Living History

Tending her garden, a woman coaxes chard to life outside the ancient Theodosian walls that line the oldest section of the city. Built in the 5th century, four miles of this protective wall still stand—fully intact in some places, fragmented in others—a reminder of Istanbul’s long history. Founded by the Greeks as Byzantium around 660 B.C., transformed into Constantinople by the Romans in A.D. 330, and officially named Istanbul in 1930, the city keeps proving itself a master of reinvention.

Nat. Geo. Article:

Anxiety fills Turkey’s biggest city: The economy is volatile, secularism is under fire, and an earthquake is coming.
Midnight in Istanbul on a hot August night, and a cheer goes up in the Neo Bar as the voice of Turkish rock diva Burcu Günes ululates through the smoky nightclub. All night the crowd has danced to Western pop, but suddenly all are riveted by sounds from the Turkish soul. The song, “Çile Bülbülüm” (Turks pronounce the ç as “ch”), is a love song, known by most from childhood. Günes has given the music a driving beat, transforming it into a pop anthem.

“Cheelaaaaaaaay.” Eyes tight shut, wincing with bittersweet emotion, scores of young people begin to wail along.

“Çile means sorrow and trouble,” one man tells me over the din. “The singer is asking her bülbül—her nightingale—why she must suffer so much sorrow.” All these youthful Turks might well be asking the same question. For Istanbul these days is on edge: the edge between East and West, between modernity and medievalism, between secularism and Islamic fundamentalism, between one horrible earthquake and the next, between prosperity and economic collapse. song

Cultural ambivalence permeates the city, creating a complexity as rich as the aromas that waft through its spice markets. Women with formfitting blouses and hemlines hovering at mid-thigh share the sidewalks of Istiklal Caddesi, Istanbul’s liveliest street, with women hidden head to toe under kara çarsaf, Turkish for black chadors. Peasants fresh from rural Anatolia struggle to maintain the intimacy of village life while living in the shadows of skyscrapers teeming with ambitious, globe-trotting stockbrokers who drive Mercedes-Benz convertibles.

Five times a day muezzins call the faithful to prayer from minarets throughout the city. Yet after midnight on a weekend the heart of Istanbul throbs with a nightlife both boisterous and profane.

Now an economic upheaval has hit the city. Many of the dancers and drinkers in the Neo Bar watched their jobs vanish last year when a devaluation of the Turkish lira plunged the country into a depression. Those still employed find the buying power of their salaries cut almost in half.

Why so much çile? Why for so long? Nightingales aren’t exactly abundant here anymore, but I’ll search for one in other voices—like those in the Neo Bar, where another beer and another “Cheelaaaaaaaay” on this Saturday night help take the edge off the edgy lives Istanbulians are living.