Letter from Istanbul
It has been marked as one of the world’s most fascinating cities. The great metropolis of two immense empires, the Byzantine and the Ottoman, the only city in the world that lies on two continents, the capital of Roman and Christian emperors, of sultans and harems. For some 500 years, the idyllic capital on the Bosporus has been called Istanbul. Still, to some Greeks it is always Constantinoupolis. There is no accounting for taste and «realpolitik.» And that refers not exclusively to Greeks. Some time ago, Romanian parliamentarian Corneliu Vadim Tudor and 27 of his European colleagues – mainly Hungarian and British parliamentarians – appealed to the European Parliament for a startling cause: They presented a motion asking Turkey to reopen Justinian’s sixth-century basilica dedicated to the «Divine Wisdom,» the Hagia Sophia, as a church. Now it functions as a museum. «Imagine: The motion defined Istanbul as Constantinople, the magnificent Christian city under occupation,» Uluc Gurkan, Turkish delegation chairman remarked last Friday in a press conference in Ankara, defining the request as «an attempt to open Pandora’s box» and a «mad initiative.» The proposal to the Strasbourg-based institution was promptly rejected. Common wisdom as opposed to the «divine» one, and down-to-earth politics prevailed when, on the same Friday, Turkish passport-holder Ecumenical Patriarch Vartholomeos translated into Turkish for the local press the words of visiting Greek Development Minister Akis Tsochadzopoulos – who, by the way, had stopped briefly by Hagia Sophia on his way to Fanari to the signing of the Turkish-Greek gas pipeline protocol. «The pipeline ( which is intended to carry Caspian gas from Iran to the EU via Turkey and Greece) will provide economic benefits to both our countries.» So declared Akis Tsochadzopoulos. In a world that is changing rapidly toward globalization, Istanbul retains the flavor of the exotic – something increasingly rare in our days. Therefore it is not just the scant 120 euros (for two nights in a four-star hotel, plus breakfast, bus transportation and sightseeing, starting from Thessaloniki) that attracts so many Greeks here. The charms of the city are still its simpler offerings; the ferry ride on the Bosporus, the stroll along Istiklar Caddesi, the pedestrian boulevard that was once the main street of Pera Istanbul’s Greek quarter, or just browsing through the wares of rug dealers, enjoying the bargaining. The sky was a leaden gray. It was cold and rainy during the whole weekend here. The political air in Turkey also felt heavy and sultry, after the smashing of the Israeli troops into Yasser Arafat’s compound in Ramallah. Ankara’s military alliance with Israel has affected the strategic map of the Middle East. Although the written statement from the Turkish Foreign Ministry, released last weekend, declared that both Israel and Palestine should move away from violence, «Note that this same statement, which condemned the suicide attacks, refrained from doing so concerning the expanded military operation of Israel against Palestine,» as a local journalist pointed out to me. Speaking under the accustomed anonymity, an Istanbul police official declared, also last Friday, that police have heightened security around churches and synagogues here. Some observers remember that when Ayatollah Khomeini came to power in neighboring Iran, he publicly suggested that Turkey too needed its Islamic revolution. That is something almost unimaginable for a government which desperately wants to be accepted into Europe. «By now, even the most religious Muslims have eagerly embraced Western consumer culture and social mobility,» observes a foreign journalist based in Turkey. «There are hardly any apparent signs that any modern Turk believes it is a crime to be nouveau riche,» he adds. For a country that has long prided itself on being a bridge between East and West, its inhabitants are «… angry that we are being pushed around by the European Union under the pretext of ‘do your democratic reforms’… Some others feel that the EU is using its membership carrot to extract concessions out of Turkey on the Cyprus question, as well as the Kurdish issue,» said a front-page article in the Turkish Daily News, on Friday by influential columnist Ilnur Cevic. The following day the same journalist returned, ending his Saturday column, headed «Crucial stage in Cyprus,» with the words: «( Cyprus’s President) Clerides has to realize a brand-new partnership will be established and that the old system will never be resurrected.» Despite grave financial problems, this unique city combining the cosmopolitan flair of Western capitals with the exotic flavor of the East is also striving to carve its niche on the international cultural circuit by offering a range of film, drama, opera and ballet. The dominant event in this year’s city calendar is the Istanbul Festival, starting with its movie series from April 13-28. «This year, we have two Greek films in our program,» debonair Ustungel Inanc, international press coordinator of the festival, told me. The first one is «Under the Stars» by Christos Georgiou (2001). An audacious choice, since it is a Cyprus/UK/Greek co-production, it narrates the story of a Greek-Cypriot lad who is haunted by invasion memories. There is also Phoebe, a child of the war, who refuses to dwell on such painful memories. Instead she trades, as a smuggler, goods with Greeks and Turks on both sides of the Green Line. «Yildizlarni Altinda,» as the film is called in Turkish, will be projected on April 26, and I can’t wait to report – in this column on Monday April 29 – on the reactions of a predominantly youthful Turkish audience. The other Greek film, Vangelis Serdaris’s «The Seventh Sun of Love,» unfolds in Greece circa 1922, the year of the Asia Minor disaster. Yet the shocking point in this picture is not the understandably tense Greek-Turkish relations at the time, but a young maid who becomes the object of desire between a Greek major and his wife. Yet film fans would be hardly shocked. In the field of the arts, it appears that Turks are shrugging off their traditional passivity. A new generation of cosmopolitan Turks, traveling and working abroad in their millions, has grown into Western-style sophistication. Turkey is now more complex than ever. For good and for bad.
