What is Istanbul? A city with a jaw dropping historical past, the captital of various empires, an unequaled skyline with minarets and pinacles piercing its skies. A city which grows in your imagination by hearing its stories, knowing its history and seen the imagery in the cinema’s, holiday pictures and inflight magazines.
Two weeks ago I arrived in Istanbul, and all that what you thought you knew about this metroplis doesn’t seem to fit. Of course the Mosques, Bazars and pictoresque alleyways are there but it doesn’t make sense. The European side is less European than I thought and the Asian side is less Oriental than I thought.
Istanbul seems to be not fit for any of my existing paradigms. Some things you maybe didn’t know about Istanbul: Its Europe’s biggest city, the population count I hear and read are always different, but it is somewhere between 10 and 15 million people. Millions of which are not registered. And the majority came to this city in the last century (‘60) although the city was and is totally not equiped to this amount of people. Last century the metropolitain boundries of Istanbul jumped over the Bosphorus to the Asia side, encapsulating villages in its surroundings. The outskirts of Istanbul are a cityscape of shanty towns and slums. At the same time Istanbul’s spires and pinacles are accompanied by the new business district’s skycrapers (Levent). So Istanbul’s urban reality is a rich one, with lots of different layers and dynamics.
The harsh, complex reality of Istanbul could be the perfect breeding ground for the cultural creatives, but is it? With the acceptance of Istanbul’s bid for being Europe’s Capital of Culture for 2010 (together with Pecs, Hungary and Essen, Germany) there is a huge change for showing Istanbuls contemporary cultural riches to the world. An article by Fiachra Gibbons in the Herald Tribune of June 13, 2006 put’s some question marks along the Istanbul 2010 ECOC project, like: won’t the project be to heavily under the political pressure of the wish of the Turkish government to join the EU. And the problem of the banks being the main financers of the arts in Istanbul. And just the sole fact that the most aclaimed Turkish artist don’t even work in Turkey, but abroad.
So Istanbuls future is uncertain, but Istanbul is an exciting urban jungle with a scent of potential in the air, up for grabs for anyone who takes it.
