Pera and Politics

Today I visited four churches along Istiklal Blvd.  The area below Taksim Square is known as Pera to Europeans and Beyoglu to Turks.  This was the section of the city where the Italians were first allowed to settle, setting a precedent for Pera to be the "International" part of the city.  However, it was not only foreigners who lived here, the European domination of the area attracted groups of local Christians as well.  Like St. George's monastery, all these churches asked that pictures not be taken inside so I unfortunately only have shots of the exterior.

The first church I visited was the Franciscan Catholic Church of St. Mary Draperis.  The church building dates to 1769 and its interior decor to 1874.  It is colorfully painted with multiple statues of the Virgin and Jesus.  The pink marble altar dominates the relatively small and low interior.  Above the altar is an icon of the Virgin said to have miraculous properties.  The icon was a donation to the first church of St. Mary, built in 1584.  Overall, the statues and icons combined with the dimly lit interior gave the church a very old-school feel.

The second church, St. Anthony of Padua, is also Catholic but in many ways the opposite of St. Mary's.  It has a huge Gothic vaulted interior and a sky-blue ceiling.  It gives the visitor the impression of being in ancient forest grove.

The next church was built to serve a local Christian population, the Armenians.  Now reduced to a small remnant of their former population, the church seems to be largely forgotten.  I was let in by an elderly Armenian who seemed to be happy but confused about my visit.  Like the exterior, the interior of the church seemed to be an elegant study in black and white, very different from its Catholic counterparts.

The last church also served a formerly large community of local Christians, the Greeks.  Anti Greek riots throughout the course of the 20th century have forced all but a few thousand to emigrate.  This Greek Orthodox Church, called the Church of the Panaghia, seemed to be undergoing renovation and unfortunately locked.

All of these churches sit in little courtyards away from the street.  According to Ottoman laws, minority places of worship could not sit directly on the street.  Today, they are calm but lonely oasis from the surrounding crowds and shops.

Yesterday was election day here in Turkey.  There was thankfully no more violence and the election was run freely and openly.  Unsurprisingly, votes for the currently ruling Justice and Developement (AK) Party far surpassed those for any of its rivals.  However, it only took about 50% of the seats in Parliament, far less than the supermajority it was hoping for.  With a supermajority, the party would have been able to go through with its plans to create a new constitution without involving other parties.  After the election results came in Prime Minister Erdogan did not backtrack on his plans for constitutional revision, but instead acknowledged that he would and could compromise with other parties in order to gain the supporters he needs.  Turkey's current constitution certainly needs revision.  Created by generals after the last full-on coup in 1983, it is somewhat authoritarian, discriminatory toward minorities and, as I have mentioned previously, restrictive toward free speech.  However, it is also probably for the best that the AKP will be forced to make compromises with other parties in order to bring about the needed reform.  The AKP may be massively popular, but they still at most only represent the point of view 50% of the population.  A new constitution based on a single point of view could and would be just as flawed as the current one.

Political involvement is enthusiastic and wide spread here.  87% of voters cast their ballots yesterday, a number that puts to shame even the most hotly contested American elections.  The Kurdish rights party, the BDP, had significant success with the independent candidates they backed.  The party had a victory rally here in Kadikoy last night, but unfortunately the darkness and constant movement of the supporters prevented me from getting a clear picture.

Kadikoy seems to be a popular staging point for rallies for political groups across the political spectrum.  When I came home from class and touring today I saw this near the ferry dock.

A good old fashioned communist rally complete with banners with pictures of Chairman Mao and another unidentified (possibly Turkish ?) figure.

I haven't had a picture of a sokak kedi here in a few days, so here's a two-for-one.  Sokak kedis discover that books can also double as beds.

The Big Island

The Prince's Islands made an appearance in the views posted previously.  Today, I visited the largest of the islands, called Buyukada or Big Island in Turkish.

A popular retreat for wealthy Ottomans and foreigners alike in the late 19th and early 20th century, the islands now attract many day-trippers.  As you can see from these two neighboring structures, efforts to preserve the homes built in the island's former glory days have been inconsistent at best.

The island is shaped by two large hills.  On the top of the northern, smaller hill is the old Greek Orphanage.  I was not disappointed in my expectations of creepiness.  It is apparently the largest wooden building remaining in all of Europe.  Since the founding of the Republic, the Turkish state has found numerous excuses to confiscate the property holdings of minority religious organizations.  This orphanage was one such property.  However, like many other buildings confiscated from minorities, instead of using or selling the property, the government allowed it to fall into almost irreversible state of disrepair. 

About a year ago, the European Court of Human Rights demanded that the Turkish government transfer the orphanage back to the Greek Patriarchate.  However, it seems that this ruling has yet to have any real affects upon the state of the property.  A caretaker living in a shack seems to be using the surrounding grounds to graze sheep and raise chickens.  A sign on the front gate warned of a guard dog, but I found him asleep at the switch (he is the black lump in the second picture).

At the top of the southern, larger hill is the Greek Orthodox monastery of St. George.  The monastery is a place of pilgrimage for both Orthodox Christians and Turkish Muslims.  Thousands of people of both religions gather around the monastery's tiny chapel on St. George's feast day, April 23.  They kiss the silver plated icons, request the saint's intervention and thank him for fulfilled requests.  Part of the pilgrimage includes unraveling a spool of thread from the base of the hill to the door of the chapel.  The faster his or thread runs out, the faster the pilgrim's prayer is supposed to come true.  Once at the peak of the hill, the pilgrim also ties a piece of cloth to one of the surrounding trees, as seen in the second picture above.  Unfortunately, I have been unable to determine the purpose behind this second practices.  It may be similar to the stones on the pillars at the tomb of the Alevi saint- when the cloth disappears, a request will be answered.

Three views of Istanbul

Friday, in lieu of classes, my language school took us on a tour of some non-traditional tourist destinations in Istanbul.

Our first stop was Eyup Mosque, located outside the old city walls toward the tail end of the golden horn.  This mosque is named after said to contain the tomb of one of the companions of the Prophet Muhammad, Eyup Ensari.  He died during the first Arab siege of Istanbul in the 7th century.  The presence of a Muslim saint has motivated many other people over the years to choose the region around the mosque as their final resting place.  The steep hills to the north of the mosque are covered with terraces of graves.

We walked up the hill to the Pierre Loti cafe, named after the French novelist who is said to have frequented it during his stay in Istanbul.  The cafe has a commanding view of the Golden Horn and, in the distance, the old city.

In the mosque courtyards, there were several families with little boys dressed in white outfits with crowns and scepters.  A fellow student was kind enough to inform me that these costumes indicated that the boys would be circumcised today.  Unlike Jewish tradition, male Muslims do not necessarily undergo circumcision at birth.  The ages of the boys I saw seemed to be somewhere between 6 and 8.  The families of the boys passed out lokum, Turkish delights, to all those passing through the mosque.  The circumcision marks a boys passage into manhood and a lavish party is thrown in his honor.

Next we went to the tiny town of Andalou Kavagi on the Asian side to the straight.  This town is the last stop-off before the Bosphorus merges into the Black Sea.  On the hill above the town there is a ruined Byzantine fortress which offers views of the northern end of the Bosphorus.  This was the setting for one of the trials of Jason and the Argonauts.  Two stones, called the Symplegades, guarded the end of the straight by continuously clashing together.  The area is still of strategic importance.  The town of Adalou Kavagi and the surrounding hills contain multiple military bases.

On our way down the hill I spotted something amazing in the yard of a local poultry farmer.  The two large birds on the left are Turkeys... in Turkey.

Our last stop was the Hill of Pines, the highest point in Istanbul.  Consequently, its sweeping views of the city were spectacular.

St. Savior in Chora

Today I visited the church cum mosque cum museum St. Savior in Chora.  The building itself dates from the 11th century but what makes it worth visiting are the spectacular mosaics and frescoes that were added to the church between 1315 and 1321.  The church's art was somewhat ironically preserved when, during its conversion into a mosque, it was covered with plaster.  In 1948, the mosque was de-sanctified and restoration revealed the building's hidden secrets.

The mosaics are extensive, covering much of the church's domes and walls.  Even in their now damaged state, they are absolutely breathtaking.

The southern side chapel is decorated primarily in frescoes.  The naturalism and emotion displayed by the figures is far ahead of the art work that was being produced in most of western Europe at the time.



This relatively inconspicuous fresco may be one of the most interesting pieces in the church.  Though most of the art in the church is dedicated to the life and genealogy of Jesus and the Virgin Mary, this fresco depicts David the Dendrite.  A hermit from Thessolonika who spent 3 years perched in a tree, he was known to give sound advice to petitioners.  He only left his tree retreat in order to travel to Constantinople and petition Emperor Justinian to send soldiers to defend his home town. 

Turkey was prominently featured in the New York Times today in an article about the increasing number of Syrian refugees fleeing into the country.  Right now, Turkey's boarder with Syria is fairly relaxed and people can easily cross both legally and illegally.  However, if the situation in continues to Syria escalate, I suspect Turkey will have to tighten up security to prevent cross-boarder raids and/or an uncontrolled flow of Syrian refugees.

And now, a sokak kedi with ridiculous eye-whiskers relaxes in the garden of St. Savior in Chora.

Mosques and Market

Today I finally went inside the Blue Mosque, the mosque located across from the Hagia Sophia that has been showing up in a lot of my "view" pictures. 

Built in the first decades of the 17th century, it gets its name from the thousands of blue Iznik tiles that decorate the interior.  It has equally stunning stained glass window, also in blue.  The interior has a light, airy feel, in contrast to many historic houses of worship, both Christian and Muslim.

I also visited the Suleymaniye Mosque, so named because Suleyman the Magnificent commissioned the famous architect Sinan to construct it in 1550.  Both Suleyman and his almost equally famous favorite wife Haseki Hurrem, who is known as Roxelanna in the west, are buried in mausoleums on the grounds.  However, the entire complex is undergoing extensive exterior renovations and I was unfortunately not able to visit the tombs.

After the mosques, I went to the Egyptian or Spice Bazaar.  Located near the Golden Horn waterfront, this L shaped bazaar specializes it Turkish spices, teas and sweets but clothing and jewelry stalls can also be found inside.  It was built in 1660 to generate funds for the neighboring New Mosque's philanthropic activities.

I have mentioned Turkey's Kurdish minority in several of my previous posts.  Violent Kurdish separatist groups, the Kurdistan worker's party or PKK and its offshoots, have been responsible for some of the recent pre-election violence.  Though the PKK is rightly deemed a terrorist organization, it feeds off the decades, and some would say centuries, of repression of Kurdish culture by the Turkish government.  Up until recently, speaking in Kurdish was forbidden and even letters used in Kurdish but not in Turkish, namely X W and Q, were banned from use.  The official policy of the government was to deny that the Kurds were a separate ethnicity.  Kurds were said to simply be "mountain Turks" who forgot their native Turkish tongue. 

Though the current ruling party, the AKP, has been responsible for loosening the restrictions on Kurdish language and culture, there is still a significant  part of the Turkish population that does not want to grant equal cultural rights to the Kurds.  For example, council members in the town of Dogubeyazit were recently given jail sentences for naming a park after a Kurdish poet.  Their sentences were passed in spite of the fact that the poet's seminal work was translated into Turkish and distributed by the Ministry of Culture and Tourism.  The council members were found to be in violation of a law, passed in the early days of the Republic, which forbids the use of the letter X.  The poet's name was Ehmede Xani.  From my travels around Istanbul, I can tell you that the letter X is no longer a persona non grata here.  I have seen multiple businesses with letter X in their name.  I also noticed an elderly Turkish woman at a cafe with a purse decorated with the standard Latin alphabet, which of course contains the letter X.  She even received compliments on it from the a woman sitting with her.  The Bogubeyazit council members are clearly suffering from the selective application of this basically defunct law, motivated by ethnic predjudice.  The New York Times recently published an excellent article about the cultural gains the Kurds have made in recent years, and how far they have yet to go to experience true equality in Turkey.

Old Fashioned Archaeology

Yesterday I went to Istanbul's Archaeology Musuem.  The museum was founded in the late 19th century to display antiquities from around the Ottoman Empire.  The museum has especially strong collections of Roman sculpture, Near Eastern Hellenistic tombs and sarcofogi, Babylonian and Hittite art and as well as artifacts spanning the entire history of what is presently the city of Istanbul.

Glazed tile friezes from the Ishtar gate of the city of Babylon.

This enormous bust of the Roman Poetess Sappho is absolutely stunning.  It is displayed in such a way that she seems to float in the middle of the room.

This is part of a reconstructed mausoleum from Palmyria in present day Syria.  It's tombs date from the 1st to 3rd century AD.

One of the museum's most famous pieces is the Alexander Sarcofigus, so called because of its battle and hunting friezes featuring Alexander the Great.  It was discoved at Sidon, in present day Lebanon, and dates from the 4th century BC.  The sacofigus is thought to have held the body of a Phonecian king, though there is some dispute as to whom.

Being the history dork that I am, I thought this was particularly cool.  This is part of the enormous chain the Byzantines used to block the entrance to the Golden Horn waterway.  The invading Turks got around this defense by disasembling their boats, taking them overland east of the city, and reassembling them behind the chain.

Though the museum seemed generally be well run, it is by no means state of the art.  There is no building-wide climate control, windows are proped open to cool some of the rooms.  Some artifacts are stored on antique looking curiousity cabinets like the one above.  The cabinets are so old that the glass in their doors is wavy, as you can see from the reflection.

The museum's collection is so extensive, it litterally spills out into the courtyard.  These sarcofigi are made of porphyry, a purple stone imported from Egypt.  They are thought to have held the bodies of some of the earliest Byzantine Emperors.

The museum's collection was one of the most amazing I've ever seen.  It is smaller than the British Museum or Metropolitan Museum in New York but that works in the visitor's favor.  Unlike it's larger counter parts, the museum can be seen in it's entirety in one afternoon; no rushing from gallery to gallery to try to take in the highlights.  Definitely a must-see for any visitor to Istanbul, but not everyone seemed to be as impressed as I was.

The Abode of the Sultans

Today I went to Topkapi Palace which was home to the Sultans, and therefore headquarters of the Ottoman Government, until the mid-19th century.  The palace was designed as a series of pavilions and courtyards by Mehmet the Conqueror, recreating in stone the nomadic encampments of the Turks.  Every single surface is decorated with intricate tiles, carvings, frescoes, stained glass and semi-precious stone mosaics.

It is located on a high point over looking the Bosphorus and Golden horn.  In pre-Byzantine times, this area served as the acropolis of the city.

A view of my neighborhood from the palace terraces.

The palace's haram was built in the late 16th century and is the location of the Sultan and his family's private quarters as well as home to the palace's female inhabitants.  It it was still stunningly decorated, but seemed less ostentatious and more homey (if a palace can feel homey).

There were two main sections where photography was not allowed.  The first was the treasury, where the most fantastical creations of gold, silver and precious stones were on display.  Some notable artifacts included pendents with emeralds the size of my fist and a 86 carrot white diamond.  I heard more than one Turk clicking their tongue, a common sign of disapproval here.

The second was the Pavillion of the Holy Mantle, where some of the holiest Islamic relics can be found.  There are relics from prophets who predate Mohammad.  Examples include the staff of Moses, the Turban of Joseph and David's sword.  There are of course numerous relics attributed to the Prophet Muhammad including about a dozen samples of his beard hair, his sword, his footprint and his cloak or mantle, which gives the building it's name.  However, to me the most interesting relics were the right arm of John the Baptist and his skull.  You would normally expect to see such relics only in a particularly holy Christian Cathedral, not the palace of the Ottoman sultans.  They may have been passed down from the Byzantines, but no one knows for sure their origin.  Though he is mainly a Christian figure, John the Baptist is considered to be a Prophet by Muslims, as are Jesus and many Old Testament figures.

In the first courtyard of the palace, just inside the walls, is the 6th century Hagia Eirene.  Despite being located on the grounds of the Ottoman Palace, this church was never converted into a mosque.  Because of its superb acoustics, it is currently being used to host concert during the Istanbul Music Festival, which lasts for most of this month.  I've put going to one of the concerts there on my list of things to do.

In addition to the sokak kedis, there are numerous sokak kopeks (dogs) here.  I have yet to post pictures of them because they are generally much more sad and ragged looking than the sokak kedis.  However, I found these two content looking kopeks taking a nap in the first courtyard of the Topkapi Palace today.