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Pulled by Two Tides
In Istanbul, you go from East to West by crossing a bridge
East and West are often used as if they were mutually exclusive categories—static and eternal. There is, however, one city where you quickly learn to mistrust the two concepts. In Istanbul, you understand, perhaps not intellectually but intuitively, that East and West are ultimately imaginary ideas, ones that can be de-imagined and re-imagined.
If Marco Polo were to visit the city today, he would find pockets unchanged—the city walls, palaces and churches. But Istanbul is now a place of sprawling suburbs, skyscrapers and concrete-block landscapes, home to 10 million residents. Living here can be a pretty dizzying experience. Like a pendulum, Istanbul swings obstinately between cosmopolitanism and nationalism, memory and amnesia—between a weighty past we can never fully shed, much as we like to try, and a hopeful future we can only run after but never quite grab hold of. Istanbul is the stepchild of the modern, secular Turkish Republic. But it still embodies remnants of a multicultural imperial legacy that don't quite match the founding myths of a supposedly homogeneous nation-state.
That is why there is no better place than Istanbul to understand that state and society are not the same. I recently experienced that firsthand, as one of the writers who have been prosecuted under Article 301 of the constitution for insulting Turkishness. My novel The Bastard of Istanbul was seen as a threat by Turkey's ultranationalists, but welcomed, widely read and discussed by different segments of society. Such tensions are common in our city, because there are four Istanbuls. First, there is the Istanbul of those who have gone, and whose passing is now marked by churches, chapels and synagogues—by schools and graveyards and vineyards. An old Jewish cemetery, a carving from an Armenian Catholic hospital, a decrepit Assyrian church, long pastorless, a Greek school now deserted—we walk by these vestiges daily, without stopping to think that Turkey's history has witnessed a dramatic transition from a multicultural, multiethnic empire to a modern nation-state, which the dominant ideology has long insisted on portraying as ethnically and culturally homogenous.
Second, there is the city of the latecomers—of those who have migrated from small towns or remote villages in Anatolia, mostly for economic reasons, hoping for a better life here because, as the saying goes, "the stones of Istanbul are made of gold." These immigrants have little concern for the city's cosmopolitan history; it is the bright future that they are after. Third, there is the Istanbul of those generations of families who were born and raised here, Muslims and non-Muslims. And fourth, there is the Istanbul of sojourners—tourists, hippies, pilgrims, mystics, artists, secret agents, conference participants, journalists, diplomats—here on a temporary stopover on their way elsewhere.
These four cities live side by side, constantly touching each other but not always interacting, just like water and oil. Yet in truth, East and West are not water and oil. They do mix. And in a city like Istanbul they mix intensely, incessantly, surprisingly. That can leave the city confused about its identity. We Turks like to brag about straddling past and present, East and West, but we are not quite sure what we mean by that. We think of these two civilizations as boroughs we can go in and out of randomly. It says WELCOME TO EUROPE at one end of the Bosphorus Bridge—and WELCOME TO ASIA at the other end.
But things are not so simple. Under the bridge, deep beneath the waters, there are two tides that pull the city in opposite directions. The upper one is the course of "Europeanism"—the overwhelming majority of the Turkish population wants to join the European Union. But beneath that tide is one of nationalism and anti-Westernism, an ideology deeply embedded and widespread in Turkey. Which tide will win out? The clash between the Europeanists and nationalists, more than the contest between secularism and political Islam, is the defining struggle in Turkey today. In a world where too many assume that Islam and Western democracy cannot possibly coexist, Turkey has been trying to keep a foot in each. One day—perhaps when Turkey joins the E.U.—the two signs will be removed from the bridge, and we will be able, once more, to re-imagine what East and West mean. Until then, however, many remain fearful of being made unwelcome on either side.
Elif Shafak's latest novel, The Bastard of Istanbul, will be released in English in January 2007
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