can see people of all nationalities, ethnicity and race populating the cafes in the tourist centres. 

The Istanbul municipality has a very creative slogan - old city, contemporary care. They seem to be having enough revenues to renovate a great number of mosques and other monuments (or is it the current political party which gave them such funds, one does not know). But, they do take good care of the monuments and conduct enough public events near the 'historic' sites to preserve a connection between the old and the new. One such event is what one sees in the picture - a chess tournament in the middle of the historic square near the Hippodrome, close to all major monuments.  

 Nowhere is the distance between Turkey and the other Muslim countries of the West Asian region more apparent than in the way women inhabit the public space. There are women in completely westernized attire, scarfed women with westernized attire and scarfed and burqa-clad women - of all ages, going about their business at all hours of the day.

Headscarf or not, women are everywhere, doing all the things that they want to do, with confidence, poise and grace.

(Trivia - most of the contestants in Miss Turkey competition were university students from Istanbul (that has 16 universities) and Ankara - courtesy, a Turkish newspaper). 

It seems that many Turkish novelists and artists think that it is difficult for Istanbul to escape its fate of bridging the West and the East. Even the Ottoman empire was doing it. The fountain between the Blue Mosque and the Hagia Sophia was presented by Kaiser of Germany while the Topkapi Palace houses gifts that the Mughal Emperor sent to the Ottomans. Istanbul Modern, the museum of contemporary Turkish art and culture shows the work of the Turkish artists constantly struggling with the Western art traditions to incorporate Turkish motifs, themes and struggles.  

The conflict between the West and the East is also being played out as one between Christianity and Islam (??) too or secularism vs.Islam, perhaps. Hagia Sophia, arguably the grandest monument of Istanbul, was the seat of Eastern Roman empire for 1000 years was converted into a mosque after the Ottoman conquest which Kemal Ataturk made into a museum. During our one week in Istanbul, there was a small demonstration demanding its re-conversion into a mosque. One didn't get a sense of this group's politics, though. Conversation with one of the demonstrating youth - a student of Islamic studies at Istanbul University - did not enlighten us much. Was it sponsored by the ruling Islamic Democratic Party, which has spearheaded Turkey's turn around but has been castigated as anti-secular by the opposition Republican party? The ruling party is a pro-development (neo-liberal) but has an Islamic slant. As of now, Turkish national flags fly on several mosques and monuments in Istanbul, but apparently, the party also has opened out a dialogue with Kurdish dissidents (according to the Kurdish shopkeeper adjacent to our guest house).  

What one remembers from a city is the hospitality. Istanbul is eminently memorable for its hospitality. The government has tourist police - for all those tourists - those with Lonely Planet and those who cannot read maps. More memorable are the ordinary people one meets on the street, trams or ferries. When we asked for directions, people pulled out i-phones to show us the maps and give us directions. The huge language barrier acted as the enabler in these difficult conversations. Old women who we met on the ferry offered us food and conducted a sign-language conversation with us for some time. Perhaps it is where it preserves its Muslim legacy - in its tehzeeb.  

Visual composition - Ramana Murthy

Commentary - Suneetha