TIME OUT: ISTANBUL

     Since my Humanities / Social Sciences / Administration building is being renovated, with jackhammers attacking the flooring, electric cables dangling and draped every which way, and dust penetrating lungs, pores, and books, it was time to get out of Ankara. 

Bilkent Stairs: demolished

I flew to Istanbul’s Asian airport, named for Sabiha Gökçen (1913-2001), Turkey’s first female combat pilot – a much calmer airport than the Atatürk airport on the European side – and took the airport bus to Taksim square.

            Taksim, that early afternoon, was perfectly tranquil, even if the now-famous Gezi Park was still closed.

            After reaching my hotel, I visited Hagia Sophia, not far away.  The great nave of Hagia Sophia is once again dominated by scaffolding.  Maintenance, conservation, and restoration of this almost 1500-year-old building must be a never-ending task.

Afterwards, while strolling around the building, I found the separate entrance that leads to a cluster of beautiful türbe (mausolea) of late 16th and 17th century sultans built along the south side of Hagia Sophia.  In addition to admiring the buildings, I was curious to check evidence for an ongoing  incident of international cultural conflict. The tile panel left of the entrance to the türbe of Selim II  is pale in comparison to that on the right. Explanations in Turkish, English, and (unusual in this day and age) French tell us with indignation that the original tiles are in the Louvre, taken long ago for restoration but never returned, with French-made copies supplied instead.   The Louvre denies that they hold the tiles illegally, so the dispute continues.

Mausoleum of Selim II: entrance (photo taken from the internet)

Above me, the call to prayer resounded.  I was surprised, for the Hagia Sophia has been administered as a (secular) museum since 1935.  But sure enough, powerful loudspeakers are mounted on at least one of the eastern minarets.  “Ah, yes,” said a friend when I told her this, “but that’s not new; there’s a prayer room now, somewhere.”   Surely it’s strange that a museum should be equipped with a prayer room and an amplified call to prayer – and provocative, if the building is the Hagia Sophia, whose symbolic importance as the leading church and then mosque of two empires still make emotions run high.

A Friday afternoon in early July along the Bosporus (at Emirgan)
 

That evening I had dinner at a rooftop restaurant with Laurel, my writing mentor from Chapel Hill, North Carolina, her sister and brother-in-law, and two friends. I presented Laurel with a copy of my historical mystery novel, Escape from Smyrna, just published (to be described in my next blog post!).  A great moment for both of us, for I had begun work on this book when taking the fiction writing workshop she leads, many years ago. From the terrace, we could see the Sea of Marmara in one direction, the minarets of the Blue Mosque in another. A seagull missing a foot inspected us benignly from the railing where he (or she) was perched.

SALT: left of the Türkcell banner

The next day included visits to SALT – Beyoğlu and the Sakip Sabancı Museum.  SALT is a research center devoted to contemporary art, architecture, and urbanism, located in the opulent neo-Baroque late 19th century building that once housed the headquarters of the Ottoman Bank.  Had I been an account holder 100 years ago, I would have been duly reassured – and intimidated – by the grandeur.  After a peek in the library, I went down to the first basement level for the temporary exhibit about architecture from the Soviet Union during the 1960s.  Not for me, I quickly decided.  Also not for me the permanent exhibit about the history of the Ottoman Bank  – or so I thought until I started reading the panels and examining the photos and documents.  In an instant I was hooked and, no longer aware of passing time, I made my way through this well organized, superbly displayed, and instructive exhibit about the financial history of the Bank, of Istanbul, indeed of  the Ottoman Empire from 1850 on.  Some of the bank’s massive vaults could be entered.  There wasn’t a soul in sight.  I had the place to myself – a total contrast with tourist-saturated Hagia Sophia.

Camondo Stairs (Kamondo Merdivenleri): still intact

Across from SALT are the Camondo Stairs, an undulating Baroque design that ascends to the parallel street uphill.  These were built by Abraham Camondo, a wealthy Sephardic Jewish businessman, in the mid 19th century.  Two of Abraham’s two grandsons, Abraham and Nissim, shifted operations to Paris. Although it made good business sense, the move would have tragic consequences.  Nissim’s grandson, also named Nissim, died as a (French) fighter pilot in World War I.  His father Moise converted the luxurious family town house into a museum in Nissim’s memory: the Nissim de Camondo Museum, which features Moise’s collection of  18th century French decorative arts.  Next to the Parc Monceau, this museum is still today a highlight of northwest Paris.  Moise died in 1935, and thus was spared the final act of the tragedy.  During World War II, his daughter, Beatrice Reinach, pilot Nissim’s sister, would be deported to Auschwitz and murdered there, together with her husband and their two children. 

Near SALT, across the street from the Camondo Stairs

After a quick lunch at a café along the Karaköy docks – to eat a local specialty of which I am very fond, kıymalı kol böreği (börek with ground meat, onions, raisins, and pine nuts) – I took a tramway then a bus up the Bosporus to Emirgan, to the Sakip Sabancı Museum, for  I was keen to see the exhibit “1001 Faces of Orientalism.” 

“Orientalism” refers to a 19th-20th century western European approach to the Ottoman Empire and the Near East: the exotic and the picturesque are emphasized.  The late literary critic Edward Said, in an influential book, Orientalism (1978), saw this as a tool of European imperialistic domination.  Said’s analysis, however pathbreaking, was too binary, too black & white.  The reality is much more complex, as this exhibit aims to show.  Ottomans were not just victims of western Orientalism; they also contributed to the movement and partook of it.  Osman Hamdi Bey’s great Orientalist painting, “The Arms Merchant” (“Silah Taciri”), was on loan from the Ankara State Painting and Sculpture Museum.  I was fascinated to learn that certain Ottoman buildings were influenced by the Alhambra, the 13th-14th c. palace in Granada, when the Alhambra became fashionable in the 19th century.

Visitors to the Sakip Sabancı Museum admire the gardens

            After a dinner with friends, I returned to Ankara the next day, comfortably settled in a seat in the middle of the back row of a Kâmil Koç bus.