istanbul special heritage in motion

‘One of the essential and enduring writers that both East and West can gratefully

claim as their own.’

Pico Iyer, New York Times

‘An extraordinary and transcendentally beautiful book.’ Katie Hickman, New Statesman

‘Pamuk’s masterpiece.’ TLS

‘Every turn in the story seems fresh, disquieting, utterly unexpected . . .

spellbindingly told.’

Washington Post

OOOOOORHANRHANRHANPPPAMUKAMUKAMUKWinne r of t heWinne r of t heWinne r of t he NOBEL PRIZE I NOBEL PRIZE I NOBEL PRIZE INNN LLLITERATUREITERATUREITERATURE

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ISTANBUL SPECIALWOODEN TREASURES

ORHAN PAMUK’S MEMORIES

SECRETS OF THE BOSPHORUS

3 HERITAGE HOTELS

FRANK GEHRY’S DREAM

AND MUCH MORE....

EUROPEAN CULTURAL HERITAGE REVIEW SUMMER 2010

ISSN

: 187

1-41

7X

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International Heritage Show

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ATELIERS D ’ART DE FRANCE PRESENTS

THEME 2010 : THE MEDITERRANEAN HERITAGE

3

The 19th century French poet and politician Alphonse de Lamartine fell instantly in love with Istanbul. He coined the famous quote: ‘If one had but a single glance to give the world, one should gaze on Istanbul’. In this special issue of the Europa Nostra Review, we are gazing on the city through many di! erent eyes: the eyes of children, scientists and activists, the eyes of historians, travellers, musicians and writers.

When I fi rst laid my eyes on this unique city, I felt a deep personal and emotional bond. Many of my ancestors had looked at this same magnifi cent panorama. It is a city with many di! erent faces, literally and fi guratively speaking. Every area has a character of its own and each neighbourhood is di! erent and unique. This city feels like a conglomerate of villages, where you can easily feel among friends and at home.

As 2010 European Capital of Culture, the whole world is watching the developments in the city. Istanbul is a crossroads of European cultural heritage. Should Turkey become a member of the European Union? We gladly leave that discussion to the politicians, but Europa Nostra is sure of one thing: in the fi eld of cultural heritage, Turkey is European. And maybe, as one of the articles in our magazine claims, it is even right at the heart of what is European.

Tunnelling under the Bosphorus to build the new rail link between the East and West has given us the opportunity to rediscover heritage that has laid buried in the dark mud for centuries. Old districts are under threat and listed buildings are being torn down. Elsewhere in the city, historical buildings are restored with commitment and dedication. We admire the beauty of the old wooden mansions and the magic of the Orient Express. We set foot on the most beautiful yacht of the world and explore what is, for someone coming from France, arguably the best cuisine in the world. How much the city has changed over the centuries can be seen in the articles on historical photographs and panoramas. Photographer Selim Seval shows us his vision of the Istanbul Walls. Orhan Pamuk tells us about old Istanbul and Agatha Christie solves a mystery on the Orient Express...

I hope you enjoy our new magazine and (re-)discover this multi-layered metropolis with so many ethnicities and cultures, each with their own remarkable history.

Published by EUROPA NOSTRAThe Voice of Cultural Heritage in EuropeEuropean Cultural Heritage Review (Summer 2010) ISSN:1871-417X

Executive PresidentDenis de Kergorlay

Secretary-GeneralSne!ka Quaedvlieg-Mihailovi"

Editor TV CultureWolter Braamhorst

Editor Europa NostraLaurie Neale

Concept TV Culturetvculture.nl

Articles written by TV Culture (except where noted)

Many thanks toOrhan Silier EN Board MemberEN Istanbul 2010 Coordinator Ye#im Tonga Kerem Çi$ çio%lu Bari# AltanDeputy Coordinators

ProofreadersDavid Kibuuka Athina Mitropoulos

PhotographyTV Culture Europa NostraWiki Commons(except where noted)

ProductionMYRA, Istanbul, Turkiye myra.com.tr

Design SupervisorRauf Kösemen

CoordinationDamla Özlüer

Periodical DesignTülay Demircan, Banu Y. Ocak

Page LayoutGülderen Rençber Erba#

Technical ControlsHarun Yılmaz

Printing CoordinationNergis Korkmaz

Printing&MAK Ofset, Istanbul, Turkiye

All rights reserved.

No part of either publication may be reproduced in any material form, including electronic means,

without the prior written permission of the copyright owners.

The views expressed are those of the authors and not necessarily those of Europa Nostra.

Every e' ort has been made to trace the copyright holders of old material.

Where these e' orts have not been successful, copyright owners are invited to contact the editor.

This Review was produced with the kind support ofeuropanostra.orgeuropanostraistanbul2010.org istanbul2010.orgkoc.com.trmyra.com.trtvculture.nlsnsreaalfonds.nl

EUROPA NOSTRA INTERNATIONAL SECRETARIATLange Voorhout 35NL - 2514 EC The HagueThe NetherlandsT +31 (0) 70 302 40 50F +31 (0) 70 361 78 [email protected]

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International Heritage Show

ParisCarrousel du Louvre

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ATELIERS D ’ART DE FRANCE PRESENTS

THEME 2010 : THE MEDITERRANEAN HERITAGE

Denis de Kergorlay, Executive President of Europa Nostra

The Wooden Houses of Istanbul

Murat Belge on the Cultural Treasures of his City

The Savarona

The Story Behind the Most Beautiful Yacht in the World

“Is This Ours?”

The Cultural Ants Project Makes Children of Istanbul’s Poorest Areas Aware of Their City

The Pearl of Orient Express

The Return of the Pera Palace Hotel

The Palate of the City

Confessions of a Food Aficionado

Terminal Stations Terminated

The New Rail Link Makes Two Iconic Railway Stations Obsolete

Resurrection

Two Examples of Re-use of Industrial Heritage

Agatha Christie

Have You Got Everything You Want?

The Çambel Cahirhan Residence: The Red Yali

Prof. Dr. Halet Çambel Fondly Remembers her Childhood in her Historical Home on the Shores of the Bosphorus

The Walls of Istanbul

Walking Around the Ancient Walls of Istanbul with Photographer Selim Seval

!smail Güleç / 10Tunnel Vision Ancient Discoveries

Under the Bosphorus / 22Buldozers of Destruction Historical Neighbourhoods of Istanbul

Under Threat / 48Frank Gehry and the Tortoise Trainer Of the Treasures of the Pera

Museum and an Architect’s Dream / 52Four Seasons in Discussion The

Battle Between an Ancient Palace and a

21st Century Urban Development / 56

Orhan Pamuk

Istanbul-Memories and the City (excerpt)

The Glorious Return of The Sultan’s Pavilion

2010 Winner of an European Union Prize for Cultural Heritage/Europa Nostra Award

Torn Between Two Worlds

Istanbul’s History is Everybody’s History

Istanbul Then and Now

How Much Has the City of Istanbul Changed Over the Last 125 Years?

The Cradle of European Civilisation New Insights in the

Neolithic Period Puts European Heritage

Firmly on Turkish Ground / 58Panorama / 60We Cannot Change the Music 25 Years of the Ye"il Ev Hotel / 80Playing for Keeps The Bo#aziçi

Performing Arts Ensemble / 92Learning from Our Mistakes / 100

The City Of Hasankeyf A New

Hydroelectric Dam Threatens the

Ancient City, Home of Thousands of

Human-made Caves / 102The Power of Example / 106We Could Raise 10 Billion Euros The Potential of Charity Lotteries for

Cultural Heritage / 108Family Business The Henokiens

Represent the Oldest Companies in the

21st Century / 112Postcard from Brussels / 114

06

‘When I came out of prison in 1974, we rented one those Yali’s, those traditional wooden houses on the Bosphorus, for the summer season. I had been a political prisoner and had been locked up under horrifi c circumstances, so you can imagine that staying in a quiet house on the peaceful waterfront was quite a change. I think it emotionally triggered something in me.’

Prof. Murat Belge’s voice is hoarse and soft, as he speaks between classes surrounded by wall to wall bookcases in his o$ ce at Bilgi University in Istanbul. The outspoken Turkish intellectual and civil rights activist has been working here as a professor of comparative literature for almost fi fteen years. Belge has translated works of James Joyce, Charles Dickens, D. H. Lawrence, William Faulkner and John Berger.

neighbourhood was changing quickly. When I was about 19, most old wooden houses had been torn down and replaced by modern buildings. I did not like the shape it took at all. I felt these old buildings needed to be conserved. Moda was one of the fi rst areas in Istanbul to go through these changes. So much was destroyed there and elsewhere since then. I think things are getting better now.’

A knock on the door indicates the arrival of tea. It is hard to imagine any conversation in Turkey taking place without the traditional çay, black tea served in tulip shaped glasses to

enjoy it hot and to show its colour.

‘One of the turning points was a growing historical conscienceness at the end of the eighties, beginning of the nineties. Friends, who knew I had a keen interest in historical areas, asked me to show

19th century photo of a street.

07

‘We did that for three consecutive summers. The young people of Istanbul were discovering the beach at that time, so the Bosphorus was out of fashion, which suited me fi ne. The summers in Istanbul are hot, but these traditional wooden houses are climatically so much better than modern buildings. They are warm in winter, but pleasantly cool in summer. I often still think of that memorable summer of 1974, but I suspect the roots of my interest in these traditional wooden houses lie even earlier than that.

I grew up in Moda on the Asian side of Istanbul and my

a group of Istanbulians around the traditional area of Cihangir. Two weeks later it was fully booked again. And again and again. So we arranged tours of the Golden Horn, of the City Walls, of the whole city. It triggered other organizations to start doing tours as well. When you make the cultural elite more aware, things start changing. At the 10th anniversary about 10.000 people had participated in these kind of tours. It helped.

Another aspect is economical, I think. A lot of owners had torn down their traditional houses, but not everybody of course. Some people simply did not have the money to rebuild, so they stayed on in their old wooden residences. From the nineties onwards these houses turned out to be much more valuable than the modern ones. So that was an important fi nancial reason to be more careful.

Now the situation is reversed. They are now taking down modern buildings of the 1950s and 60s to replace them with what I would call ‘second class historical building restoration’ in which new concrete houses are covered with wood in a traditional fashion.

Conservation of these traditional houses became part of the political landscape. In the beginning the politicians had no idea.I remember when they asked me to give two candidates for the position of mayor of Istanbul a crash course in cultural heritage conservation. One I took around the historical areas and he talked to the people and took an interest. But the other one just fl ew over it in a helicopter. We hovered over the Hagia Sophia and he asked me;

‘What is that?’ ‘Luckily he did not win the election.’

He smiles and stirs his tea. Professor Murat Belge saw a lot of changes during his lifetime, personally and politically, socially and culturally. He is a kind survivor of more turbulent times, more a teacher than a fi ghter, more a philosopher than a hard-line activist.

‘We should renovate what still is surviving, but that is not enough. You cannot tear down all the ugly buildings, but you have to take down some of the aesthetic horrors. Most areas are a bad mishmash of styles without cohesion. You have to rebuild some areas as they used to be, also residential areas. You can bring back the old workshops where craftsmen can learn real skills again, like carpentry, ironmongery and masonry. We are doing that in Sultanahmed where we created a carpenters

Murat Belge’s favourite Yali’s on the Bosphorus

Kıbrıslı Mehmed Emin Pa"a Mansion was named after an Ottoman statesman of Turkish Cypriot origin who bought the house in the 1840s. It is still owned by the same family.

Yali of Sadullah Pasha is located in Çengelköy and was built in the 1760’s. The design is based on a traditional Turkish tent. It is famous for its beautiful and diverse interior decorations from classical Ottoman and baroque traditions.

Yali of Kont Ostrorog, built around the 1790s and named after the Polish Count Leon Ostrorog. He served as a consultant on law to the Ottoman Empire. The present owner of the house is Rahmi Koç.

08

09

training institute in a restored historical building.’

Is he not afraid of Disneyfication of the city? Making Istanbul a fairytale of cultures which has very little to do with the real history of the area?

‘If you are not deceiving anyone, there is no harm in it. Cultural heritage should always be linked to the population that lives there. We have so many di!erent atmospheres in this multi-cultural historical city; Turkish Muslim, Greek, Armenian or Jewish to name but a few, all need to be

preserved with respect to that specific area. Unfortunately we live in a two-nation state: one part of the population is highly educated and they see the need to preserve our past. And then there are the rest of the Turks who live in a street without any curiosity for what was there before or what is in the next street. I remember when we used to visit these areas on our heritage tours, the children would shout

‘Hello-Goodbye’ to us in English because they thought we were foreigners. It is not part of their life. So why should they care for it? There is still a lot to be done there, but at least it is not getting worse,’

he says with mellow sarcasm. ‘At least things are discussed now. The present government, this islamically inspired government to be more precise, is taking care of Christian Byzantine heritage, which is something that would probably not have happened even ten years ago. The Theodosian Harbour near Yenikapı for instance, or the enormous complex of Byzantine remains near the Four Seasons in Sultanahmed. It costs a lot of money to postpone construction, but they are doing it and that is, for me at least, a real reason to be hopeful and optimistic.’

Wooden houses of Istanbul.

Today and in the 19th century.

10

Gülgeç’s first caricature was published in 1968. He is one of Turkey’s most famous cartoonists and illustrators. This cartoon was first published in 1993 (History volume 1, number 2 summer), but it is still as relevant today as it was then.

Reproduced by kind permission

12

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The leader of Turkey is su!ering from serious health problems and has been dreaming of living peacefully along the shores of the Bosporus. For six weeks he enjoys the good life on the ‘most beautiful yacht in the world,’ as the Savarona was then known. He invites personal friends like Zsa Zsa Gabor, the King of Romania (who arrives on his own

14

yacht) and the famous Turkish entertainer Muzeyyen Senar. But then, in the middle of the night, when his health takes a turn for the worse, he is carried o! the ship to the Dolmabahçe Palace, a more fitting location for an ailing statesman. He dies a few days later on 10 November 1938, at the age of 57.

15

The luxurious ship was secretly built in 1931 for the personal pleasure of Emily Roebling Cadwalader, a rich Philadelphia socialite and grandchild of the famous John Roebling, who built the Brooklyn Bridge. It was to be a 4 million dollar surprise for her husband. This new maritime creation was to be the Savarona III, because the heiress had lost interest in the earlier two vessels, which bore the same name. The ship was constructed in Germany by Blohm & Voss and had been designed by the famous William Francis Gibbs. The 4,600-gross-

Ataturk’s desk on the Savarona.

Ataturk’s bed.

16

ton yacht was the largest private yacht ever built. Although the ship could only carry a few passengers, they would enjoy rooms and service that could easily compete with the finest hotel suites.

to sell it. This prompted her to buy the whole castle just so that she could own the fireplace. For the next two years, she travelled around the world with her friends. She avoided the United States, as she refused to pay the import duties and even claimed capital losses of $647,124 on the ship. The American government did not allow her tax claims and made a formal charge of fraud. By

1938, the ship had been docked in Germany for almost five years, raking up 350.000 dollars in maintenance. Emily Cadwalader had had enough of her expensive yacht and decided to sell it.

After seeing pictures of the Savarona, president Kemal Atatürk decided the ship would make a beautiful presidential yacht. The Turkish delegation, lead by Mahmut Baler, managed to buy the Savarona in 1938, after many negotiations, for $1 million. The Turkish people could finally present their beloved president with his floating palace, even if he was to enjoy it only briefly.

Party aboard the Savarona, 1932.

Emily Cadwalader, already in her late forties, travelled across Europe to buy the most expensive accessories for her ship, including a golden staircase. In a castle in Portugal she saw the perfect fireplace for the Savarona but unfortunately the owner refused

17

After Atatürk’s death, the ship continued to be used as an o$ cial presidential yacht. In the fi fties it became a training ship for the Turkish marine. By the 1980s the ship was in bad shape and was almost ready to be scrapped.

It was however saved by the Turkish shipping magnate Kahraman Sadıko#lu who hired the ship from the Turkish government for 49 years and fi xed her up for 25 million dollars. He not only rented out the yacht to the world’s richest people, but also created a permanent Atatürk museum in part of the ship.

Recently the Istanbul Chamber of Commerce, together with other interest groups have started negotiations to buy the ship back from Sadıko#lu. If everything goes according to plan, the yacht will be turned into a national museum and will be moored in front of the Dolmabahçe Palace. The story of the Savarona is not over yet...

Fatusch, an international production company, located in Rotterdam in the Netherlands, has been working on a documentary about the Savarona for the last three years. Project producer Eray Ergeç explains: ‘We have already discovered many things. I think the audience is going to be surprised how this yacht is connected to international historical events. We can not reveal anything yet, but we hope that when the ship becomes a national museum, we can show the Turkish people and the world that this ship is a true cultural icon. We are still looking for co-producers to go in production, but we expect to present the fi lm in 2011.’

Lütfiye Ero#lu is a driven person, a small frame which hides a big personality. For the first time, on the 13th of June, with support of Istanbul Cultural Capital 2010, the Cultural Ants will organise a festival with more than 2000 cultural ants and 600 volunteers. Time is already running short. For a professor at the Yeditepe University Faculty of Pharmacy, she is unusually active in the field of cultural heritage.

‘This whole adventure started around 2002. I was increasingly feeling worried about the fact that many of my students did not know anything about cultural heritage or culture in general for that matter. I would just ask them, for instance after the weekend, if they had seen this-and-this film or read that-and-that article and was usually met by blank expressions.

Many of these students come from Anatolia and I asked them about cultural heritage in their home towns, but even that did not trigger any response. One could argue that these are medical students, who cannot be expected to have any cultural interest, but I disagree. If even these highly educated people are not even interested, what chance would our heritage have in 20 or 30 years?’

‘I was lucky because I not only come from generations of teachers; I was also inspired by my high school art teacher in Konya where I grew up. Everybody needs someone to ‘plant the seed,’ so to say, and I was planning to do just that. Together with other enthusiasts we started the Cultural Awareness Foundation in 2003. We concentrated on primary

18

school children, about the age of 11 and 12, in the poorer areas of Istanbul. If we can get in early, we thought, we stand a chance. To be honest, we considered the students a bit of a lost cause at the time. We came up with a pilot project and were convinced that everybody would be as enthusiastic as we were, but we could not have been more wrong.’

‘We thought we had it all worked out. We did not want it to become political or authoritarian, so we did not work through the government. The courses would be held on the weekends, they would be free of charge and we would work with young student volunteers. What we failed to realise is that many children in the poorer areas, slums may be a more accurate description, were working on the weekends. Of course this is prohibited and nobody would admit to it, but that was one of the problems. Also, the parents were very suspicious. Who are these people and what alien thoughts are they putting in our children’s minds? The students themselves had to be trained. Most of them had never set foot in these areas before. They needed to learn how to approach people in an open and equal manner.’

‘But that is all changing now. The children, who are going on these adventures through the city, share these stories with their parents and the neighbourhood. These kids learn about architecture and engineering, they learn about history and design.

I remember one story which sums up why this is such an emotional and important project for me. One of these eleven year old children looked around Sultanahmed for the first time. Even though he lived only 15 minutes away from it, he had never been there. He turned to the volunteer and gasped: ‘Wow, is this ours? Is this really ours?’

Prof. Ero#lu sits silently for a moment and looks at her co!ee. ‘You know, we did a project outside of Istanbul in Antalya, with high school students. The school was next to the ancient city of Perge and the

The Cultural Ants exploring the Archeological Museum in the heart of the Historic Peninsula.

19

children did not know anything about it. Can you imagine that? Everywhere you look in Turkey, there is cultural heritage and we are just not seeing it. We want every school to have an ancient city as a friend, so children, and through them whole communities, can feel responsible for their cultural heritage. We want individual children to link with historical objects, so they can establish an emotional link with history and feel and understand it better through something very concrete and real.’

‘We think the Cultural Ants project is also suitable for other countries. The Ministry of Culture is supporting us with that. Thanks to the Cultural Ants project, cultural heritage is now becoming a part of the curriculum for primary schools in Turkey and we will even start a voluntary course for medical students this semester at our university. We decided that they may not be a lost cause after all.’

She smiles and says: ‘We must not forget that the basis of the Cultural Ants project is respect. The students respect the children and their parents, the children respect the student volunteers. But, maybe even more importantly, they learn with each other and from each other, they bond with the students who are usually from a di! erent background. The students bond with them. They become role models. The children learn that they can aspire to be architects, technicians or engineers. It is not an overnight process, but step by step we see results. We have examples of Cultural Ants who are now at university. Is that not marvellous?’

Prof. Lütfi ye Ero#lu, Initiator

of the Cultural Ants Project.

20 The Cultural Awareness Foundation and Cultural AntsTargeting elementary school children, the Cultural Ants is an original education model that utilises cultural values as an intellectual stimulant. Specially trained university student-volunteers to show children Istanbul’s historical sites and provide information about the city’s historical heritage in an active and entertaining fashion. In 8 years 5000 Cultural Ants and 1000 volunteers took part in the activities. ‘Exemplary educational model which can be utilised in multi-ethnic societies throughout Europe,’ said the jury of the European Union Prize for Cultural Heritage/Europa Nostra Awards in 2009.

The Cultural Ants discovering their city for the first time.

21

At the site of the Maramaray project, the new tunneled rail link between Europe and Asia, pre-construction excavations by the Istanbul Archaeological Museums have revealed one of the greatest nautical archaeological discovery sites of all time. The ancient Theodosian Harbour of Constantinople was a major trade centre from the fourth

22

century until river silting rendered it useless at the end of the 10th century. The site, near Yenikapı, had lain forgotten for centuries. Chief among Yenikapı’s discoveries are some 34 shipwrecks ranging in date from the 7th century to the late 10th or early 11th century. It includes the first Byzantine war galleys, merchant vessels, some still with cargo, and smaller fishing craft. Thanks to their burial in a thick layer of wet mud, all ships are amazingly well preserved.

A satellite view of the Bosphorus.

The Marmaray-project connects the two sides of the Bosphorus through a tunnel. With a total length of 76.53 km, the project includes the construction of 13.56 km of double track tunnel (of which 1.35 km under the sea and 12.21 km of approach tunnels), 40 stations and connections with other transport networks. It is the largest and most important infrastructure project to be undertaken in Turkey so far. Never before has an immersed tunnel been built at a depth of 60 metres, with the construction operating in the congested shipping lanes and heavy currents of the Bosphorus. The tunnel lies in an active seismic zone and has to be safe even in the event of an earthquake. The Marmaray project is expected to result in a reduction of 144,000 tonnes of air pollution and greenhouse gases annually. The European Investment Bank supports the project with a loan of up to 650 million Euros.

Important archeological discoveries.

Photo by Bekir Kösker

23

‘Half of the ships are from the last stages of the harbour around the year 1000,’ Pulak continues enthusiastically. ‘Most were destroyed by storms or maybe an earthquake. We found remnants of trans-oceanic vessels. We found a merchant ship with cargo and a galley that had sailed into one another, so they sank as a result of an accident. The other ships were simply abandoned.’

Professor Pulak mainly worked on eight hulls dating from the 7th to the 11th century for over two years. He and his team faced uncomfortable conditions. The heat was at times unbearable and so was the discomfort of having to work on a construction site. Carefully and meticulously they sifted through layers of mud and

wood trying to find answers in a race against the clock.

‘We found the earliest Byzantine galley. We could even study the exact spacing between the oars. We could figure out the precise angles of the rowers. All these things may not seem too interesting to your readers, but it teaches us how these ships really operated. What they could do and what they could not. Some of the

ships still had an upper level. One ship was 80 percent intact! We have found leather shoes, wooden combs, nine human heads, bones of dockside horses and camels, Hellenistic pottery and amphorae, di!erent seeds and grains. All these finds will have a huge impact on our knowledge of trade routes and of Byzantine history. In Pisa harbour for instance, another important location for research on ancient vessels, most of the

24

ships are wreckage. They were nowhere near as complete as the ones we found here. We could even pinpoint the exact location of the junction of the city walls with the breakwater wharfs. As a result they had to redesign one of the planned underground stations. It will be a lot smaller now. It is really exciting and ground breaking.’

The discoveries made by Pulak and other scientific teams will rewrite the book on Istanbul’s history.

‘In the deeper layers they found amazing neolithic remnants; vessels of wood, skeletons, even evidence of cremations, buried in urns and tree stumps, a civilisation that moved away when sea levels rose and the Bosphorus

filled up. The project has hit the bedrock now, so we will probably not find more.’

All these discoveries have caused considerable delays in the construction of this vital rail link. The Bosphorus is the natural connection between the Mediterranean and the Black Sea, and between the European and Asian continents, but at the same time it is a natural barrier cutting the city in two. Each day, over a million trips are made across the Bosphorus by boat or using one of the two bridges over the straits. At

rush hour, crossing the city can take up to three hours. The Marmaray rail link, once it is operational, is likely to attract more than 1.5 million passengers per day. There is a lot at stake. But Huseyin Belkaya, Deputy Project Manager from Avrasyaconsult is not worried: ‘In Istanbul we live on archaeology and we live in history,’ he explains.

‘This tunnel will be built. Of course it will be a little bit delayed, but we have waited for many years to construct this tunnel - we can wait a couple of years more.’

Tunnel photographs supplied by the European Investment Bank

President Gül’s visit to Yenikapi site, www.tcbb.gov.tr

25

Alexander Vallaury, a French-Turkish architect living in the city, designed the hotel in a blend of Art Deco, Art Nouveau and Oriental styles. It was ground breaking in its technology. It was the first and only hotel to be powered by electricity or provide hot running water for its guests. It had the first electric elevator in Istanbul.

The hotel soon became a place to be seen. King Edward VIII, Queen Elizabeth II, Emperor Franz Joseph, as well as Sarah Bernhardt, Alfred Hitchcock, Mata Hari, Yehudi Menuhin, Rita Hayworth

and Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis have all stayed here, to name but a few. Ernest Hemingway was often found at the Orient Bar of the hotel, whisky in hand. Greta Garbo too was a regular. Agatha Christie did not write ‘Murder on the Orient Express’ in hotel room 411, as is often assumed, but she did often stay in the hotel on holidays. President Kemal Atatürk always stayed in Room 101.

The hotel lived through the Ottoman decline, the founding of the Republic and two world wars.

Early 20th century photo of

the Pera Hotel.

26

But the legendary status of the hotel began to be blemished by time. The colours started to fade, the famous guests moved away, the rooms became stu!y, the furniture antiquated and the technical installation unreliable. The once beautiful façade was now a shade of hideous green. But the building lingered on because everybody knew somebody who got married there or celebrated a birthday or another special occasion there. It survived on memories and nostalgia, but the future became more and more uncertain. For years there was talk of renovating the hotel, but nothing happened.

‘The shortest answer is doing the thing,’ the Be"iktas Shipping Group must have thought in 2008 when the Pera Palace was in need of immediate renovation.

They launched a 23 million Euro renovation and restoration project, executed by KA.BA Conservation of Historic Buildings and Architecture Ltd.(a 2007 winner of the European Prize for Cultural Heritage/Europa Nostra Award), alongside the Metex Design Group. A bit of a gamble, as the hotel is o$cially owned by the Turkish Treasury and just rented to Be"iktas.

The original architectural and design features of the property are preserved and carefully combined with the needs of a modern five star hotel. The rooms and suites are furnished with antiques, hand-woven Ousak carpets, white Carrera marble and Murano glass chandeliers and are named after some of Pera Palace’s most celebrated guests. One of the

challenges was the busy and noisy road next to the hotel. Special windows were designed to make sure the endless tra$c would never bother the guests again.

On this 100th birthday in 1981, bedroom 101 was o$cially turned into a Kemal Atatürk Museum. In 2010, the museum-room is completely restored and redecorated in ‘sunrise pink,’ Atatürk’s favourite colour. The textiles and curtains are rose pink and beige. The hotel continues to collect items related to Atatürk, including books, magazines, carpets and medals.

In September 2010 the legendary Pera Palace Hotel is expected to re-open its doors and return as a prominent symbol of Istanbul’s heritage once more.

Famous guests of the Pera

Hotel: Alfred Hitchcock,

Greta Garbo and Sarah

Bernhardt.

Photo by Goodwin

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y

27

29

Exciting and necessary as the Marmaray project may be, according to Dr. Yonca Kösebay Erkan of the Kadir Has University, the new rail link has two potential heritage victims; Sirkeci train station on the European side and Haydarpa"a train station on the Asian side, will become obsolete.

We get out of a taxi across the road from Sirkeci Station in the Historical Peninsula of Istanbul.

I remember grainy images of the last Ottomans, taken early in the morning of March 5, 1924. A special train departing from Sirkeci Station was carrying the last members of the Ottoman dynasty, which had ruled for centuries across three continents, out of Turkey towards an uncertain future. The station is also forever linked to the

side entrance of the station. ‘It is completely unclear what the plans are. It is di$ cult to protest against something unknown and I think that is the general idea. At a certain moment they will start construction work and then it will be too late. They might change both into shopping malls, I have no idea. Anything is possible. As an Istanbulite I feel emotionally attached to these buildings. As a professional I know they are

On October 4, 1883, the fi rst voyage of the Orient Express departed from Gare de l’Est in Paris.The direct Orient Express stopped running on May 19, 1977. The Venice Simplon Orient Express, a luxury tourist train that uses restored cabins of the legendary train, still travels to Istanbul once a year. The Orient Express features in many best-sellers like ‘Around the world in 80 days’ by Jules Verne, ‘Dracula’ by Bram Stoker, ‘Murder on the Orient Express’ and ‘Have You Got Everything You Want?’ by Agatha Christie, ‘Stamboul Train’ and ‘Travels With My Aunt’ by Graham Greene and ‘From Russia, with Love’ by Ian Fleming.

legendary Orient Express. The 3,094 kilometres route ended here in Sirkeci, 80 hours after leaving Paris. It is a phenomenal place, surrounded by messy parking lots and busy shops at a crossroads of trams, boats and cars. And trains, of course, as the terminal building is still a fully functional railway station. That situation may change as soon as the new rail link between West and East is fully operational.

‘We do not know what they are going to do with it,’ Kösebay Erkan says as we enter the ugly 1950s concrete

30

Marmara, bordering the walls of Topkapı Palace all the way to the centre of the Historic Peninsula of Istanbul. The modern terminal was opened on November 3, 1890, replacing a temporary building.

‘I discovered that that temporary station, the first Sirkeci terminal, still exists. Just opposite of the original entrance to the new station you can see a rather unassuming yellow building. It is derelict now, forgotten by everyone. It should be fully restored and cared for. It is important heritage, but look at it!’ Across a parking lot and a busy petrol station we can see a small building. Some of the windows are broken and the rooms are empty and obviously used for less noble

activities than waiting for the international train to Paris.

‘Sirkeci Terminal station is on the European side, but it is built in an Orientalist style, while Haydarpa"a Terminal station on the Asian side looks typically European. It connects the two train stations stylistically and the two continents symbolically. The sultan had waiting rooms in both terminals, but I do not think he used them much. On the European side he had his own platform a couple of hundred meters back, at the bottom of the Topkapı gardens.’

The new Sirkeci Station was impressively modern for its time. It had electric light and even a central heating system. It was designed by August Jachmund, a Prussian. For

important heritage buildings that are deeply connected to our history. They need to keep their function to some extent, otherwise they are dead structures. What is a railway station without trains arriving and leaving?’

After the Crimean War, the Ottoman authorities came to the conclusion that is was necessary to build a railway connecting Europe with Istanbul. The Sultan permitted the route to run along the shoreline of the Sea of

The first railway station in the heart of the city.

‘You can see it best from the water. It really stands out, if you compare it to the rest of Istanbul’s architecture. It is an iconic building. Haydarpa"a and Sirkeci both have to be saved in a way that is respectful to their past,’ she says as I buy a token for the boat. ‘We need a new railway system to help millions of people get from A to B, but we also need to safeguard these unique heritage buildings for the future and keep them relevant as railway stations.’

The ferry from the European side to Kadıköy on the Asian side, plows determinedly though the turbulent waters of the Bosphorus. The ship is followed by seagulls of the most persistent and hungry nature, catching bread from commuters, who in turn are caught on camera

by tourists. Haydarpa"a Terminal station doesn’t just stand, it lurks impressively, surrounded by water on three sides. The new station was o$cially opened in 1909 and designed by the German architects Otto Ritter and Helmut Cuno. It looks like an out-of-place Bavarian castle. It was a gift from Kaiser Wilhelm II to Sultan Abdülhamid II. The German construction company made a foundation in the muddy shoreline, using 1100 wooden piles, each more than 20 meters long. Walking through the station, it is easy to imagine the 19th century passengers passing through these hallways on the way to the East or the West. The train stations of Istanbul are not just local or national treasures, they are at the heart of what European cultural heritage is all about.

almost a hundred years it served as the iconic departure and end station of the Orient Express. Next to the second class waiting room there is now a museum, dedicated to the legendary train and its passengers. Next to platform 1 we still find the Orient Express Café, a famous meeting point for journalists, intellectuals and writers in the 1950s. The café is still popular with tourists and train passengers.

Dr. Yonca Kösebay Erkan takes me to the ferry, not far from the railway station. The travellers of the Orient Express would have taken the same route if they wanted to travel further east. Haydarpa"a Terminal Station on the Asian side was the starting point for trains bound for Iraq and Iran and even India.

32

A!"#$" %&'( #')

33

‘Par ici, Madame.’

A tall woman in a mink coat followed her heavily encumbered porter along the platform of the Gare de Lyon.

She wore a dark brown knitted hat pulled down over one eye and ear. The other side revealed a charming tip-tilted profile and little golden curls clustering over a shell-like ear. Typically an American, she was altogether a very charming-looking creature and more than one man turned to look at her as she walked past the high carriages of the waiting train.

Large plates were stuck in holders on the sides of the carriages.

PARIS - ATHENS. PARIS - BUCHAREST. PARIS - STAMBOUL.

At the last named the porter came to an abrupt halt. He undid the strap which held the suitcases together and they slipped heavily to the ground. ‘Voici, Madame.’

The wagon-lit conductor was standing beside the steps. He came forward, remarking, ‘Bonsoir, Madame,’ with an empressement perhaps due to the richness and perfection of the mink coat.

The woman handed him her sleeping-car ticket of flimsy paper.

‘Number Six,’ he said; ‘this way.’

He sprang nimbly into the train, the woman following him. As she hurried down the corridor after him, she nearly collided with a portly gentleman who was emerging from the compartment next to hers. She had a momentary glimpse of a large bland face with benevolent eyes.

‘Voici, Madame.’

The conductor displayed the compartment. He threw up the window and signaled to the porter. A lesser employee took in the baggage and put it up in the racks. The woman sat down.

Beside her on the seat she had placed a small scarlet case and her hand bag. The carriage was hot, but it did not seem to occur to her to take o! her coat. She stared out of the window with unseeing eyes. People were hurrying up and down the platform. There were sellers of newspapers, of pillows, of chocolate, of fruit

of mineral waters. They held up their wares to her, but her eyes looked blankly through them. The Gare de Lyon had faded from her sight. On her face were sadness and anxiety.

‘If Madame will give me her passport?’

The words made no impression on her. The conductor, standing in the doorway, repeated them. Elsie Je!ries roused herself with a start.

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘Your passport, Madame.’

She opened her bag, took out the passport and gave it to him.

‘That will be all right, Madame, I will attend to everything.’ A slight significant pause. ‘I shall be going with Madame as far as Stamboul.’

Elsie drew out a fifty-franc note and handed it to him. He accepted it in a businesslike manner, and inquired when she would like her bed made up and whether she was taking dinner.

These matters settled, he withdrew and almost immediately the restaurant man came rushing down the corridor ringing his little bell frantically, and bawling out,

‘Premier service. Premier service.’

Elsie rose, divested herself of the heavy fur coat, took a brief glance at herself in the little mirror, and picking up her hand bag and jewel case, stepped out into the corridor. She had gone only a few steps when the restaurant man came rushing along on his return journey. To avoid him, Elsie stepped back for a moment into the doorway of the adjoining compartment, which was now empty. As the man passed and she prepared to continue her journey to the dining car, her glance fell idly on the label of a suitcase which was lying on the seat.

It was a stout pigskin case, somewhat worn. On the label were the words, ‘J. Parker Pyne, passenger to Stamboul.’ The suitcase itself bore the initials ‘P.P.’

A startled expression came over the girl’s face. She hesitated a moment in the corridor, then going back to her own compartment she picked up a copy of the Times which she had laid down on the table with some magazines and books.

She ran her eye down the advertisement columns on the front page, but what she was looking for was not there. A slight frown on her face, she made her way to the restaurant car.

The attendant allotted her a seat at a small table already tenanted by one person - the man with whom she had nearly collided in the corridor. In fact, the owner of the pig-skin suitcase.

Elsie looked at him without appearing to do so. He seemed very bland, very benevolent, and in some way impossible to explain, delightfully reassuring. He behaved in reserved British fashion, and it was not till the fruit was on the table that he spoke.

‘They keep these places terribly hot,’ he said.

‘I know,’ said Elsie. ‘I wish one could have the window open.’

He gave a rueful smile. ‘Impossible! Every person present except ourselves would protest.’

She gave an answering smile. Neither said any more. Co! ee was brought and the usual indecipherable bill. Having laid some notes upon it, Elsie suddenly took her courage in both hands.

‘Excuse me,’ she murmured. ‘I saw your name upon your suitcase - Parker Pyne. Are you - are you, by any chance -?’

She hesitated and he came quickly to her rescue.

‘I believe I am. That is -’ he quoted from the advertisement which Elsie had noticed more than once in the ‘Times,’ and for which she had searched vainly just now - ‘ ‘Are you happy? If not, consult Mr Parker Pyne.’ Yes, I’m that one, all right.’

‘I see,’ said Elsie. ‘How - how extraordinary!’

He shook his head. ‘Not really. Extraordinary from your point of view, but not from mine.’ He smiled reassuringly, then leaned forward. Most of the other diners had left the car. ‘So you are unhappy?’ he said.

‘I -’ began Elsie, and stopped.

‘You would not have said ‘How extraordinary’ otherwise,’ he pointed out.

Elsie was silent a minute. She felt strangely soothed by the mere presence of Mr Parker Pyne. ‘Ye-es,’ she admitted at last. ‘I am - unhappy. At least, I am worried.’

He nodded sympathetically.

‘You see,’ she continued, ‘a very curious thing has happened - and I don’t know in the least what to make of it.’

‘Suppose you tell me about it,’ suggested Mr Pyne. Elsie thought of the advertisement. She and Edward had often commented on it and laughed. She had

never thought that she... Perhaps she had better not... If Mr Parker Pyne were a charlatan... But he looked - nice!

Elsie made her decision. Anything to get this worry o! her mind.

‘I’ll tell you. I’m going to Constantinople to join my husband. He does a lot of Oriental business, and this year he found it necessary to go there. He went a fortnight ago. He was to get things ready for me to join him. I’ve been very excited at the thought of it. You see, I’ve never been abroad before. We’ve been in England six months.’

‘You and your husband are both American?’

‘Yes.’

‘And you have not, perhaps, been married very long?’

‘We’ve been married a year and a half.’

‘Happily?’

‘Oh, yes! Edward’s a perfect angel.’ She hesitated. ‘Not, perhaps, very much go to him. Just a little - well, I’d call it strait-laced. Lot of Puritan ancestry and all that. But he’s a dear,’ she added hastily.

Mr Parker Pyne looked at her thoughtfully for a moment or two, then he said, ‘Go on.’

‘It was about a week after Edward had started. I was writing a letter in his study, and I noticed that the blotting paper was all new and clean, except for a few lines of writing across it. I’d just been reading a detective story with a clue in a blotter and so, just for fun, I held it up to a mirror. It really was just fun, Mr Pyne - I mean, I wasn’t spying on Edward or anything like that. I mean, he’s such a mild lamb one wouldn’t dream of anything of that kind.’

‘Yes, yes; I quite understand.’

‘The thing was quite easy to read. First there was the word ‘wife,’ then ‘Simplon Express,’ and lower down, ‘just before Venice would be the best time.’’ She stopped.

‘Curious,’ said Mr Pyne. ‘Distinctly curious. It was your husband’s handwriting?’

‘Oh, yes. But I’ve cudgeled my brains and I cannot see under what circumstances he would write a letter with just those words in it.’

‘’Just before Venice would be the best time,’’ repeated Mr Parker Pyne. ‘Distinctly curious.’

Mrs Je! ries was leaning forward looking at him with a fl attering hopefulness. ‘What shall I do?’ she asked simply.

‘I am afraid,’ said Mr Parker Pyne, ‘that we shall have to wait until just before Venice.’ He took up a folder from the table. ‘Here is the schedule time of our train.

34

It arrives at Venice at two-twenty-seven tomorrow afternoon.’

They looked at each other.

‘Leave it to me,’ said Mr Parker Pyne.

It was fi ve minutes past two. The Simplon Express was eleven minutes late. It had passed Mestre about a quarter of an hour before.

Mr Parker Pyne was sitting with Mrs Je! ries in her compartment. So far the journey had been pleasant and uneventful. But now the moment had arrived when, if anything was going to happen, it presumably would happen. Mr Parker Pyne and Elsie faced each other. Her heart was beating fast, and her eyes sought his kind of anguished appeal for reassurance.

‘Keep perfectly calm,’ he said. ‘You are quite safe. I am here.’

Suddenly a scream broke out from the corridor.

‘Oh, look - look! The train is on fi re!’

With a bound Elsie and Mr Parker Pyne were in the corridor. An agitated woman with a Slav countenance was pointing a dramatic fi nger. Out of one of the front compartments smoke was pouring in a cloud. Mr Parker Pyne and Elsie ran along the corridor. Others joined them. The compartment in question was full of smoke. The fi rst-comers drew back, coughing. The conductor appeared.

‘The compartment is empty!’ he cried. ‘Do not alarm yourselves, messieurs et dames. Le feu, it will controlled.’

35

36 A dozen excited questions and answers broke out. The train was running over the bridge that joins Venice to the mainland.

Suddenly Mr Parker Pyne turned, forced his way through the little pack of people behind him and hurried down the corridor to Elsie’s compartment. The lady with the Slav face was seated in it, drawing deep breaths from the open window.

‘Excuse me, Madame,’ said Parker Pyne. ‘But this is not your compartment.’

‘I know. I know,’ said the Slav lady. ‘Pardon. It is the shock, the emotion - my heart.’ She sank back on the seat and indicated the open window. She drew her breath in great gasps.

Mr Parker Pyne stood in the doorway. His voice was fatherly and reassuring. ‘You must not be afraid,’ he said. ‘I do not think for a moment that the fire is serious.’

‘Not? Ah, what a mercy! I feel restored.’ She half rose. ‘I will return to my own compartment.’

‘Not just yet.’ Mr Parker Pyne’s hand pressed her gently back. ‘I will ask of you to wait a moment, Madame.’

‘Monsieur, this is an outrage!’

‘Madame, you will remain.’

His voice rang out coldly. The woman sat still looking at him. Elsie joined them.

‘It seems it was a smoke bomb,’ she said breathlessly. ‘Some ridiculous practical joke. The conductor is furious. He is asking everybody -’ She broke o!, staring at the second occupant of the carriage.

‘Mrs Je!ries,’ said Mr Parker Pyne, ‘what do you carry in your little scarlet case?’

‘My jewelry.’

‘Perhaps you would be so kind as to look and see that everything is there.’

There was immediately a torrent of words from the Slav lady. She broke into French, the better to do justice to her feelings.

In the meantime Elsie had picked up the jewel case.

‘Oh!’ she cried. ‘It’s unlocked.’

‘... et je porterai plainte à la Compagnie des Wagons-Lits,’ finished the Slav lady.

‘They’re gone!’ cried Elsie. ‘Everything! My diamond bracelet. And the necklace Pop gave me. And the emerald and ruby rings. And some lovely diamond brooches. Thank goodness I was wearing my pearls. Oh, Mr Pyne, what shall we do?’

‘If you will fetch the conductor,’ said Mr Parker Pyne, ‘I will see that this woman does not leave this compartment till he comes.’

‘Scélérat! Monstre!’ shrieked the Slav lady. She went on to further insults. The train drew in to Venice.

The events of the next half hour may be briefly summarized. Mr Parker Pyne dealt with several di!erent o$cials in several di!erent languages - and su!ered defeat. The suspected lady consented to be searched - and emerged without a stain on her character. The jewels were not on her.

Between Venice and Trieste Mr Parker Pyne and Elsie discussed the case.

‘When was the last time you actually saw your jewels?’

‘This morning. I put away some sapphire earrings I was wearing yesterday and took out a pair of plain pearl ones.’

‘And all the jewelry was there intact?’

‘Well, I didn’t go through it all, naturally. But it looked the same as usual. A ring or something like that might have been missing, but not more.’

Mr Parker Pyne nodded. ‘Now, when the conductor made up the compartment this morning?’

‘I had the case with me - in the restaurant car. I always take it with me. I’ve never left it except when I ran out just now.’

‘Therefore,’ said Mr Parker Pyne, ‘that injured innocent, Madame Subayska, or whatever she calls herself, must have been the thief. But what the devil did she do with the things? She was only in here a minute and a half - just time to open the case with a duplicate key and take out the stu! - yes, but what next?’

‘Could she have handed them to anyone else?’

‘Hardly. I had turned back and was forcing my way along the corridor. If anyone had come out of this compartment I should have seen them.’

‘Perhaps she threw them out of the window to someone.’

‘An excellent suggestion; only, as it happens, we were passing over the sea at that moment. We were on the bridge.’

‘Then she must have hidden them actually in the carriage.’

‘Let’s hunt for them.’

With true transatlantic energy Elsie began to look about. Mr Parker Pyne participated in the search in a somewhat absent fashion. Reproached for not trying, he excused himself.

‘I’m thinking that I must send a rather important telegram at Trieste,’ he explained.

Elsie received the explanation coldly. Mr Parker Pyne had fallen heavily in her estimation.

37‘I’m afraid you’re annoyed with me, Mrs Je! ries,’ he said meekly.

‘Well, you’ve not been very successful,’ she retorted.

‘But my dear lady, you must remember I am not a detective. Theft and Crime are not in my line at all. The human heart is my province.’

‘Well, I was a bit unhappy when I got on this train,’ said Elsie, ‘but nothing to what I am now! I could just cry buckets. My lovely, lovely bracelet - and the emerald ring Edward gave me when we were engaged.’

‘But surely you are insured against theft?’ Mr Parker Pyne interpolated.

‘Am I? I don’t know. Yes, I suppose I am. But it’s the sentiment of the thing, Mr Pyne.’

The train slackened speed. Mr Parker Pyne peered out of the window. ‘Trieste,’ he said. ‘I must send my telegram.’

‘Edward!’ Elsie’s face lighted up as she saw her husband hurrying to meet her on the platform at Stamboul.

For the moment even the loss of her jewelry faded from her mind. She forgot the curious words she had found on the blotter. She forgot everything except that it was a fortnight since she had seen her husband last, and that in spite of being sober and strait-laced he was really a most attractive person.

They were just leaving the station when Elsie got a friendly tap on the shoulder and turned to fi nd Mr Parker Pyne. His bland face was beaming good-naturedly.

‘Mrs Je! ries,’ he said, ‘will you come to see me at the Hotel Tokatlian in half an hour? I think I may have good news for you.’

Elsie looked uncertainly at Edward. Then she made the introduction.

‘This - er - is my husband - Mr Parker Pyne.’

‘As I believe your wife wired you, her jewels

have been stolen,’ said Mr Parker Pyne. ‘I have been doing what I can to help her recover them. I think I may have news for her in about half an hour.’

Elsie looked inquiringly at Edward. He replied promptly:

‘You’d better go, dear. The Tokatlian, you said, Mr Pyne? Right; I’ll see she makes it.’

It was just half an hour later that Elsie was shown into Mr Parker Pyne’s private sitting room. He rose to receive her.

‘You’ve been disappointed in me, Mrs Je! ries,’ he said. ‘Now, don’t deny it. Well, I don’t pretend to be a magician, but I do what I can. Take a look inside here.’

He passed along the table a small stout cardboard box. Elsie opened it. Rings, brooches, bracelet, necklace - they were all there.

‘Mr Pyne, how marvelous! How - how too wonderful!’

Mr Parker Pyne smiled modestly. ‘I am glad not to have failed you, my dear young lady.’

‘Oh, Mr Pyne, you make me feel just mean! Ever since Trieste I’ve been horrid to you. And now - this.

But how did you get hold of them? When? Where?’

Mr Parker Pyne shook his head thoughtfully. ‘It’s a long story,’ he said. ‘You may hear

it one day. In fact, you may hear it quite soon.’

38 ‘Why can’t I hear it now?’

‘There are reasons,’ said Mr Parker Pyne.

And Elsie had to depart with her curiosity unsatisfied.

When she had gone, Mr Parker Pyne took up his hat and stick and went out into the streets of Pera. He walked along smiling to himself, coming at last to a little café, deserted at the moment, which overlooked the Golden Horn. On the other side, the mosques of Stamboul showed slender minarets against the afternoon sky. It was very beautiful. Mr Pyne sat down and ordered two co!ees. They came thick and sweet. He had just begun to sip his when a man slipped into the seat opposite.

It was Edward Je!ries.

‘I have ordered some co!ee for you,’ said Mr Parker Pyne, indicating the little cup.

Edward pushed the co!ee aside. He leaned forward across the table. ‘How did you know?’ he asked.

Mr Parker Pyne sipped his co!ee dreamily. ‘Your wife will have told you about her discovery on the blotter? No? Oh, but she will tell you; it has slipped her mind for the moment.’

He mentioned Elsie’s discovery.

‘Very well; that linked up perfectly with the curious incident that happened just before Venice. For some reason or other you were engineering the theft of your wife’s jewels. But why the phrase ‘just before Venice would be the best time’? There seemed no sense in that. Why did you not leave it to your - agent - to choose he own time and place? ‘And then, suddenly, I saw the point.

Your wife jewels were stolen before you yourself left London and were replaced by paste duplicates. But that solution did not satisfy you. You were a high-minded, conscientious young man. You have a horror of some servant or other innocent person being suspected. A theft must actually occur - at a place and in a manner which will leave no suspicion attached to anybody of your acquaintance or household.

‘Your accomplice is provided with a key to the jewel box and a smoke bomb. At the correct moment she gives the alarm; darts into your wife’s compartment, unlocks the jewel case and flings the paste duplicate into the sea. She may be suspected and searched, but nothing can be proved against her, since the jewels are not in her possession.

‘And now the significance of the place chosen becomes apparent. If the jewels had merely been thrown out by the side of the line, they might have been found. Hence the importance of the one moment when the train is passing over the sea.

‘In the meantime, you make your arrangements for selling the jewelry here. You have only to hand over the stones when the robbery has actually taken place. My wire, however, reached you in time. You obeyed my instructions and deposited the box of jewelry at the Tokatlian to await my arrival, knowing that otherwise I should keep my threat of placing the matter in the hand of the police. You also obeyed my instructions in joining me here.’

Edward Je!ries looked at Mr Parker Pyne appealingly. He was a good-looking young man, tall and fair with a round chin and very round eyes. ‘How can I make you understand?’ he said hopelessly. ‘To you I must seem just a common thief.’

‘Not at all,’ said Mr Parker Pyne. ‘On the contrary, I should say you are almost painfully honest. I am accustomed to the classification of types. You, my dear sir, fall naturally into the category of victims. Now, tell me the whole story.’

‘I can tell you that in one word - blackmail.’

‘Yes.’

‘You’ve seen my wife; you realize what a pure, innocent creature she is - without thought or knowledge of evil.

‘She has the most marvelously pure ideals. If she were to find out about - about anything I had done, she would leave me.’

‘I wonder. But that is not the point. What have you done, my young friend? I presume this is some a!air with a woman.’

Edward Je!ries nodded.

39

‘Since your marriage - or before?’

‘Before - oh, before.’

‘Well, well, what happened?’

‘Nothing; nothing at all. This is just the cruel part of it. It was at a hotel in the West Indies. There was a very attractive woman - a Mrs Rossiter - staying there. Her husband was a violent man; he had the most savage fits of temper. One night he threatened her with a revolver. She escaped from him and came to my room. She was half crazy with terror. She - she asked me to let her stay there till morning, I - what else could I do?’

Mr Parker Pyne gazed at the young man, and the young man gazed back with conscious rectitude. Mr Parker Pyne sighed. ‘In other words, to put it plainly, you were had for a mug, Mr Je!ries.’

‘Really -’

‘Yes, yes. A very old trick - but it often comes o! successfully with quixotic young men. I suppose, when your approaching marriage was announced, the screw was turned?’

‘Yes. I received a letter. If I did not send a certain sum of money, everything would be disclosed to my prospective father-in-law. How I had - had alienated this young woman’s a!ection from her husband; how she had been seen coming to my room. The husband would bring a suit for divorce. Really, Mr Pyne, the whole thing made me out the most utter blackguard.’

He wiped his brow in a harassed manner.

‘Yes, yes, I know. And so you paid. And from time to time the screw has been put on again.’

‘Yes. This was the last straw. Our business has been badly hit by the slump. I simply could not lay my hands on any ready money. I hit upon this plan.’ He picked up his cup of cold co!ee, looked at it absently, and drank it. ‘What am I to do now?’ he demanded pathetically. ‘What am I to do, Mr Pyne?’

‘You will be guided by me,’ said Parker Pyne firmly. ‘I will deal with your tormentors. As to your wife, you will go straight back to her and tell her the truth - or at least a portion of it. The only point where you will deviate from the truth is concerning the actual facts in the West Indies. You must conceal from her the fact

that you were - well, had for a mug, as I said before.’

‘But -’

‘My dear Mr Je!ries, you do not understand women. If a woman has to choose between a mug and a Don Juan, she will choose Don Juan every time. Your wife, Mr Je!ries, is a charming, innocent, high-minded girl, and the only way she is going to get any kick out of her life with you is to believe that she has reformed a rake.’

Edward Je!ries was staring at him open-mouthed.

‘I mean what I say,’ said Mr Parker Pyne. ‘At the present moment your wife is in love with you, but I see signs that she may not remain so if you continue to present to her a picture of such goodness and rectitude that it is almost synonymous with dullness.’

Edward winced.

‘Go to her, my boy,’ said Mr Parker Pyne kindly. ‘Confess everything - that is, as many things as you can think of. Then explain that from the moment you met her you gave up all this life. You even stole so that it might not come to her ears. She will forgive you enthusiastically.’

‘But when there’s nothing really to forgive -’

‘What is truth?’ said Mr Parker Pyne. ‘In my experience it is usually the thing that upsets the apple cart! It is a fundamental axiom of married life that you must lie to a woman. She likes it! Go and be forgiven, my boy. And live happily ever afterwards. I dare say your wife will keep a wary eye on you in future whenever a pretty woman comes along - some men would mind that, but I don’t think you will.’

‘I never want to look at any woman but Elsie,’ said Mr Je!ries simply.

‘Splendid, my boy,’ said Mr Parker Pyne. ‘But I shouldn’t let her know that if I were you. No woman likes to feel she’s taken on too soft a job.’

Edward Je!ries rose. ‘You really think -?’

‘I know,’ said Mr Parker Pyne, with force.

‘Have You Got Eveything You Want’ (1934) © Agatha Christie Ltd., a Chorion company. All rights reserved. www.agathachristie.com

Besides a discomfortable food poisoning from a revengeful chicken dürüm bought at midnight on Taksim Square, it is di$cult to find a more exciting and rewarding place for your mouth and nose. There are so many high quality restaurants in the city, that it would be impossible to make a list of recommendations. The smartest way to travel through the culinary cultural heritage of this spread-out metropolis is by using local knowledge to find the best places. For in Istanbul, the best meal is sometimes served behind an unassuming exterior.

Film-maker and food lover Yelda Yanat Kapkın takes us to restaurant Kat.5, a delightful place hiding on the top floor of an unremarkable house in Cihangir, to talk about Turkish food. After a shaky ride in a prehistoric elevator, the door opens to a panoramic view of the Bosphorus. ‘We should export more wine,’ she says, while tasting a ruby wine from the Black

Sea region, ‘but we simply cannot compete with the cheaper French, South African and Chilean wines. Still, they are worth your while. Great food is just everywhere in Istanbul. Every area has its own specialities, sometimes dating back centuries. Beyo#lu for instance with its Genoese traditions or Üsküdar with a completely di!erent historical background. Go down the street from the restaurant and you will find a wonderful patisserie with so many di!erent cakes you need a day to try them all. Take another right and you are in a street were a local fish restaurant with a surprisingly cheap and tasty dish of the day, is competing for the last remnants of your appetite. It is a delicious adventure.’

Food has always been important in Istanbul. In Topkapi Palace, for instance, it is estimated that in the 17th century 1300 kitchen sta! were employed. The Janissaries, the sultan’s personal troops and

bodyguards, were named after culinary expertises, as pancake maker or baker. The Sultans’ chefs, who dedicated their lives to their profession, developed and perfected dishes combining kitchens of the Balkans to Russia, from North Africa to the Middle East.

‘Istanbul’s reputation as a centre of trade routes, is still as accurate today as it was in time of the sultans,’ Yelda Yanat Kapkın explains. ‘The bazaars of Istanbul are at the core of it all, the secret

41

to the many excellent restaurants and eateries of Istanbul. From the famous and touristy bazaars of Sultanahmet to a forgotten bazaar in Üsküdar on the Asian side, designed by the legendary architect Sinan (1489-1588 ed.), the endless array of colourful spices, meats and poultry, vegetables and exotic fruits are the heart of Istanbul’s heritage.’

Although the markets are still as vibrant as they were, lets travel back in time to the Ottoman Empire and explore the bazaars through the eyes of traveller John Auldjo, who visited Istanbul in 1833.

‘After breakfast, a party was made to visit the bazaars (...) On landing at the Balouk, or fish bazaar, we passed through the bazaar of drugs, called also that of Alexandria, an extensive covered building, where rhubarb, paints, senna, and other commodities of that sort, are sold in stalls fitted up on both sides of the passage. The articles are all exposed in the most tempting manner, according to the fancy of the vendor, who sits cross-legged on the shop-board behind, waiting anxiously for his customer; and when anyone stops but for an instant, he pops out his head like a spider, to ascertain whether it is a bite or not.

We passed through the pipe-stick bazaar, situated in an open street: on one side of which, pipe-sticks and amber mouth-pieces are exposed to sale; the other being almost entirely occupied by turners, who work with extraordinary neatness, considering the imperfect nature of their tools.

From the bazaar where cotton handkerchiefs and shawls, English

42

and German, are sold, we passed to the shop of Mustapha, the scent dealer, where we established ourselves for a luncheon, consisting of pipes, co!ee, and lemonade, while the various bottles of perfume, of roses and jasmine, musk, musk rat-tails, lemon essence, sandal wood, pastilles, dyes, all the sweet odours that form part and parcel of a sultana’s toilet, were temptingly exposed to our view. From time to time, portions of these delicacies were rubbed on our whiskers, hands, and lips, to induce us to purchase; so that when we left the shop to return to Pera, we were a walking bouquet of millefleurs, and might have been scented a mile o!.’

‘I should really not give you any advice on restaurants. I would not know where to begin,’ Yelda Yanat Kapkın continues, while looking at the choices of dessert.

‘One of the fun things to do in Istanbul is to explore the cultural heritage of the city by tasting all its di!erent culinary traditions. You should try köfte, of course,

and, if you have the chance, you should go to the Princes’ Islands for lunch and a stroll. And, of course, you should make time to discover the endless parade of patisseries like Markiz Patisserie, very close to here, with wonderful fruitcakes and macaroons or Beyaz Fırın with great Easter breads and güllaç (a rose flavoured dessert.ed) on the Anatolian side.’

Fruits in abondance.

Famous deserts and great produce.

The hustle and bustle of the

open markets.

While tasting her burma kadayif, a shredded wheat dessert with pistachio filling, she laughs. ‘Oops, I have done it again, I still gave advice, but it is so di$cult not to. I have lived in Istanbul all my life and still I discover new culinary treasures. It is truly magical.’

43

The Kadir Has University’s campus on the shore of the Golden Horn started life in 1884 as the Tekel Tobacco Factory. After nearly seventy years, the structure began to su!er seriously from the lack of maintenance and was eventually abandoned. In the late 1990’s the Kadir Has Charity Foundation came up with the idea to turn this deserted factory building into a university campus. Tekel handed over the

building to the Foundation in 1997 on a twenty-nine lease. On December 30, 2002, after many years of restoration, the university opened its doors for the first time. The 35.000m% had been an unbelievably large space to repair and restore. The result is phenomenal.

Chief restorer and architect Dr. Mehmet Alper is proud of his buildings. ‘I have lived with the restoration

44

of these buildings for so many years. I devoted an important part of my life to this old factory. More people are studying here than we originally planned, but as long as we are flexible about the space, we can do it. These buildings are used by thousands of students every day. It is not a static situation.’ The Kadir Has University restoration by Dr. Mehmet Alper received an European Union/Europa Nostra Award in 2003.

The building is not only 19th century industrial heritage, it is literally built on top of the ancient city walls of Istanbul. The Byzantine cisterns underneath the structure date back to the 11th century and the ruins of a historical Ottoman hammam date back to the 16th century. The treasures of the Rezan Has Archaeological Museum, including

the Halûk Perk collection, are handsomely displayed between the pillars of the Byzantine remains. Through a long corridor next to the museum we reach a door that leads us to another cistern complex, yet to be restored. It is a small step from the 21st century into the Middle Ages. The site is impressive. Water is dripping from the ancient ceilings. No one has used these chambers for centuries.

On our way back, we meet the founder of the university, businessman and philanthropist Kadir Has (1921-2007), sitting behind his desk peering determinedly into the future. The almost, but not quite life-like wax figure, has an unreal quality to it. One may wonder if this haunting image does the real legacy of the man any justice.

45

santralistanbul is a cultural complex on the campus of Istanbul Bilgi University, at the upper end of Golden Horn. It started its life as the Silahtara#a Power Station, that supplied the city with electric power from 1914 to 1983. The immense area of 118,000m% houses a modern art museum, an energy museum, an amphitheater, concert halls and a public library. It feels like the set of Metropolis, Fritz Lang’s masterpiece from 1927. At night it is a miracle in red. Modern art feels right at home between the oversized turbines, pumps and walls of glass. It interacts easily with the massive steel structures that seem to grow from the walls and descend from the ceilings. It feels

like the workers of the energy plant have just left the scene, after a meticulous clean-up.

The redevelopment plan was an idea of O#uz Özerden, the young entrepreneur and founder of Istanbul Bilgi University. He persuaded the Ministry of Energy and Natural Resources to grant him a twenty-year lease in 2004. The architectural work was completed in three years. santralistanbul’s opening took place in 2007. They expect 1.5 million people to visit the cultural complex. The centre’s director is Serhan Ada. Some parts of the complex are still under construction.

46

Not much is left of the the o$cial neighbourhood.

49The home we enter is tiny. Two small rooms cramped with beds that double up as couches. On one of them an old woman is screaming in agony. She was born in this room seventy years ago and now she will die here. Her daughter is sitting on the ground next to her softly squeezing and caressing her hand, trying to relieve the pain. Times are tough. Her own son, daughter and husband are in jail and money is scarce. ‘We were not hungry before, but now we are,’ she says.

Art historian Derya Nuket Ozer puts an arm around her

to comfort her. The Romani people living in the dilapidated

Sulukule area of Istanbul can be a tough people to love, but Derya feels that this is where she should be at this moment. Everywhere people come up to her, children get a hug and even a stray dog forgets to bark. She feels a strong emotional commitment to this district and its people. As she looks away in an e!ort to hold back her tears,

she explains: ‘I was politically active and put in jail when I was just 20. I was incarcerated with Romani prisoners and was amazed by their resilience, their humour and their zest for life. When in 2006 this quarter came under threat and people asked me to get involved, I simply had to. It is in my character.’

The Sulukule (‘Water Tower’) neighbourhood lies in the northern section of Istanbul’s historic peninsula and is part of the UNESCO World Heritage Site of Istanbul. Romani presence in this part of Istanbul dates back to Byzantine times. It is one of the historical areas designated for drastic urban transformation and gentrification. The Sulukule Platform, of which Derya Nuket Ozer is an active member, is a civil community initiative fighting an uphill battle against the authorities and construction companies to safeguard as much of the area as possible.

Other neighbourhoods are also under serious threat. The immigrant quarter of Tarlaba"ı,

close to the famous Taksim Square, will be next. The old Fener/Balat District on the shores of the Golden Horn has already been partially cleared. On the surface these urban renewal programmes seem to be an excellent initiative. Deteriorated buildings are torn down and modern apartment buildings and villas are built in their place. Some of the historical homes are being renovated. But the original communities, which live in these areas, can no longer a!ord to live there. The people who gave life to the houses and streets move out and what is left is soulless and culturally empty.

‘Every area needs a di!erent strategy,’ Derya explains.’ What might work for Sulukule, might not work in Tarlaba"ı. Here, there was a thriving Romani community that did not want to move from where they had been living since Byzantine times. The young immigrants of Tarlaba"ı may be happy to move out, so a di!erent approach is needed there.’

The destruction of the neighbourhood of Sulukule is

unbelievable. 90.000 square metres have already been cleared. Listed and registered historic wooden houses, some dating back to the 19th century, have been bulldozed to rubble. Of the 85 buildings that were suggested by the Sulukule Platform to be saved, only 9 were accepted and of those only 2 remain. Together with an historic mosque they are the sole survivors of a once famous popular entertainment district. 5000 people were evicted and housed 30 miles away. Many came back within months and settled in the already overcrowded neighbourhoods surrounding Sulukule.

‘It takes a lot of energy. You struggle street by street, house by house. First we focussed on the intangible heritage, then on the tangible and now we concentrate our e!orts on the archaeological importance of the area. All of the Sulukule Platform is in this fighting mood. From the beginning we realised that we might lose, but we did not want them to get away with it easily. The problem is not just the politicians or the government, but also the architects, the art historians and the heritage organizations who have often elitist and, quite frankly racist points of view. The Romani people are not politically organized, so

it is di$cult for them to stand up collectively against a large scale gentrification project like this.’

We walk to the north side of the cleared area until we reach the ancient walls of the city.

‘In Sulukule the Lykos river enters the historical peninsula, so the walls are here at their weakest. We expect to find important remnants from the many besiegements the city endured. We even expect to find pre-historic remains. Sulukule should be seen as Efeze or Pergamon. Any construction in the area should be halted until the archaeological museum has excavated the site. The building of the new luxurious houses and villa’s will have to wait until all that is finished. If they do it by the book, it will take a long time. We are afraid that they will not.’

As we speak, bulldozers are energetically levelling the

area and truckloads of soil are being removed. After being initially stopped from taking photographs by over zealous security guards, the manager comes out explain what going on. The municipality and the surrounding neighbourhoods have been secretly using the area as a dumping ground for garbage and waste. It has to be cleaned up, so an archaeological team can do proper research. They are even planning to hire an archaeologist

of their own to get the process moving again. It shows how multi-layered and complex the daily practice of the Sulukule project is.

‘Even the people who work here do not know what the current status is,’ Derya Nuket Ozer explains, while posing for a photograph in front of one of the last listed buildings still standing.

‘The people, who live here, do not know what is going to happen next. There is no real discussion. What we need, is an overall plan for the whole UNESCO World Heritage peninsula. We need to look at it from a national perspective, not from a local perspective. The proper renewal of these historical areas should concern all of us, not just the people who live there or the organisations, like the Sulukule Platform, who try to help them. Because the next time you come, this house will be gone too.’

On the right: Sulukule before the destruction

began.

50

The Sulukule Platform is a civic initiative composed of individuals from di! erent disciplines: planners, architects, art historians, journalists, social scientists and students. They advocated the necessity of a rehabilitation project in Sulukule, but focussed on social issues like employment and educational initiatives geared towards the ‘Sulukule people.’ The Sulukule Roma Solidarity and Improvement Association works together with the Platform. UNESCO, the European Union Human Rights Commissioner, representatives of Roma communities abroad and many civil society organizations and o$ cials visited the neighbourhood and monitor the developments. Activist Derya

Nüket Özer in Sulukule.

51

Özalp Birol, the energetic general manager of the Pera Museum and the &stanbul Research Institute, disappears as quickly as he arrives. Even though the museum is closed today, two di!erent groups are touring the building. Something went seriously wrong when the di!erent parties met on the fourth floor.

Within minutes he is back, slightly out of breath, sits down and smiles.

‘The diplomat’s wife and her lady friends were apparently ‘shushed’ by the group of tour guides, which was annoyed by their loud talking. The ladies did not take the ‘shushing’ lightly, so there was a heated discussion and I had to smooth things over.’

The Pera Museum, founded by Suna & &nan Kıraç Foundation, opened its doors in 2005. The building used to be known as the Bristol Hotel, built in 1893 by Achille Manoussos. Now only the facade of the old structure remains as the building was considered to be too unsafe in an area prone to earthquakes.

The museum houses three permanent collections. The Anatolian Weights and Measures with over 8.500 pieces is unrivalled in the world. The 400-piece collection of Kütahya Tiles and Ceramics is equally famous and the Orientalist Art Collection, a legacy of Suna Kirac’s sister Sevgi Gonul and her husband Erdogan Gonul, is a true treasure. This rich collection, now expanded to 350 paintings, centres around European artists inspired by the Ottoman Empire. The most famous work was bought a few years ago for a staggering 3.5 million dollars; ‘The Tortoise Trainer’ by Osman Hamdi. It is generally believed to be losely

inspired by a Japanese woodcut. But Özalp Birol interprets the painting di!erently.

‘I think it is about bureaucrats. Tortoises do not have ears, they have thick shells. They hardly move. They cannot be convinced to do anything, even if you try really hard like the tortoise trainer in the painting. Let me give you an example. Five years ago the Suna and &nan Kıraç Foundation commissioned architect Frank Gehry to design a new cultural complex on the location of the TRT studios across the road from here, I’ll show you.’ We follow him outside.

He points to a messy and sad looking parking lot, spreading from the legendary and newly restored Pera Palace Hotel towards a hideous architectural mishap. According to the local broadcasting centre of Turkish Public Broadcaster TRT, taste is something that happens to other buildings.

‘When we started the project, Frank Gehry was 76, now he is 81. We cannot wait any longer. We are willing to spend 200 million dollars to make this historical quarter attractive and alive again. The Mayor wants it. The locals want it. Istanbul wants it. But nothing happens. The ball is in the Prime Minister court. It must happen in 2010 or it will not happen at all.’

He sighs and walks back to the museum café. He takes a sip of his tea and points to the grand piano in the middle of the room. ‘Let me give you another example; from the museum world. That instrument used to belong to Maria Callas. You just have to look at it and it shares

Osman Hamdi ‘The Tortoise

Trainer’ (Above)

Japanese woodcut.

(Below)

53

its history with you. It is direct communication. The museum collection of the Turkish Republic is enormous. We cannot compete with it. But they do not have the expertise, the flexibilty or the

organisational structure. They are badly managed. We manage this museum as a company. I come from the business world - Unilever, Castor Oils, Nestle - I have always been very interested in arts and

culture, but I am not a curator. This is a western style cultural centre, that is geared towards a general public. We get 40 to 50 primary school children every day. We teach them how to visit an exhibition, how to enjoy and appreciate it.’

´We have an exhibition at the moment about the Hippodrome, the race circus from Roman Times in the centre of Istanbul. We use originality, creativity and new technologies. We use only three original artifacts to tell a fascinating story. But our exhibition is much more e!ective than you would see in a traditional Turkish museum using 300 artifacts. The bureacratic system does not allow them to develop new business models or new communication strategies. It is up to the private museums to show the way´.

´This museum has a lot of energy. And it gives a lot of energy back. Running this place is like conducting a classical orchestra. You need great players and a good team spirit. But even with every e!ort, you have to understand that every museum in the world loses money. There is no museum anywhere, public or private, that can survive without donations or support. The maximum you can ever accomplish is that you manage to generate 30% of your core funding through ticket sales, shop sales and other activities. We had a moment of panic around August 2008, when the financial crisis was taking the world by storm. Continuity is very important for a museum and as a private museum, you are dependant on your donors. But Suna and &nan Kıraç trust us. The family does not interfere. They just said, do not worry, please continue with all your plans.’

Frank Gehry’s designs.

54

Inan Kirac said in an interview*:’If you have the time and the means, you slowly begin to fi ll your house, your study, with beautiful things-more than just beautiful, with things that have a meaning, a depth, a history. Even if your job is the world’s most tiring and di$ cult and you don’t have enough time for such things, when you come home at night, or when you leave your work on your desk and lean back in your chair, those works of art gradually draw you into their own world; they make you think, they console you, they give you rest and make you happy.’

Suna Koç (1941), the co-founder of the Pera Museum, is the fourth child of Vehbi Koç of the famous Koç family. She is a Turkish business woman and philantropist. She is married to &nan Kıraç, a high ranking executive of the Koç Group. They have one child. Suna has served various posts in the holding, most recently as vice president. Due to her contributions in education, health and social service in Turkey, she received in 1997 the ‘Supreme Service Medal.’ She has been battling Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS), better known as ‘Lou’ Gehrig disease (an American baseball player) for many years. It is the same disease that Stephen Hawking is su! ering from, as did David Niven.

*Turkish Airlines Magazine

55

Such was the tone set in the discussion on the extension of the Four Seasons hotel in Sultanahmet, the central historical area in Istanbul. It was the fi rst jail house in the heart of the capital of the Ottoman Empire, and was built in 1918. In 1969, although abandoned, it continued to be used as a military facility. Many famous writers, journalists and artists awaited trial in the neoclassical building. In 1992, after a long period of neglect, the Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts chain got permission to convert the derelict building into a luxury boutique hotel. But it quickly became apparent that the 65 rooms were nowhere near enough to cater for the growing infl ux of a' uent tourists. Even though the hotel is itself an important and listed heritage site, it now wanted to expand on top of another heritage site. Underneath the hotel and next to it lie the remains of a Byzantine palace which date back to the time of Constantine the Great in the fourth century.

Sultanahmet is one of the most popular places for tourists in the world and is home to the Hagia Sophia, the Topkapı Palace, the Blue Mosque and the Hippodrome. First class creature comforts are

in high demand and the options in this World Heritage area are limited. Despite protests and with considerable delay and constructional adjustments, the hotel extension was partially realized. The hotel now has 170 guest rooms and suites.

But what is going to happen to the huge archaeological site next to the hotel’s extension? This remains unclear. The planned ‘Archaeological Park, Tourism and Cultural Area’ is still not open to the public. Already more than 20 million euros have been spent on the project, which is overseen by the Istanbul Archaeological Museum, but the area still resembles a construction site. The guards at the excavation gate forbid us to take photographs,

but from a di! erent viewpoint it is clearly evident just how central the Byzantine remains are.

The delays and discussions illustrate the uncomfortable relationship between tourism and preservation. Uncontrolled development and temporary restorations have already endangered many sites in Istanbul, but without proper funding, heritage work cannot be done. Commercial exploitation o! ers fi nancial possibilities that are not available elsewhere. An open dispute would be highly embarrassing while Istanbul is 2010 European Capital of Culture, but UNESCO’s World Heritage Committee, as well as Europa Nostra, are monitoring the developments closely.

*Reed Construction Data, July 30, 2008

Archeological Park, Tourism and Cultural Area drawing, Mission Rapport, UNESCO, 2008.

The Four Seasons Hotel is not the only prison that was transformed into a hotel. The very idea of prison life seems to be diametrically opposed to a life of luxury, but quite a few jails have found a new life as hotel. The Charles Street Jail, in Boston USA, was one of the countries most infamous prisons, but re-opened in September 2007. Jail Hotel Loewengraben in Luzern, Switzerland, was still functioning as a prison in 1998. The Breakwater Prison, the notorious correctional facility in Cape Town, is now a luxury resort in the middle of the popular Victoria & Albert Waterfront. Britain’s oldest prison in Oxford is now one of its classiest boutique hotels. The Helsinki County Prison closed down in 2002. Katajanokka is now a 102-room hotel, where you can even book the private cell where former Finnish president Risto Ryti was jailed by the Soviets.

57

‘Only three families still live here,’ says Dr. Mehmet Özdo#an, Professor of Pre-History at the University of Istanbul. He opens the balcony door of his Sultanahmed apartment, close to the Blue Mosque in the heart of Istanbul. ‘My family has lived on this location for sixteen generations. At least, that is what my mother used to say. I was born here in this house. It stands on the ruins of a Byzantine palace. As a kid I used to play in those catacombs.’ He points to an ancient structure visible directly next to the garden. ‘Sultanahmed is now a tourist area, not a residential area.’

When I remark that Istanbul must have been a very di!erent city when he was a child, he sips his tea and smiles sardonically. ‘So many things have changed in Turkey. When I was a child we celebrated the fact that Istanbul had reached one million inhabitants. Now it is almost eighteen million, I think. In the 1950s Turkey was an agricultural society. Now people are no longer needed in the villages. Who wants to live in a mud house in the middle of nowhere? Certainly not the girls.’

Prof. Özdo#an started his career in pre-history not just out of

passion. ‘I enrolled in the wrong course by accident. But what can you do? Thanks to the new ideas of Professor Braidwood and Professor Halet Çambel (the legendary Turkish archaeologist, see also the article on the Red Yali ed.), I stayed with it. Halet Çambel created me. She taught me to take science seriously, that you cannot escape it, that no excuses are acceptable, that there is always more to be done. Archaeologists are always under duress. It becomes part of your life. The work is never finished. It is mostly boring as well. Documentation is such a heavy burden. Everything

58

When they and other groups started to move into Europe, they introduced this new revolutionary way of living to the primitive tribes already living in Europe, adapting their ways to local conditions, creating a new and diverse civilisation based on the same fundamental ideas.

‘They started travelling to the west in di!erent groups. One group went through Istanbul and along the Danube to the north. Another from the Dardanelles to Central Europe, another arrived in Spain and Portugal and maybe there are many more. But why did all these di!erent groups move in the first place? I am convinced that humans are basically very, very lazy,’ he flashes a knowing smile. ‘Nothing changes for millenia if you leave it up to humans. I think they only started to move to the west when certain conditions forced them to. Some may say it was social upheaval or over-population that made them move, but I think the main reason may have been some sort of climate change. We know that small changes in the weather conditions can have a large impact on a society.’

‘There is so much to discover and there is so little time,’ he says contemplatively as he walks me to the door. ‘Prof. Halet Çambel is 93 and she is still working and gathering data every day. We have no choice, we have to do it.

has to be precise and detailed. Appreciation comes much, much later if at all and you do not get to enjoy it. I could have been a happy person,’ he says with a wry smile.

‘Let me give you an example. Most of our knowledge of the pre-history in the Istanbul area comes from rescue missions. Everyday sites are being destroyed without being documented. It is a continuous race against urban development. The only bronze age site left in the vicinity of Istanbul is totally endangered. They built a helicopter platform and and a villa on it. You must have heard about the Theodosian harbour they have uncovered in the Marmaray Project, the new rail road link under the Bosphorus. By accident, and that says it already, because we should be digging purposely, the real important finds turned out to be underneath the ancient Byzantine ships; a grave that proves people lived here 6,000 years earlier than we had previously thought. The skeletons of two curled up adults and two children, buried with gifts for the afterlife. A Neolithic group of people farmed and fished here,

quite close to where I live. Every new site we find, tells us something about how people travelled from the East into Europe.’

Dr. Mehmet Özdo#an may talk about events that happened thousands of years ago, but the political and philosophical implications of his research are huge still today. He studied the beginnings of agriculture and religion and the social structure of the earliest cities. In a time where feelings of ethnicity and cultural nationalism are increasingly underlined, his scientific findings tend to go against populist opinions.

‘The European Union is trying to forge an European identity, based on the Romans or the Greeks. But the real underlying basis of European identity comes from Anatolia. Neolithic culture of course changed and adapted as it moved west into Europe, but it is clear that the origins came from Anatolia,’ he explains.

Scientific research by Prof. Özdo#an and others has proven that a completely new way of living was developed in Anatolia with a di!erent way of building, with cereals and livestock. The inhabitants of Çayönü in South-Eastern Turkey for instance, are probably the first to experiment with agriculture. They raised sheep and goats. They had dogs. They may have been the first to domesticate the pig. Female figurines found there may be the earliest traces of the Mother Goddess cult. The genetically common ancestor of 68 contemporary types of cereal, still grows as a wild plant on the slopes of Mount Karaca. It seems to have developed into a society in which women and men were treated equally.

Dr. Mehmet Özdo#an’s ideas get support from new climatic research. Climatologists have discovered that an important climate change occurred around 8000 years ago. Sudden arid conditions must have had an unfavourable and maybe even devastating influence on the agricultural communities in the Eastern Mediterranean. The conditions may have triggered the rapid spread of early farmers out of Anatolia, into Greek Macedonia as well as into the fertile plains of Thessaly, and simultaneously into Bulgaria and likely also other regions.

59

The house had three floors, I never walked down the stairs, but slid down on the banister of the stairs in one go.’ Prof. Dr. Halet Çambel (1916)

*) R)+ Y",'fondly remembers her childhood in her historical home on the shores of the Bosphorus. The tireless and legendary professor of prehistory is not in Istanbul at the moment, but in Karatepe (a late Hittite fortress and open air museum in Osmaniye Province in southern Turkey ed.). Together with her younger colleague Murat Akman, she is archiving half a

64

*) R)+ Y",'Prof. Dr. Halet Çambel, Dr. Paolo Girardelli, Backview of the house, Ottoman strawberries.

century of work at the Karatepe excavations with characteristic meticulousness.

‘I have started this work in Karatepe over fifty years ago and I will not stop, before I have finished here,’ she says. Professor Çambel hopes that, in future, her meticulous approach to archiving will be taught in her red wooden villa on the Bosphorus. She and her late husband Nail Çakırhan have donated their house to the Bosphorus University to be an

Institute for Archaeology and Traditional Architecture.

‘These houses were usually named after the people who lived in them, so that why ours is known as the Çambel-Çakırhan Residence, but some call it simply the ‘Red Yali.’ The house was located in Arnavutköy, or ‘Albanian village,’ a Greek village with some Armenians and some Turks. The sea-side was occupied by Greek fishermen’s rowing boats,’ she explains.

The quietness of Çambel’s youth is hard to imagine, as cars race by continuously on the road that now separates the red mansion from the Bosphorus. Just like other historical sea-side mansions or yali’s, the immediate connection with the water is lost forever. The house is still a home. Prof.Dr. Halet Çambel grew up in the house and has been living here for almost 70 years with her late husband Nail Çakırhan, the equally famous poet, journalist and architect.

65

Even in her old age the mansion

is majestic.

66 ‘When our parents were no more, my husband opened the house up again to make it one whole. The former owners had divided the house up. Living in a smaller house is less expensive, of course, but when you open the door after being away for some time, you have this feeling of space.’

The large central entrance is fi lled with books, boxes and even a bicycle. The side chambers look traditional with old heaters and mahogany furniture, unchanged since the 1930s. A wide staircase leads to the fi rst and second fl oors. No one has been sliding down the banister for a long time. Every room is stacked with bookcases, archive cabinets, newspapers and photos and mementos from a long and adventurous life. While time has not stopped in the Red Yali, it has at least been slowed down considerably.

Dr. Paolo Girardelli of Bo#aziçi (Bosphorus) University is leading the research of the Çambel Çahirhan residence. He shows us around the house in Professor Çambel’s absence.

‘I must say, when I fi rst entered the house, I felt the urge to run away.

There is so much work to be

done. Now I consider it an honour and a gift. I remember when I met Nail Çakırhan and I complimented him on his restorations of wooden houses. He was already very weak then and unable to speak, but I will never forget his smile.’

We walk around in the terraced hillside garden behind the villa.

‘The house was originally owned by the Armenian Head Gardener of the Sultan. It has its own water springs and it is located on a very long piece of land, almost 500 meters from the Bosphorus to the top of the hill. It is one of the few original houses from the beginning of settlements on the Bosphorus.’

‘We not only document the architectural history of the house or archive all the books and manuscripts, we are also interested in other aspects, for instance the vegetables and the fruit that the Ottomans grew in their gardens. We can still fi nd specimens of the original plants, like the Ottoman strawberry, a less juicy and smaller kind of strawberry, that grew here in Arnavutköy.’

He walks to the front of the Red Yali and points to the Bosphorus. ‘Many of the traditional Yali’s are in very bad shape, like for instance the Italian embassy’s summer residence in Tarabya.

It is one of the most striking contributions to Istanbul’s architectural heritage by Raimondo D’Aronco, but now it really needs repairs. Thanks to Professor Çambel the Red Yali will be saved for

future generations, but many others need our immediate attention.’

Nail Çakırhan (1910-2008) was a Turkish poet, journalist and Aga Khan award-winning architect and restorer. He repaired and restored and built new houses built in accordance with the traditional styles, primarely in Akyaka in southwestern Turkey. He also constructed his own house in the region, considered a classic by its blend of traditional Ottoman/Turkish/Aegean architecture.

Prof. Dr. Halet Çambel (1916) is without a doubt the best known Turkish archaeologist. She is one of the country’s foremost researchers and the most knowledgeable Hittite expert. She is also one of the fi rst Turkish women participating in Olympic Games (Fencing,1936). She studied at the Sorbonne and became H.T. Bossart’s assistant in 1940 at the Istanbul University. She is most famous for her work on Çayönü and the excavations of Pi"mi" Kale and Karatepe-Aslanta".

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Reproduced with the permission of Orhan Pamuk and Faber & Faber

Photo by Jerry Bauer

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The Pamuk Apartments were built at the edge of a large plot of land in Ni"anta"ı that had once been the garden of a pasha’s mansion. The name ‘Ni"anta"ı’ (target stone) comes from the days of the reformist, Westernising sultans of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century (Selim III and Mahmut II) who placed stone tablets in the empty hills above the city in those areas where they practised shooting and archery; the tablets marked the spot where an arrow landed or where an empty earthenware pot was shattered by a bullet and usually carried a line or two describing the occasion. When the Ottoman Sultans, fearing tuberculosis and desirous of Western comforts, as well as a change of scene, abandoned Topkapı Palace for new palaces in Dolmabahçe and Yıldız, their viziers and princes began to build for themselves wooden mansions in the hills of nearby Ni"anta"ı. My first schools were housed in the Crown Prince Yusuf &zzeddin Pasha Mansion, and in the Grand Vizier Halil Rıfat Pasha Mansion. Each would be burned and demolished while I was studying there, even as I played football in the gardens. Across the street from our home, another apartment building was built on the ruins of the Secretary of Ceremonies Faik Bey Mansion. In fact the only stone mansion still standing in our neighbourhood was a former home of grand viziers that had passed into the hands of the municipality after the Ottoman Empire fell and the capital moved to Ankara. I remember going for my smallpox vaccination to another old pasha’s mansion that had become the headquarters of the district council. The rest – those mansions where Ottoman o$cials had once entertained foreign emissaries, and those of the nineteenth-century sultan Abdülhamit II’s daughters – I remember only as dilapidated brick shells with gaping windows and broken staircases darkened by bracken and untended fig trees; to remember them is to feel the deep sadness they evoked in me as a young child. By the late fifties, most of them had been burned down or demolished to make way for apartment buildings.

Through the back windows of our building on Te"vikiye Avenue, beyond the cypress and linden trees, you could see the remains of the mansion of

Tunisian Hayrettin Pasha, a Circassian from the Caucasus who served as Grand Vizier for a short while during the Russian-Ottoman War (1877–78). As a young boy (in the 1830s – a decade before Flaubert wrote that he wanted to ‘move to Istanbul and buy a slave’) he’d been brought to Istanbul and sold into slavery, eventually to find his way into the household of the Governor of Tunis, where he was raised speaking Arabic, before being taken to France for much of his later youth.When he returned to Tunis to join the army, he quickly rose through the ranks, serving in top posts at command headquarters, in the governor’s o$ce, the diplomatic corps, and the finance ministry. Finally he retired to Paris, whereupon, just as he was turning sixty, Abdülhamit II (acting at the suggestion of another Tunisian, Sheikh Zafiri) summoned him to Istanbul. After engaging him as a financial adviser for a short time, he made him Grand Vizier. The pasha thus became one of the first in a long line of foreign-educated financial experts who, given the mandate to pull Turkey from a sea of debts, went beyond dreaming (like their counterparts in so many other poor countries) of national reform along Western lines. As with many of his successors, people expected a great deal from this pasha, simply because he was more a Westerner than an Ottoman or Turk. And for precisely the same reason – that he wasn’t Turkish – he felt a deep shame. The gossip was that Tunisian Hayrettin Pasha would make notes in Arabic when returning home in his horse-drawn carriage from his meetings in Turkish at the palace: later he would dictate these to his secretary in French. The coup de grace was an informer’s report of rumours that his Turkish was poor and that his secret aim was to establish an Arabic-speaking nation; while knowing these rumours to be mostly baseless, the ever suspicious Abdülhamit nevertheless gave these denunciations some credence and removed the Pasha as Vizier. Because it would have been unseemly for a fallen Grand Vizier to take refuge in France, the Pasha was forced to end his days in Istanbul, spending his summers at his Bosphorus villa in Kuruçe"me and his winters as half-prisoner in the mansion in whose garden we would later build our apartment.

translated by Maureen Freely

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When he was not writing reports for Abdülhamit, he passed the time composing his memoirs in French. These memoirs (translated into Turkish only eighty years later) prove their author to have possessed a greater sense duty than of humour: he dedicated the book to his sons, one of whom would later be executed for his involvement in the attempted assassination of Grand Vizier Mahmut (evket Pasha, by which time Abdülhamit had bought the mansion for his daughter (adiye Sultan.

Watching the pasha’s mansions burn to the ground, my family maintained a stony equanimity – much as we had done in the face of all those stories about crazy princes, opium addicts in the palace harem, children locked in attics, treacherous sultan’s daughters and exiled or murdered pashas – and ultimately the decline and fall of the Empire itself. As we in Ni"anta"ı saw it, the Republic had done away with the pashas, princes and high o$cials and so the empty mansions they had left behind were only decrepit anomalies.

Still, the melancholy of this dying culture was all around us. Great as the desire to Westernise and modernise may have been, the more desperate wish, it seemed, was to be rid of all the bitter memories of the fallen empire: rather as a spurned lover throws away his lost beloved’s clothes, possessions and photographs. But as nothing, Western or local, came to fill the void, the great drive to Westernise amounted mostly to the erasure of the past; the e!ect on culture was reductive and stunting, leading families like mine, otherwise glad of Republican progress, to furnish their houses like museums. That which I would later know as pervasive melancholy and mystery, I felt in childhood as boredom and gloom, a deadening tedium I identified with the ‘alaturka’ music to which my grandmother tapped her slippered feet: I escaped this state by cultivating dreams.

The only other escape was to go out with my mother. Because it was not yet the custom to take children to parks or gardens for their daily fresh air, the days I went out with my mother were important events.

‘Tomorrow I’m going out with my mother!’ I’d boast to my aunt’s son, who was three years my junior. After walking down the spiral staircase, we would pause before the little window facing the door through which the caretaker (when he was not in his basement apartment) could see everyone coming and going. I would inspect my clothes in the reflection and my

mother make sure all my buttons were buttoned; once outside I would exclaim in amazement,

‘The street!’

Sun, fresh air, light. Our house was so dark sometimes that stepping out was like opening the curtains too abruptly on a summer’s day – the light would hurt my eyes. Holding my mother’s hand, I would gaze in fascination at the displays in shop windows: through the steamy window of the florists,’ the cyclamens that looked like red wolves; in the window of the shoe shop, the barely visible wires that suspended the high-heeled shoes in mid-air; in the laundry, just as steamy as the florists,’ where my father sent his shirts to be starched and ironed. But it was from the windows of the stationery store, in which I noticed the same school notebooks my brother used, that I learned an early lesson: our habits and possessions were not unique and there were other people outside our apartment who lived lives very similar to our own. My brother’s primary school, which I, too, would attend a year later, was right next door to Te"vikiye Mosque, where everyone had their funerals. All my brother’s excited talk at home about ‘my teacher, my teacher’ had led me to imagine that, just as every child had his own nanny, every pupil had his own eacher. And so when I walked into that school the following year to find thirty-two children pressed into one classroom with a single teacher, my disappointment was profound – my discovery that in e!ect I counted for nothing in the outside world made it only harder to part from my mother and the comforts of home each day. When my mother entered the local branch of the Bank of Commerce, I would refuse, without explaining, to accompany her up the six steps to the cashier: wooden steps with gaps between them through which I had convinced myself I might fall and disappear for ever. ‘Why won’t you come in?’ my mother would call down to me, as I pretended to be someone else. I’d imagine scenes in which my mother kept disappearing: now I was in a palace, now at the foot of a well . . . .

If we walked as far as Osmanbey or Harbiye past the Mobil station on the corner, the winged horse on the billboard covering the entire side of an apartment building would find its way into those dreams. There was an old Greek lady who darned stockings and sold belts and buttons; she also sold ‘eggs from the village’ which she’d take out of a varnished chest one by one, like jewels.

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71In her store was an aquarium where undulating red fi sh would open their small but frightening mouths trying to bite my fi nger pressed against the glass, dancing around with a stupid determination that never failed to amuse me. Next, there was a small tobacconistcum-stationery newspaper shop run by Yakup and Vasil, so small and crowded that most days we’d give up the moment we entered. There was a co! ee shop called the ‘Arab shop’ (just as Arabs in Latin America were often known as ‘Turks,’ the handful of blacks in Istanbul were known as

‘Arabs’); when its enormous belted co! ee grinder began to thunder like the washing machine at home and I moved away from it, the ‘Arab’ would smile indulgently at my fear. When these shops went out of fashion and closed one by one to make way for a string of other, more modern enterprises, my brother and I would play a game less inspired by nostalgia than a desire to test our memories, and it went like this: one of us would say, ‘The shop next to the Girl’s Night School’ and the other would list its later incarnations: 1. the Greek lady’s pastry shop; 2. a fl orist; 3. a handbag store; 4. a watch shop; 5. A football pools retailer; 6. a gallery-bookshop; 7. a pharmacy.

Before entering the cave-like shop where for fi fty years a man named Alaaddin sold cigarettes, toys, newspapers and stationery, I would, by design, ask my mother to buy me a whistle or a few marbles, a colouring book or a yoyo. As soon as she put the present into her handbag, I’d be seized by an impatience to go home. But it wasn’t only the glamour of the new toy.

‘Let’s walk as far as the park,’my mother would say, but all at once, sharp pains would travel up my legs to my chest, and I knew I could walk no further. Years later, when my daughter was the same age and we went out for walks, she would complain of remarkably similar pains; we took her to the doctor, he diagnosed ordinary fatigue and growing pains. Once fatigue had eaten into me, the streets and shop windows that had captivated me only moments ago would slowly drain of colour, and I’d begin to see the whole city in black and white.

‘Mummy, pick me up!’

‘Let’s walk as far as Maçka,’my mother would say, ‘We’ll go back on the tram.’

The tramway had been going up and down our street since 1914, connecting Maçka and

Ni"anta"ı to Taksim Square, Tünel, the Galata Bridge and all the other old, poor, historic neighbourhoods that then seemed to belong to another country. When I went to bed in the early evenings, I’d be lulled to sleep by the melancholy music of the trams; I loved their wooden interiors, the indigo-blue glass on the bolted door between the driver’s ‘station’ and the passenger area; I loved the crank that the driver would let me play with if we got on at the end of the line and had to wait to leave

... Until we could travel home again, the streets, the apartments, and even the trees were in black and white.

The Yeni Valide Mosque is a mosque in the Üsküdar district of Istanbul (on the Asian side). It was built between the 1708 and 1710 by the mother of Sultan Ahmed III. The area was then known as Scutari and was still an independent city of Greek Byzantine origin. As the tra$c rushes by on a four lane road, it is hard to copy the exact image. Although the mosque has not changed, the environment has changed dramatically.

In the 1880s, Constantinople (as Istanbul was then known) was a bustling Ottoman city. The most famous sights of the city were photographed for posterity. If we compare these unique historical pictures - all from the collection of the Library of Congress - how much has the city changed over the last 125 years?

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The Column of Constantine, also known as the Burnt Column, stood in the center of a large oval-shaped square on top of the second hill of Istanbul. It was originally higher than it is today and was topped by a statue of Constantine dressed as the sun god Helios.

The porphyry blocks of the column were cracked by time and by fire, and have been reinforced with iron hoops. The course of the avenue that passes by the column has not changed since the time of Constantine.

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The Galata Tower (photo by J. Pascal Sébah) was built in 1384. It was the highest point in the city walls of the Genoese colony. It was reconstructed on a number of occasions in the Ottoman period, most notably, after a great fire that destroyed much of Galata in 1794 and in 1832. The tower’s conical cap was blown o! during

a storm in 1875. The tower was used as a fire- control station until 1964, when it was closed for restoratiom before being opened in 1967 as a tourist attraction. The street leading up to the tower has not lost its charm, as the Cultural Ants show.

Around 1630 Hazarfen Ahmet Celebi allegedly climbed the Galata Tower carrying a set of artificial wings and jumped o! as Sultan Murad IV was watching. He flew from the very top of the Galata Tower and landed in the Do#ancılar square in Üsküdar supported by a south-western wind. The sultan handed him a sack of golden coins, and said: ‘This man is capable of doing anything he wishes. It is not right to keep such people’ and banned the inventor to Algeria for the rest of his life.

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The provenance of the Serpentine Column is not in doubt. The coiled bronze is at least 2,487 years old. Originally the statue was adorned with a golden bowl supported by three serpent heads. It was moved from Delphi in Greece to the Hippodrome in Constantinople where it still stands in its original

location. The bowl was destroyed or stolen during the Fourth Crusade. Ottoman miniatures show the serpent heads were intact. Legend has it that they were destroyed in the 17th century by a drunken Polish tourist, but probably they just fell o! because of age.

The Gate of Salutation, also known as the Middle Gate, leads into the Topkapi palace and the Second Courtyard. The date of construction of this gate is unclear. The architecture of the towers seems more Byzantine than Ottoman. Today it is still the main entrance through which ten of thousands of tourist pass every year.

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The main campus of Istanbul University with its landmark gate used to be the Ottoman Ministry of War. Some Roman and Byzantine ruins are still visible on the grounds. Although the surroundings of the campus have changed over the last 100 years, the main buildings can be easily identified today

The Hippodrome of Constantinople was the social and sporing centre of Constantinople. (Today the square is known as the Sultan Ahmet Square.) The Egyptian Obelisk, originally erected in the 16th century B.C. by Pharaoh Thutmosis III was brough to Istanbul by emperor Theodosius I in 390 A.D. Five or six meters of the obelisk are lost, but the remainder stands on a marble base with friezes depicting the Emperor. In the distance we can see the Serpent Column and the Walled Obelisk. Originally it was covered with gilded bronze plaques, but these were stolen and melted down by the crusaders in 1204. The area of the Hippodrome has now changed from a dusty road into a park.

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The Fountain of Sultan Ahmed III is located in the great square in front of the Imperial Gate of Topkapı Palace. It was built under Sultan Ahmed III in 1728. It was a social centre and gathering place during the Ottoman period and is still in the centre of one of busiest tourist areas of the city.

The 25 meter tall Fenerbahçe Lighthouse was built in 1857. It has been declared a National Heritage site. Istanbul boasts a total of 37 lighthouses on its shores and islands. Those on the European shore emit green light, those on the Asian side red. The original park

that surrounded it, has now been partially built up and the lighthouse can only be seen from behind a fenced wall. It is a well guarded military base and photographs are o$cially not allowed.

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Galata Bridge is one of the most famous bridges of Istanbul. Not many people realize that there have been at least four bridges by the same name in the last couple of centuries. The bridge on the historical photographs was constructed in 1875. The bridge was

480 m long and 14 m wide and rested on 24 pontoons and cost 105,000 gold liras. The area has changed dramatically, although the locations can be easily identified.

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O$ cially the history of the Hagia Sophia, the Holy Wisdom Church, goes back to the year 360, but it has collapsed and been destroyed so many times, that the present building shows elements from many di! erent centuries. The building was a mosque from 1453 until

1934, when it was secularized. It was opened as a museum on 1 February 1935. The area surrounding it, is still one of the most stunning sites in Istanbul.

Traveller Pero Tafur (1435-1439) on the Hagia Sophia:‘It is very large and they say that in the days of the prosperity of Constantinople there were in it six thousand clergy. Inside, the circuit is for the most part badly kept, but the church itself is in such fi ne state that it seems today to have only just been fi nished. It is made in the Greek manner with many lofty chapels, roofed with lead, and inside there is a profusion of mosaic work to a spear’s length from the ground. This mosaic work is so fi ne that not even a brush could attempt to better it. Below are very delicate stones, intermixed with marble, porphyry, and jasper, very richly worked. The fl oor is made of great stones; most delicately cut, which are very magnifi cent....The Despot and the others directed the clergy to bring out the holy relics (...) which were: Firstly the lance which pierced Our Lord’s side, a marvellous relic; the coat without a seam, which must at one time have been violet, but which had now grown grey with age; one of the nails; and some thorns from Our Lord’s crown, with many others, such as the wood of the Cross, and the pillar at which Our Lord was scourged. There were also several things of Our Blessed Lady the Virgin, and the gridiron on which St. Lawrence was roasted, and many other relics which St. Helena took when she was at Jerusalem and carried here, which are much reverenced and closely guarded.’

Despot John VIII Palaiologus died in 1448, while his wife Maria of Trebizond died in 1439 from the plague.

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‘We cannot change the music. It has been the same since 1984, for more than 25 years now.’ Gazanfer Kizildemir, the manager of the famous Green House Hotel (Ye"il Ev) in the center of Sultanahmed in Istanbul, sits in the garden and points at the speakers from which a subtly played Mozart can be heard.

‘Renewal in the Green House Hotel is very di$cult. We wanted to keep the authentic atmosphere, but we

need the new technology, so we have to somehow hide it from view. Every time I doubt what to do, when I change the curtains or the chairs for instance, I ask myself what would Mr. Gülersoy have done?’

Kizildemir refers to the legendary Çelik Gülersoy (1930-2003), lawyer, historical preservationist, writer and poet. He was one of the pioneers of

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Turkish heritage conservation and director general of the Touring and Automobile Club of Turkey (TTOK) for 38 years. One of his most famous projects was the restoration of the Green House and So#ukçe"me Street, a charming alley in the direct neighbourhood of the hotel in Sultanahmet.

‘A big man casts a big shadow, and it can still be felt today. He was a visionary, but also a one-man show, sometimes angry, sometimes calm, but always passionate and charismatic. ‘All of you are my children,’ he would say to the sta!. You must not forget that in 1977, when he started to think about the renovation, this was a really bad area. People were afraid to come here. He was the first to rediscover it.’

Looking at the old pictures of the buildings it is hard to imagine how these could be saved and in fact they were not. It was decided that the only way forward was to build an exact replica of the original mansion. The same happened a few years later in So#ukçe"me Street. All the ruins were torn down and replaced with carbon copies of the originals. At least the outside appearance would survive and in that sense the city landscape could be saved. In the 21st century a di!erent approach would probably be preferred, but there is no doubt that Gülersoy managed to safeguard heritage which would otherwise have disappeared completely. They restored buildings and sites that even did not belong to them. The Yildiz and Emirgan mansions and country cafés, the Hıdiv Palace and the Çamlıca had to be given back to the city municipality

The Green House before and after restoration. Manager Gazanfer Kizildemir.

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The four story wooden mansion or ‘konak’ was built at the end of the 19th century for (ükrü Bey, the general manager of the ministry of monopoly. After the death of the owner, the house gradually fell into a state of neglect. In 1977, the mansion came up for sale and was purchased by the TTOK. The new Green House Hotel was fi nished in 1984. The restoration was awarded a medal by Europa Nostra - the predecessor of the European Union Prize for Cultural Heritage/Europa Nostra Awards - in 1985.

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after restoration. Recep Tayyip Erdo#an, now the Prime Minister of Turkey, was at that time mayor of Istanbul.

‘The mayor did not like the fact that they were serving alcohol on these locations, that is probably the real reason,’ says Kizildemir as he opens the door to the famous Pasha Room where many celebrities have stayed. ‘TTOK spent so much money on these restorations and the municipality just took them back. Now some of them are neglected. For instance, the palace had a beautiful rose garden, which has been destroyed. Istanbul’s mentality has changed over the years. When I was a child Istanbul had 5 to 6 million people, now it is three times as much. Many people who came here imported their lifestyle into the city. These people like to build new apartments instead of restoring old buildings. Some people just stay in their own area and have never even seen the Bosphorus or Taksim Square. Times have changed. We used to have many celebrities stay here, like Jean Paul Gaultier, Rudolf Nureyev and Larry King.

‘This is where Mitterrand stayed.’ He changes the subject with a swooping arm movement.

‘He stayed here with Mazarine, his illegal daughter, during Christmas 1992. It was very strange for the other families who were already staying here; the Turkish police with dogs, the French secret service, representatives of the Turkish Ministry of Foreign A!airs and even media people, who tried to find out if the rumours were true. The Paris Match story on his extra-marital a!airs came out shortly there after. I was a receptionist then and I remember it well.’ Walking back to the lobby, he exchanges a quick joke in Turkish with a member of his sta!.

‘This is why I still work here after 23 years. We are not cold ‘professionals,’ we are like a family. To work in a place like this needs a lot of love and are. All the beds for instance are made of copper. Every year we have to take them all out to be cleaned one by one. Every four to five years or so, the hotel needs to be completely re-painted and repaired. We feel loyalty towards the hotel. The newest sta! member has already been working here for ten years. Staying here is not formal and never anonymous. And the people who come here appreciate that. Some of our guests came here first as children, 25 years ago and now they return as adults.

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The walls you see in Istanbul now, were not the first walls to be constructed. Built at the time of Theodosius following the fall of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century, the walls that we see today, helped Istanbul become a world capital. Envious of the richness and magnificence of the city, Western Europeans conducted their own version of the Crusades initially waged against the Muslims, but this time they fought against their fellow Christians, the Byzantines. They took control of the city for 100 years and savagely pillaged it. Preserved in the annals of history are the lines of poetry cited by Sultan Mehmet the Conqueror to express his sadness over the state of the city in 1453. The lines were written by Ferdowsi, a Persian poet from the 10th century;

‘The spider weaves the curtains in the palace of the Caesars; the owl calls the watches in the towers of Afrasiab.’

I tried to capture the walls as much possible as I could with people around. People in a picture give a sense of scale

but more importantly the feeling of life. The walls still surround the city today;

there is a life in, out of and on the walls. The wooden house, probably dating

back to Ottoman times, the walls from the Byzantine era and the old man going

home with a shopping bag all blend together seamlessly.

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The gates that once opened to the Marmara Sea now let the adjacent neighborhood breath sea air. On many fronts, these gates still serve as an opening to the outside world. Some are large enough to allow modern buses to pass through, others can only be used by pedestrians.

After receiving his doctorate in Finance from Istanbul University’s Faculty of Business, he worked as a high level executive in banking and finance corporations. Since 1994 he heads his own international financial consulting company. He is the chairman of the Cultural Awareness Foundation and a founding member of Fotogen - Photographic Art Association. Selim Seval started out in photography in the late 1960’s as an amateur with a simple box camera. He held his first exhibition in 1971, participated in many competitions and represented Turkey abroad. His Metroistanbul exhibit took place in Istanbul in 2004; the exhibit featuring ‘A long dream… Istanbul’ opened in 2006 in Sarajevo and Mostar. Photography books: Metroistanbul (2004) A Long Dream… Istanbul (2005) Airportistanbul (2006)Terminalistanbul (2007) Man-At-Work (2008)Istanbul City Walls (2009), published by Turkiye Is Bankasi Cultural Publications.

Selim Seval (1953)

After the final conquest of Byzantium and with the development of cannon technology, the importance of the city walls waned and a few centuries later, their strategic significance disappeared altogether. They were left to the mercy of nature’s destructive forces. The remnants of Istanbul’s unique walls make it one of the most extraordinary cities in the world.

We must restore and preserve them. These walls, these monuments belong to all of us; our future generations have a right to witness them.

This project, to photograph the walls of Istanbul, actually came about as a matter of fate. At the beginning of 2005, during the preparations for the Fotogen – Istanbul: the Historic Peninsula exhibit, each one of my photographer colleagues was assigned a particular historic area on the peninsula to cover; I was assigned to the walls. After taking the required four photographs for the exhibit, I got caught up in the depth and significance of my subject and continued to take photographs. At the same time, I did some in-depth research and read about the walls. During every shooting session, I imagined how the walls had been built and tried to picture life during those times - when these walls were of vital importance to Istanbul. I continued with these photographic sessions for approximately two years. I walked all around the walls (even over places where there is no trace of the walls today), in front of them, behind them - sometimes on top of them, coming back to certain places again and again.

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Parts of the walls had fallen victim to Ottoman janissaries but the destruction of Mother Nature was often worse. Some towers have fallen apart in such a way that created unique shapes.

The walls can take many shapes, sometimes as part

of a castle, a palace or a dungeon. The Dungeon of Anemas is among the best preserved, considering its age. Now under a massive

renovation work, this structure is a good example

of a Byzantine structure.

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Newly washed clothes hanging on a rope and a boy on a bicycle in front of a well-preserved Byzantine tower is a timeless picture. It could be any time from the last or this century. When shooting this picture, I wished that the boy was aware of the historical setting he was in.

Where great battles were once fought with great aggression,

people today enjoy a good weather picnicking with their

families in front of the walls on green grass.

Life continues around the wall as it has been since the sixth century. There were times of sadness, fear and joy. Today the walls no longer protect the city from its enemies but have become a playground for children.

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Once a Byzantine

Palace, now a Sunday

marketplace for rare species

of doves, the surroundings

are like a movie-set confusing

visitors of the time they are

in. Listen to the sounds around.

You could be making a time travel to 1000

years ago.

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Enjoying a cigarette where once attacking soldiers were burnt to death with hot oils pouring from above. I wonder how many lives were taken within this square meter where this lady now enjoys open air on a summer afternoon.

A close-to-a-century old man in front of an over-a-millennium old structure. Istanbul is a rare place on this earth where time may be measured not only in years or decades but in centuries and millennia. When I was shooting this picture it was inevitable to think whether this man has ancestors who saw the times when these walls were still protecting the city.

These children’s temporary home for the summer is the tent under the tower. The area is being cultivated and their parents are farmers looking after the land.

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In some parts climbing on the walls where once Byzantine soldiers did, are

safe. As there are no railings to hold you have to be careful. It is not advised if you

have fear of height.

Trees may grow on the

walls making a surrealist landscape.

Pero Tafura, a Spanish traveler and writer wrote around 1438: ‘The city of Constantinople is made like a triangle, two parts in the sea and one on land. It is very strongly walled in a way that is a marvel to see. They say that the Turks came there and put the city in great straits, and he that had charge of the mines (attempting to dig tunnels under the walls. ed.) was amazed, and said to the Grand Turk: ‘Lord, this city is not to be taken by mining, for the walls are of steel and will never fall.’ This was said because the walls are very high and are made of great marble blocks bound together.

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The crack on the wall may soon pull the tower down. To help restore and preserve this piece, state-of-the-art technology is required immediately. A year from now we may see the tower collapse. It will be too late to take action then. Mother Nature will have claimed another piece from Istanbul.

This shop, a car electrician’s workshop, is housed in probably the world’s most historical setting for such a business – a Byzantine tower on the shores of the Golden Horn. At least the shop owner maintains the building and prevents it from collapsing.

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‘We started in the dorms of Bo#aziçi (Bosphorus ed.) University in Istanbul in 1993,’ explains Ülker Uncu, one of the founding members of the group as we sit in a café on Istiklâl Caddesi, the famous Istanbul shopping street near Taksim Square. ‘We started to research traditional folk songs and the history of folk dances. Most of us started to learn how to play instruments. After two years we began to perform in public. We were just interested in playing together

and we did not want to stop after leaving University.’

‘The early 90s was a time in which di!erent ethnic groups, Kurdish first, and then others, began to manifest themselves. We wanted to show this cultural diversity in our performances. We were not political, but we felt we were touching on something important. The younger generation did not know Turkey as

93a multi-ethnic, multi-lingual and multi-cultural country, each with their own traditions in song and dance. Bo#aziçi university was very liberal. They were not encouraging us openly, but they were certainly not against it. People came to our performances and approached us afterwards with their songs; Arabic, Kurdish, Assyrian, Azerbaijan, Greek, Georgian and Armenian songs. All these di!erent folk songs are not unrelated to one another. They are all songs that stem from the same country. A celebration of unity in diversity. Later the musical heritage of the Laz, Circassian, Roma, Macedonian and Alevi cultures was incorporated into our performances. People helped us in interpreting and translating them and they explained the history behind them. We used their lyrics as the basis for little theatrical scenarios. They knew we were genuinely interested. They trusted us with their heritage.’

‘You have to understand, that nobody was allowed to play this music in public. What we did had a political impact. For years, the police was present to monitor our activities at every performance. We wanted to ease all this cultural polarization and ethnic tension through our music and theatre. Until 2000, non-Turkish folk songs were not played on the radio or seen on TV. After 2000 it was o$cially allowed, but the networks still censored themselves. After 2005 it finally became a little easier. The original members are now in their forties, but we still continue to work together. There is so much to discover and we are still eager to do so.’

Listen and watch on: www.kardesturkuler.com/en

The life performances are at the heart of the Bo#aziçi Performing Arts Ensemble.

The cover of their latest CD.

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After years of neglect and depredation by nature and robbery, the mid 17th century pavilion finally underwent a comprehensive restoration (2005-2009). The restoration not only preserved the original floor plan, but also the traditional Ottoman

art, the structure of the roof, the timber framed building system, hidden in the masonry walls, the craftsmanship of metal, glass and gypsum works and the original Iznik tiles. Thieves, who had broken into the building before the restoration, had stolen some

valuable tile (çini) panels and inscriptions.

The restoration of the New Mosque Royal Pavilion was sponsored by the Istanbul Chamber of Commerce. The owner of the building is the General

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Directorate of Foundations of Turkey, which manages hundreds of important historical landmarks. According to the protocol signed, Istanbul Chamber of Commerce can use the building for the

next 20 years. Hatice Karakaya Architecture O$ce was awarded a contract to prepare the restoration project and do historical research on the structure.

Heavily damaged prior to its restoration, the building was first saved from further harm by a protective cover. The restoration work started with the removal of the roof’s overlay and the repair of the construction beneath. In the initial stages, the 17th century tiles on the second floor were removed in order to repair the timber frame behind it.

The restoration combined traditional craftsmanship with the expertise and possibilities of present-day technology, with materials such as stone, brick, plaster, timber, metal and glass for structural purposes and tile, mother-of-pearl, tortoise shell and ivory for decorative purposes. All the dismantled elements have been cleaned, repaired and put back in their original positions. The ones that could not be re-installed (tiles with wrong patterns, severely damaged hinges, metal nails, some glass pieces for example) have been listed and preserved. All the work was filmed by 32 cameras, to record the restoration so other could learn from it.

The New Mosque Sultan’s Pavilion has now reclaimed its place as one of the most beautiful treasures of the Historic Peninsula of Istanbul.

In 2010 the New Mosque Sultan’s Pavilion won an European Union Prize for Cultural Heritage/ Europa Nostra Award in the category Conservation: ‘What impressed the Jury about this project was the integrity and determination of the Turkish authorities in their methods of restoring the Sultan’s Pavilion with such meticulous accuracy. Their commitment to authenticity was uncompromising.’

97Professor Eldem is not only an expert on Ottoman history, he is directly and personally connected to it. He is the great grandson of Osman Hamdi’s brother. Osman Hamdi (1842-1910) was an Ottoman statesman, museum director and prominent Turkish painter. The family came together in the 1930s and changed the name to Eldem. The name refers to the Greek origins of the family. Osman Hamdi was the son of an orphan from the Greek island of Chios.

‘People did not have surnames in the Ottoman empire. There were some family names, but most people were just known in their neighbourhood. In 1934 every Turk had to chose a family name.

Nowadays, most Turks have no idea where their name came from, or why it was chosen by their family in the 1930s.’

‘My great grand uncle Osman Hamdi is the father of archaeology in Turkey. He started the Istanbul Archaeological Museum. He was a pioneer and a patriot, but also a man torn between two worlds. He lived and worked in Paris. He had a French wife. He built himself an ivory tower and created peace and tranquillity at home and in his studio. He avoided the outside world.’

Professor Eldem leans back in his comfortable chair. His o$ce seems the result of a messy library accident. Books, magazines and mementos are spread everywhere.

‘It is depressing. His archaeological museum is the least visited museum in Istanbul. Turks do not go, unless they are forced. They do not relate to that past. For them 1453 (the year the Ottomans took over the city ed.) is the beginning

of history. The other day, I took a boat to the Asian side. From the water you can see Haydarpa"a Train Station. It was built by the Germans in a German style at the beginning of the 20th century. I overheard a child asking his mother ‘what is that?’ The mother answers; It doesn’t look Turkish, it must be Byzantine.’

‘We have to rewrite the history of Istanbul. I hope that Istanbul 2010 European Capital of Culture helps us to realize that Istanbul has one interconnected history. We tend to think in contrasts; Christian vs. Muslim, Oriental vs. Western, East vs. West. We look at the di!erences, not at the similarities, not at the continuity. The Europeans think that the Ottomans came from the steppes and conquered Christian territory. The Turks only see the Ottoman Empire or the Republic, not the rest. It shows the disconnected way the city is perceived. The European versions are as wrong as the Turkish. They all want to change the other´s opinion, but that does not work, of course.

Osman Hamdi became the director of the Imperial Museum in 1881. He used his position to start archaeological expeditions and fight against the smuggling of artefacts to the West. Among the many treasures he discovered, the Sarcophagus of Alexander the Great is one of the most important finds. He started building the Istanbul Archaeological Museum that o$cially opened in 1891 under his directorship. In 1882, he instituted the Academy of Fine Arts, which provided Ottomans with training in aesthetics and artistic techniques. Throughout his professional career, Osman Hamdi continued to paint in the style of his teachers, Gérôme and Boulanger. His 1906 painting, ‘The Tortoise Trainer,’ was sold for 3.5 million dollars in December 2004.

Edhem Eldemwww.nl.gob.mx

Photo by Giovanni Dall’Orto

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Everybody eats the history of Istanbul with a di!erent sauce.’

The phone rings. He listen intensely, hangs up and says.

‘I’m sorry, I appear to have a class now. I’ll be back in an hour.’ He rushes out and returns within the hour amidst a flock of students. Prof. Edhem Eldem is a very popular teacher. His dress casual, his smile easy and his twinkling eyes are sometimes obscured from view by a big mop of black curly hair. The students even started a facebook page called

‘Edhem, je t’aime.’ He blushes. ‘I have not dared to look at it.’ He returns quickly to a less personal topic.

‘You see, history is unfortunately still a tool of ideology. We have a Turkish version and a Western version of history. The Turks tend to respond very emotionally to the West, but of course that does not

work. To change the psychology is a slow process.

The pre-modern response to history is very di!erent. The Ottomans were not so negative regarding Byzantium. There is no anger, no symbolic actions, no ideology. They use it and adapt it. They cover up crosses and transform the churches into mosques. It is easy and practical. We discovered that the design of

funerary architecture, for instance, only changed superficially. It is obvious that the same artisans made them. When the Ottomans took over the city, everyday life just continued.’

‘The Republican period was much more destructive. Now people know it is wrong, but up to the 1980s, it was very easy to destroy cultural heritage. If the Theodosian harbour at Yenikapı (see elsewhere in the magazine ed.) was uncovered in the 1980s, they would have continued without stopping. But there is still a lot to be done. The distortion of historical conscience has been so powerful. Even our students have very little knowledge of cultural heritage. Wikipedia is great, even if it is not always accurate. It shows a variety of opinions. It invites you to question history. The history of Istanbul should not be seen as Eastern or Western; it is world history that happened here.’

“When I entered the Imperial Mint in 1994 while visiting 16 di!erent sites under consideration for the Istanbul Museum, it was love at first sight. Abandoned for 28 years, covered with metres deep dirt and rubbish accumulated over the years, overgrown with trees, with some subterranean spaces totally given up to oblivion, this 17 500 m2 space was stunningly beautiful. Built on top of or next to structures dating from the Byzantine and the classical Ottoman period, the Imperial Mint had been largely deserted since the new Mint building opened its doors in the 1960s. Giant machines mostly dating from the 19th century, some of them still in use for printing o$cial forms, and those which could not be moved to be sold for scrap metal, stood around like proud and defiant sentinels.

In fact, without such a strong a!ective bond, it would not have been possible to endure for years the punishment that was meted out to us, in return for our endeavours to set up a new type of museum which would tell the story of the city of Istanbul, a dynamical cultural centre which could be used by the civil society on the premises of the Imperial Mint. My friend Prof. Ulrich Borsdorf, who started out at about the same time as I to convert an abandoned coal mine and coke factory into the Ruhrland Museum, and who succeeded in inaugurating this giant facility in

2010 at the time that Essen became one of the culture capitals of Europe, told me that he had experienced the same kind of sudden love a!air with the site. They succeeded, while the leadership of the History Foundation after 2006 gave in and gave up under governmental pressure, and one of the most important cultural projects of civil society in Turkey collapsed.”

Orhan Silier, former President of the History Foundation of Turkey, is clearly saddened as he relates the 12 year legal struggle that he had to wage with the Ministry of Culture for the foundation of the Istanbul City Museum on the premises of the old Mint. While he tells us the story of how Istanbul came to enter the year 2010 without having a city museum, he goes into explanations which, as a historian, he cannot put aside.

“Although the history of civil society in Turkey goes back to the 19th century, the military coup of 1980 crushed the gains made in the previous 30 years. In the 1990’s, after a ten-fifteen year period of recovery, many initiatives were taken on di!erent fronts for broadening the basis of democracy, and greater civil societal participation. The History Foundation, set up in 1991 by 264 prominent intellectuals from di!erent professions and walks of life, drew its strength from

Orhan Silier

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101the highly qualified voluntary labour of its founders, rather than the approximately 100 dollars that they per person contributed towards the founding capital.”

The History Foundation, who worked for a non-chauvinistic historiography and history education, was the protagonist in Turkey for an encounter of history with society, for a new approach to museums, an approach that later came to be termed “inclusive museums.” Immediately after its establishment, the History Foundation started publishing the periodical Istanbul, besides tens of books on the City, as well as an eight volume, 5000-page Encyclopaedia of Istanbul and organised tens of scientific conferences, symposia and congresses. The Istanbul Museum project became part of the agenda of the Foundation in 1994. In 1995-96, the UN Habitat summit held in Istanbul was the occasion for the mounting of the ‘Istanbul-World City’ exhibition on the premises of the Imperial Mint, a big step forward as the site was speedily cleaned up and readied for this event with a pre-restoration e!ort and was given to the Foundation for 49 years to restore and set up an Istanbul Museum.

“The premises of the Imperial Mint, although situated in the first courtyard of the main palace of the Empire, had been abandoned for 28 years. This site suddenly became enlivened with 41 exhibitions, 116 concerts, 171 theatre performances and film screenings, 142 congress, symposium and other meetings, all in all 523 scientific, artistic or cultural activities over a course of ten years. It played host every day to several civil societal events. In short, it turned into an ‘out of control’ focal point of intellectual and social activity. This was totally unacceptable for the establishment. The conventional museums, especially the neighboring ones, who only prided themselves in possessing outstanding collections but had remained locked up in the first half of the 20th century, felt seriously threatened by this development.”

As Orhan Silier talks about the museum trips abroad, the budding attempts to enter into collaborations with city museums in the United States and Europe, thanks to the support of the Istanbul Stock Exchange, the Rockefeller Foundation and the European Commission, he deplores the fact that all the plans that were made, the contacts that were established, should have disappeared into the cracks to feed underground streams, instead of bearing tangible fruit.

“The year 2001 was fixed as the opening date of the first stages of the Museum. Afterwards, when the

endless litigation began to dislodge the History Foundation from the Imperial Mint, we reset our sights for the year 2010. In October 2005, I signed a protocol with the Minister of Culture and the Mayor of the Greater Istanbul to set up the Museum as a joint project. Meanwhile, as Istanbul put forward its candidacy for the 2010 Culture Capital, one of the foremost projects presented to the selection committees was the Istanbul Museum... Conservatism, mistrust, proventialism and even jealousy regarding a project which was clearly in a di!erent, international league, tipped the scales. In this city of 12 million, two thirds of which are first generation Istanbulites, an institution which would raise awareness of an urban identity, which would o!er the past and the future of city life to the appreciation and participation of the citizens, continues to be conspicuously absent.”

Orhan Silier, who has focussed his e!orts in the last decade on the Council and Board of Europa Nostra and the establishment of Europa Nostra-Turkey now, is optimistic regarding the chances of Turkey to surmount similar losses:

“Will we be able to learn from our mistakes? For example, will the state be able to start entering into cooperation and collaboration with civil societal actors, rather than eternally being in conflict with them? Will historiography in Turkey cease to be a propaganda tool and become a creative source of inspiration for the future, by basing itself on scientific research? Will the state museums be able to transform themselves from bureaucratic institutions with meagre means into relatively autonomous cultural entities who interact with the society and its problems, and also equip Turkey for meaningful competition within Europe?

I answer these questions in the a$rmative. My generation has paid the price of being in the ‘avant garde,’ of struggling for aims whose ‘time had not yet come.’ We will learn to be social actors who are more open to the world, more ready to learn from it, and anxious to take steps while being considerate to each other’s cultural, ethnic, religious and social a$liations. An important change will come about in the social function of the state. We will have an important part to play in this process of restructuring, only to the extent that we ensure a deep and comprehensive communication, solidarity and partnership between the cultural heritage sectors of Turkey and the other European countries.”

The waters of the Tigris River gave rise to the first settlements of the Fertile Crescent in Anatolia and Mesopotamia—the cradle of civilization. The ancient city of Hasankeyf, built on and around the banks of the river in southeastern Turkey, may be one of the oldest continuously inhabited settlements in the world, spanning some 10,000 years. Hasankeyf and its surrounding limestone cli!s are home to thousands of human-made caves, 300 medieval monuments and a unique canyon ecosystem—all combining to create a beguiling open-air museum.

Photo by Bingül Özcan

But the city, along with the archaeological artifacts still buried beneath it, is slated to become a sunken treasure. Despite widespread protests from local authorities, archaeologists, architects, preservationists and environmental groups, the massive hydroelectric Ilisu Dam is expected to be completed in 2013. The reservoir created by the dam will inundate the site’s caves and flood most of its structures.

More than 20 cultures have left their mark at Hasankeyf. The first settlers probably lived along the Tigris in caves carved into the rock cli!s. (The ancient Assyrian name for the place was Castrum Kefa, meaning “castle of the rock.”) The Romans built a fortress there circa A.D. 300 to patrol their empire’s eastern border with Persia and monitor the transport

of crops and livestock. In the fifth century A.D., the city became the Byzantine bishopric of Cephe; it was conquered in A.D. 640 by the Arabs, who called it Hisn Kayfa, or “rock fortress.” Hasankeyf would next be successively ruled by the Turkish Artukid dynasty, the Ayyubids (a clan of Kurdish chieftains) and the Mongols, who conquered the region in 1260.

Hasankeyf emerged as an important commercial center along the Silk Road during the early Middle Ages. Marco Polo probably passed over its once-majestic stone, brick and wooden

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bridge, built around 1116 (only two massive stone piers and one arch remain). In 1515, the city was absorbed into the Ottoman Empire and has since remained a part of modern Turkey.

Among the site’s most important structures are the ruins of the 12th-century palace of the Artukid kings; the El Rizk Mosque, built in 1409 by the Ayyubid sultan Suleiman; and the 15th-century cylindrical Tomb of Zeynel Bey (the eldest son of Uzun Hasan, who ruled over the region for 25 years). The tomb is decorated with glazed blue and turquoise bricks in geometric patterns that suggest a significant artistic link between Central Asia and Anatolia.

“About 200 di!erent sites will be a!ected by the Ilisu Dam,” says Zeynep Ahunbay, a professor of

architectural history at Istanbul Technical University. “But Hasankeyf is the most visible and representative of all, due to its picturesque location and rich architectural content. It is one of the best-preserved medieval sites in Turkey.”

The consortium of German, Swiss, Austrian and Turkish contractors charged with erecting the Ilisu Dam has already begun constructing a bridge and service roads for the transportation of building materials. The 453-foot-high dam will hold back the waters of the Tigris just before it flows into Syria and Iraq, creating a massive 121-square-mile reservoir that will raise the water level in

Hasankeyf more than 200 feet. The consortium and the Turkish government maintain that the dam will provide power and irrigation to the area, encourage local development and create jobs. And, they say, the reservoir will be a magnet for tourists and water sports.

Opponents counter that most of the electricity generated by the dam will go to the big industrial centers in the west of the country. They advocate developing alternative energy sources instead, such as wind and solar power, and promoting cultural and environmental tourism.

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“The dam will bring only destruction for us,” says Ercan Ayboga, a hydrologist at Bauhaus University in Germany and spokeman for the Initiative to Keep Hasankeyf Alive, which was formed in January 2006. “There will be no benefit for the people of the region.” The project will displace tens of thousands of residents and threaten hundreds of species, including the rare striped hyena and the Euphrates soft-shelled turtle. Moreover, Ayboga says, “We will lose cultural heritage on the highest level, not

But the plan has not mollified protesters. “It is totally impractical and technically impossible,” says Ayboga. Many of the monuments are made from ashlar masonry, he notes, which are uniform stone blocks carefully sculpted to fit together; they cannot simply be taken apart and reassembled. The monuments would lose some of their original details as some blocks break and crumble, and recreating the proper alignment is di$cult. “And the dramatic siting, the rock caves, the aspect of the river, all will be lost.”

Professor Ahunbay agrees: “It is impossible to transfer and ‘save’ Hasankeyf at the same time. Many of the features of the old city were brought to light by excavation, yet there is still more to be revealed. One-third of the visible traces are still covered by rubble and earth.”

Ahunbay takes the long view. “When the very short useful life of the dam is set against the long history of Hasankeyf and its potential to live for eternity,” she says, “one without doubt must chose the survival of Hasankeyf.”

Copyright 2009 Smithsonian Institution. Reprinted with permission from Smithsonian Enterprises. All rights reserved. Reproduction in any medium is strictly prohibited without permission from Smithsonian Institution.Such permission may be requested from Smithsonian Enterprises

just local heritage, but world heritage.”

In late 2008, the European members of the Ilisu Dam consortium put a six-month freeze on financing because the project failed to meet World Bank standards for environmental and cultural protection—thereby temporarily halting construction. For its part, the Turkish government has proposed moving 12 of Hasankeyf’s 300 monuments to a newly created cultural park about a mile north of the city.

Photo by Nevit Dilmen

Photo by Nevit Dilmen

107Donald Insall Associates, an architect firm from the United Kingdom, is the only organization to have won as many as thirteen of Europa Nostra’s Annual Awards and Commendations. The Practice’s projects and personnel have received a unbelievable total of 140 awards for excellence in conservation, design and craftsmanship. They specialize in caring for historic buildings and towns, and in the design of new buildings for sensitive sites. They have worked for private owners, estates, trusts, universities, schools, hospitals, churches, museums, hotels, developers, local authorities and central government. Donald Insall Associates have recently celebrated their 50th Anniversary. The company’s influence on good conservation practice throughout the world has been incomparable. Insall himself, now 83, has just published a major new book, entitled ‘Living Buildings,’ setting out something of the philosophy and principles which have inspired the team and its methods. ‘His philosophy is combined with practical guidance and in-depth analysis of architectural conservation. From day-to-day maintenance to drastic renovation projects, the book o!ers advice drawn from case studies of some of the country’s best loved buildings,’ says a review on the Historic Town Forum.

Insall is still deeply inspired by cultural heritage and the emotional connection to its place and time:

‘Whether for individual buildings or monuments or sometimes for whole towns, what we most admire and enjoy is each project’s unique identity and character. Indeed we have sometimes proposed as a motto the simple guiding maxim that every place may be truly more itself.’

Starting in 1958 as a solo practice, almost immediately joined by an increasing number of colleagues, the group has ever since steadily gathered additional new and like-minded members. Despite the recession it consists of some 40 architects, supported by a similar number of administrative and specialist sta!. To ensure their future, the firm has become a small Limited Company, whose ownership is increasingly held for its Associates as anEmployee Benefit Trust. Although Donald is still working today, he was o$cially succeeded as Chairman by Nicholas Thompson in 1998. Present Directors include seven Architect Associates, and for easy accessibility in all parts of the United Kingdom, there are now seven local Regional O$ces. Despite firmly established procedures, the atmosphere is markedly ‘familial’ and informal, with every project run as the direct responsibility of one of the group’s 20 Associates.

Bowland Yard, Belgravia: Sensitive Residential Development in a Typical London Mews’ (1989)Trinity College, Cambridge: ‘Major Restoration Project to the Highest Standards’ (1991)Speke Hall, Liverpool: Restoration of Hall and Recreation of Garden (1993)The Bath Spas: Repair and reinstatement of missing original features (1993)The Mansion House, London: Restoration, repair and alteration (1994)Cockerell Building, Gonville & Caius College, Cambridge: Diploma (1997)Windsor Castle: Medal for Post-fire Restoration Work (1999)Donald Insall: Medal of Honour (2000)Somerset House, London, Phase II: Diploma (2001)Royal Albert Hall: Diploma (2003)Palace of Westminster Conservation Plan (2007)The Grange, Ramsgate (2008)

‘Living Buildings’ is available to Europa Nostra Members and Readers of this review by special o!er of the publishers at the reduced price of £27.50 plus postage costs (r.r.p £39.50), and is an attractive publication illustrated with over 600 colour photographs, designed to be of interest to architects, students and all who love and care for old buildings.

Europa Nostra Awards, Medals and Commendations:

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Wouldn’t it be fantastic if cultural institutions in all European countries could utilize the unique, private fund-raising mechanism of charity lotteries? Unfortunately charity lotteries are not allowed in all EU member states, as governments in these countries have the monopoly on national lotteries.

It is for this reason that the Association of Charity Lotteries in the EU (ACLEU) was established two years ago. ACLEU represents the interests of charity lotteries and their benefi ciaries in Brussels and in the EU member states.

ACLEU members support development cooperation, nature & environment, social cohesion, health & well-being and, last but

not least, culture and cultural heritage. According to rough estimates, more than 10 billion Euros per year could be generated for civil society across Europe, should all EU member states allow charity lotteries. This is why ACLEU is petitioning for a level playing fi eld when it comes to other (state) lotteries in all member states.

The Dutch BankGiro Lottery, one of the founding members of ACLEU, is an example of what a charity lottery can achieve for cultural heritage. This private charity lottery raises funds for cultural institutions throughout the Netherlands. With the slogan ‘Culture Enriches’ it involves its

participants in Dutch cultural heritage, whilst at the same time providing the opportunityto win great prizes. Around 800,000 Dutch people take part in the BankGiro Lottery every month.

Half of the revenue from each lottery ticket sold, goes directly to preserving cultural heritage in the Netherlands. In 2009, 60 million Euros was awarded to over 60 cultural institutions, including the Rijksmuseum, the Van Gogh Museum and the Anne Frank Foundation. Many regional museums were also granted BankGiro Lottery funds.

Ronald Plasterk, former Dutch Minister for Education, Culture and Science:

Photo by Marcus Koppen

‘Private initiatives such as the BankGiro Lottery are crucial in preserving our heritage. The government of course also has its responsibilities. (...). But when it comes to more recent heritage for example, meaning the more recent monuments, we can achieve so much more thanks to private initiatives.’

Funds from the BankGiro Lottery regularly create a knock-on e!ect within the cultural sector: the lottery was the first to allocate funds for the building of an Amsterdam o!shoot of the world-famous Hermitage in St. Petersburg. In total the Hermitage received more than 15 million

by seven national museums started in 2008 and provides senior citizens with a great day out to a museum. They are picked up and dropped o! at their rest home or senior citizens’ club at the end of the day. The BankGiro Lottery supports the Museum Plus Bus with a 1,2 million euro contribution.

The lottery also uses the medium of television to make culture ‘accessible’ to a large audience.

A successful example is the ‘Restoration’ television series; as of 2010 known as ‘The Most Beautiful Building of the Netherlands’.

Euros from the lottery. Not long thereafter the government and other private investors followed suit, so bringing this project to fruition.

In the summer of 2009, Hermitage Amsterdam opened its doors. As the founder of the Hermitage, the BankGiro Lottery sent out 1 million two-person admission passes to the inhabitants of Greater Amsterdam, enabling as many people as possible to become acquainted with the city’s latest asset.

Another, highly practical, example of how culture can be brought closer to the general public is the Museum Plus Bus. This initiative

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Photo by Roy Beusker

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‘Restoration’, originally a BBC title, proved very popular in the Netherlands. With its message ‘Save our Cultural Heritage’, ‘Restoration’ shows how dilapidated buildings compete in seeking a restoration budget of maximally 1 million euros, granted by the BankGiro Lottery. Thousands of people get involved in canvassing votes for ‘their’ building. It shows the involvement of civil society and hundreds of volunteers in the preservation of cultural heritage.

Ranging from churches to windmills, from an outdoor swimming pool to a steam-driven pumping station and a heritage-

protected radio telescope, the programme is extremely good at making clear that monuments are not empty shells but are instead a rich storehouse of tales from our past. Each season of ‘Restoration’ ends with an exciting live broadcast, when public votes are counted and the winner is announced.

Beside the winners of each season, the television program has succeeded in generating attention to all the restoration projects involved. More than three-quarters of all participating buildings have been able to realize their restoration plan so far as a direct result.

If the BankGiro Lottery can raise 60 million Euros each year for cultural institutions in the Netherlands alone, imagine the possibilities for your organisation if we could scale up and expand the model to other European countries…

ACLEU supports the European Union Prize for

Cultural Heritage / Europa Nostra Awards with

an annual contribution, and since 2009 they

have been an associate organisation of Europa

Nostra. Moreover, Europa Nostra in its turn is

also an associate organisation of ACLEU. For

further information on ACLEU please visit

www.acleu.eu. For further information on the

BankGiro Lottery and its beneficiaries within

the cultural sector please visit

www.bankgiroloterij.nl (Dutch only) or

www.novamedia.nl (English).

Photo by Roy Beusker

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Christophe Viellard, the new President of the Association Henokiens, sat down with us to talk about the historical strength of the association and the strategic alliance with Europa Nostra.

‘Our association was conceived thirty years ago by Gerard Glotin, the owner of the French family company Marie Brizard, founded in the 18th century. He had the idea to bring family companies together with at least a 200 year track record. He realised that

these businesses were a powerful engine for the global economy. He saw the great opportunities of exchanging experiences among like-minded entrepreneurs with a long term vision. A century old family tradition ensures the willingness to grow and expand.

The name Henokiens comes from the Bible. It is based on Enoch (or Henoch), the father of Methuselah, who lived 365 years before he moved to heaven without dying. It is an ideal

113symbol for century old companies that still thrive today.

We have 40 members from 8 di!erent countries, including 36 European members and 4 Japanese members. They represent a very diverse palette of activities, including textiles, wine production, car equipment, food, shipping, banking, hotels, liquor, jewellery, glassware, paper making, armoury, hooks and bell manufacturers, publishing, real estate, china ware and renewable energy ... each of them have succeeded to combine authentic knowledge, ambition and loyalty to traditional values in a corporate culture that has endured for centuries. I encourage you to discover all these stories and companies by visiting our website: www.henokiens.com.

Around the world there are millions of family businesses and hundreds of organisations that represent them, but not like our association. We only welcome members that have existed for over 200 years and that are still owned and managed by the founder’s family. That is what makes our organisation unique.

Europa Nostra is a natural partner for us. Like them, we cherish

the importance of heritage. Our members represent the living memory of a long tradition. The value of this transference of knowledge over the centuries is understood by Europa Nostra. Together we can send a strong signal to future generations. We can build bridges between generations and encourage those who seek their way in today’s economy.

Europa Nostra and the Henokiens speak the same language, the language of culture and the power of example. Our members teach their children to work for the company with their

heart and mind, to support the company, to care for it and cherish it. This family culture is transmitted without specific written documentation. However, it has all the characteristics of a real education, a scholarship or a ‘civilisation’ from generation to generation.

What is the secret behind the longevity and success of our members? Our message, like that of Europa Nostra, is simple. It is about a culture based on respect. The family business model can encourage millions of people. It can open new perspectives in a world where reputations can be destroyed very quickly, where short-term success is everything and nobody worries about tomorrow. Businesses can only survive for such a long time if they put the public interest before their own. The members of the Henokiens value loyalty to our ancestors, to our local roots, to social responsibility, the environment and sharing know-how. This form of responsible enterprise, based on family traditions, can and should become the lifeblood of the economy of tomorrow.’

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Dear Reader,

As 'The Voice of Cultural Heritage in Europe', we are stepping up our presence and influence in Brussels. In the last six months so much has happened on that front and I wish to share with you some highlights from my Brussels-related diary.

1 December 2009 – The front pages of all European newspapers announce the new Treaty of the European Union – the so called Lisbon Treaty. For us, heritage actors and activists, this is an important accomplishment. Article 3 says :“The European Union shall respect its rich cultural and linguistic diversity, and shall ensure that Europe's cultural heritage is safeguarded and enhanced”. This is a true break through. I feel so proud and also somewhat sentimental. I recall June 2004 when the late Otto von der Gablentz, the then Executive President of Europa Nostra, and I travelled together to Brussels for a grand civil society hearing grand civil society hearing chaired by Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, President of the European Convention. I remember vividly how people listened to Otto's words with respect and interest. Weeks later, with the

precious support of Gijs de Vries, Dutch member of the European Convention, we managed to get the above text included in the draft Constitutional Treaty and six years later in the final text of the Lisbon Treaty.

1 March 2010 – The opening of Europa Nostra’s liaison o$ce in the very heart of the EU quarter in Brussels was a great event for us. From now on, my colleague Louise van Rijckevorsel will be our 'ears, eyes and voice' in Brussels. We are grateful to share the o$ce with the European Landowners Organisation and the Union of European Historic Houses Associations. Many representatives of the di!erent European heritage networks joined us for the opening reception.

9 March 2010 – The new Commissioner responsible for Culture, Mrs Androulla Vassiliou (Cyprus) holds a press conference to present the European Heritage Label initiative. Since 2006, when this idea was first launched by the French government, we have monitored the idea very closely. We feel that this idea could become a true European success story, just as the World Heritage List. I am pleased to see that many of our

comments ended up in the final proposal. March/April 2010 - The opening of our Brussels o$ce had an immediate 'energising' e!ect. Everybody agrees: we have to join forces to make cultural heritage a true European priority. We have met many influential contacts within European Institutions and in particular the European Parliament, like Mrs. Doris Pack, Chair of the EP's Culture and Education Committee. We have several meetings scheduled every week with key persons and organisations, both public and private. It is a busy period, but with very rewarding results.

4 May 2010 – Costa Carras, Vice-President from Greece, Alvaro Santa Cruz, Vice-President from Spain and I have lunch with Commissioner Vassiliou at the top floor of the Berlaymont building (see photo). Over a delicious meal, Mrs Vassiliou is open, committed and deeply aware of the importance of cultural heritage for Europe and the Europeans. She wishes to develop synergies between the EU Prize for Cultural Heritage/Europa Nostra Awards, the European Heritage Days and the newly launched European Heritage Label. She is keen to receive input and ideas from us on future strategy and policy towards cultural heritage.

Cordially yours

Sne"ka Quaedvlieg-Mihailovi#, Secretary General of Europa Nostra

Em!l!a Romagna 3-9 May

Austr!an-Ital!an Tyrol 17-23 September

Old Cast!le 11-17 October

Jordan 3-13 November

Copenhagen 8-12 December

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