From Istanbul, you can witness the entire changing world and see the sedimentary layers of empires upon which that world was built. On either side of the city, there are Ottoman-style mosques. In their previous lives in Byzantium, some of the city’s mosques were Orthodox churches. Beyond the graveyard of Ottoman and Byzantine imperium, there is evidence of more recent political projects, like the Art-Deco influenced modern architecture of the Turkish Republic, founded a century ago by the revolutionary statesman Mustafa Kemal Ataturk. Ataturk’s face is inescapable in Turkey: printed on banners the size of buildings, tattooed on women’s breasts, staring down at you in neighborhood cafes. The modern buildings from the Ataturk period appear designed to serve as a physical attestation to Turkey’s rightful place among secular European nations. That secular European ethos, which itself conceals plenty of darkness, has been badly abraded by the country’s recent history.
Istanbuls
