Istanbul's blue tile paradise
onthearts.com
onthearts.com
See the Hagia Sophia, which appears to have been left to dilapidate since it was turned into a mosque all those centuries ago. A conversion process which appears to have amounted to plastering over the stunning mosaics, and drilling some Arabic script plaques into the walls. Some of which were exposed while it was a museum, but have been cordoned off again now that it’s been re-mosqued
I only noticed this when, on a recent trip, I travelled around the city with a well educated Turkish millennial, and amateur historian, who pointed out these abuses of historical sites over and over again. Topkapi and Dolmabace palaces are largely empty stone buildings with the trees in the yards being the most fascinating things.
The palimpsest of history in the city is quite stunning though. And some stunning beauty in unexpected places. For example, the ceilings in the University of Istanbul are incredible.
Either you were not actually allowed to go in or things have changed a lot since the last time I visited those places.
Dolmabahçe is real "palace" palace. There are a lot of rooms with really extravagant furnishings, carpets, mirrors etc as well as lots of original art on the walls. Topkapı is more like a museum with artifacts from the time displayed behind glass. Still worth a visit. Contrast this to the "palaces" in Seoul where all the buildings are completely empty except for one of them having one large sofa or something. You are not allowed inside any of the buildings. You spend 3 hours walking around the (admittedly beautiful) gardens and ponds.
What I have seen happening though is with every passing year the percentage of the are that are open to tourists is decreasing. It used to be that you could do a relaxed tour of Dolmabahçe with the guide explaining everything in detail. Tours were in groups but people could fall behind and the guide would wait for you. Last time I was there the tour was more like a factory conveyor belt. The frequency of tours had increased dramatically and it took maybe 30 minutes to do the thing in a rush. If I remember correctly Atatürk's room wasn't even included. Guides would keep telling you to hurry up and not to fall back. Plus, photography was forbidden. I belive these changes to be designed for money making purposes.
(I noticed similar things in Cappadocia. The natural open areas where you could visit a few years ago are now cordoned off. There are more venues in venues where you have to pay extra to visit etc.)
I've been meaning to visit Göbekli Tepe but they alread got their hands on it. I don't know that it would be a worthwhile trip now.
So. I don't know why you said Dolmabahçe and Topkapı are empty buildings. Maybe they are now but I really do find that hard to believe. Did you visit only the Harem in Dolmabahçe or something. The Harem is basically like a huge dormatory. There's nothing fancy there.
If you are a Rust developer and planning to visit Istanbul let us know! (We know good kebap/baklava places ;) )
Another tidbit: Hagia Sophia can be translated to english as Saint Sofia. It is pronounced in Turkish as Aya Sofia. Aya is from an arabic word that means "sign" like sign of god (similar to "aya"-tullah in Iran). The similarity between "Hagia" and "Aya" is so strong as though it follows the concept of changing the "j" sound to "h" or "y" sound. When applying that same rule to "Ayatollah", you could basically translate the word to "Saint of God". Every time I think of this, it gives me the jitters.
Last time I was there a few years ago I recall there's a small section near one of the lower galleries off to the side that has been reopened for use as a sort-of-mosque but it's the size of a couple double wide trailers and not really part of the main structure as people think of it. It might be a test of the waters to see how far they can go but I promise you, money will trump religion in this case no question about it.
https://www.dailysabah.com/turkey/istanbul/istanbuls-reverte...
It's still aggressively available to the public, but you're not going to see much of the pre-Ottoman era inside.
Did they cover up the frescoes in the pendentives of the main dome that depict the (very much non-human looking) seraphim?
They converted it to a mosque in 2020.
I have to say, I'm seeing this kind of "byzantine fake news" more and more on HN threads related to Islamic history.
My understanding is that: (a) the three big Abrahamic religions all place the most emphasis on worshiping as a congregation on different days and (b) among each group, a minority of people who identify with the label actually go to worship with a congregation regularly. Would it really be _so_ bad if you had one big fancy palace which switched from hosting Muslims on Friday, Jews on Saturday, Christians on Sunday and could be a museum / community space / charity space Mon-Thurs?
As for an interfaith building, it's an interesting thought. There might be issues with ceremonies such as weddings, funerals, and events. There is the Abrahamic Family House in Abu Dhabi, but it's not a single building. I thought something like this might exist in Jerusalem, but I couldn't find any..
1. Muslims, Christians, and Jews view each other as disbelievers.
2. Mosques, and I assume churches and synagogues (I'm less familiar) do act as community and charity spaces.
3. Making a museum out of a place built for the worship and glorification of God is extremely offensive.
4. Mosques, and I assume churches and synagogues are not only used on Friday/Saturday/Sunday.
5. Your cariciature only makes sense if you view faith as a hobby to be set aside once you leave the mosque/church/synagogue gates, an ardently secular worldview at odds with faith.
The Visigoth Kingdom was completely wiped out by Muslim invaders.
It didn't happen by some committee decision, but mostly by killing everybody involved with the old version. That's an important detail.
The Hagia Sophia was indeed a church. The Hagia Sophia was also indeed a museum. The reconversion into a Mosque was also widely criticized.
>What exactly is "false" or "fake news" about the parent comment? All three sentences...to me. The...museum...was also widely criticized.
Lying by omission is still lying. Context matters.
Thank you!
What the article's author wrote is fine. The Hagia Sophia was a mosque for about five hundred years. It is a mosque today. The last time it was a church is the 15th century. It is perfectly fine to mention a famous mosque in an article about mosques without getting into its (literally) ancient history.
pirate787, on the other hand, deliberately hid its long history as a mosque in service of proving a point.
It's unfortunate that the political situation continues to be bad.
But the good news is you really do not need anything other that Turkish food because it is just amazing.
For example, try getting proper cantonese dim sum in Paris or Barcelona. I only know 2 places in Paris that are halfway decent after having searched quite a bit. Or try searching for good Zhejiang food (the Hangzhou or ningbo style) in Europe.
And Chinese food in most of the US is bastardized to make it much sweeter and oily to conform to the taste there making it absolutely terrible and far from authentic.
It isn't that green and its very dense but there are great little parks all over the place with very good things for kids to play on. Anyone will say hi and start talking to you even though it is much huger city than London where everyone seems to resent having to share the space.
Every week or two there will be a market in your area with huge canvas sheets stretched across from one block of apartments/buildings to the other and the quantity of wonderful vegetables and fruit is just incredible. You have to bargain. My town in the UK has a market but God preserve anyone who attempts to haggle - it's small and expensive and yet it's the best one for miles around and I'm glad to have it at all.
There are a million reastaurants in every suburb in Istanbul - I think it's more common than most areas to have commercial properties in the ground floor of blocks of flats so that you don't absolutely have to travel just to have some tea and a simit or a few slices of borek.
I like it when you put money in a bucket and lower it from your balcony to the simit seller in the street - who puts your simit and change in for you to pull them up. Sokak Simit is the "bees knees". You must buy it off a street (sokak) vendor as the one from the pastane (bakery shop) tends to be soft and pointless. It's a kind of woven ring of bread covered thickly with sesame seeds and it should be dark coloured and very chewy. Some people use the word "bagel" to describe it in English but it's isn't really anything like them and you don't eat it with stuff inside. A simit with a tomato and some olives and possibly a boiled egg is just fabulous - nutty and chewy and satisfying. You have to wash it down with a glass of golden acik cay (a-chuk ch-eye) (light tea) in my personal opinion.
There's a dessert I've had at Kofteci Yusuf which is covered in Tahin which is amazing. I think it's Ekmek Kadayıfı. That's one place where I am totally converted to tahin. A cup of good Turk Khave with that is great. :-)
Wikipedia doesn't have an entry but Googling gets you some good pictures.
This is the exact same feeling you get when visiting Iran. Except for Isfahan, which is also beautiful on the outside
Unfortunately some of them are a radiation hazard, because the blue color is made out of radiocactive cobalt.
A blue tile also plays an important role in the short film Zima Blue, which I cannot recommend highly enough - because of the story and its aesthetics.
Not only the endless layers of multi-millennial history, even the current state of the inhabitants is extremely diverse. It's also surprisingly safe.
IMHO the city got ruined in so many ways during the Turkish economic boom the last 5 decades and yet you can tell that the city "still got it". In your runtime analogy, the current state of the modern istanbul is like everything new being like bloated Electron app.
The current mayor is from the secular Turks with western values and he is doing some great things to reduce the bloatware and re-surface the hidden gems through full rewrites.
But sometimes he encounters unexpected behaviour. Just recently, he converted Feshane(old factory where they used to produce Fez style hats during the Ottoman times) into an art gallery but due to some undocumented API the islamist started protesting him for not respecting their values.
Here is the Feshane after the conversion: https://twitter.com/ekrem_imamoglu/status/167157892814888143...
Here is the protest: https://twitter.com/tcbuyuksehir/status/1678147852453683206
Note: Before the conversion, Feshane was used for food markets and such.
plus, cats. In what city can you double your entertainment just by carrying a small laser pointer with you everywhere.
Damn, I need to go back if only because I never thought of this. :D
London and Paris do not belong on that list. Rome is on another level. Paris and London are a few levels below somewhere. Heck I'd say istanbul is a level above rome since the turks added onto constantinople and added a richness and extra layer that rome never got. Not to mention that the eastern roman empire was far more impressive that than the western roman empire.
> and probably nothing else.
No, it is in the same league with many of the ancient cities in the region and elsewhere around the world. Cities tend to be built on top of each other not just today but throughout history.
> the islamist started protesting him for not respecting their values.
Good. Considering turkey isn't a western nation, why should their mayor peddle 'western values' as you stated. Last I checked, turkey is a muslim turkic nation and lets hope they hold onto their values.
Also, an old hat factory which was used as a market is not something islamic. The mayor wasn't paddling any western values to islamists, the mayor was elected by the popular vote and he is still very popular. He does what the electorate demands and significant portion of the electorate demands art galleries.
I think you need to update your understanding of Turkey, it's very lacking and almost offensively shallow. Are you taking any red pills by any chance? Anyway, don't form your opinions from James Bond movies.
It's a predominantly islamic turkish speaking nation. You say 'almost all the population claims to be muslim' and say it's not a muslim nation?
> The country itself is the legacy of the Ottoman empire which was partly in Europe for centuries
No. The ottoman empire was a legacy of the turkish nation. It's why the ottoman empire is also called the turkish empire. The nation predates the empire. Just like britain to british empire back to britain.
> The country itself is the legacy of the Ottoman empire which was partly in Europe for centuries, thus was influenced by western values for hundreds of years already.
'Western values' is a post ww2 neo-colonial nonsense invented in the last few decades to justify our continuing invasion of the 3rd world. It hasn't existed for 'hundreds of years' just like 'the west' hasn't existed for hundreds of years. Also, the ottoman empire was a conquering empire that did more exporting of 'values' than importing of it from europe. For hundreds of years, the ottomans had the upper hand. It's only the weaken turkish nation that start adopting european science, technology, etc after their empire was destroyed by 'the west'.
> I think you need to update your understanding of Turkey,
No. I think I have a fairly strong grasp of turkish history. Thanks.
> it's very lacking and almost offensively shallow.
Says the person who thinks being being turkic or muslim is worse than being 'western'. I'm saying turkey should be proud of who they are. You are saying they should be embarrassed by who they are and try to mimic 'superior' westerners. Isn't that the gist?
I've nothing against turkish people or muslims. Though you certainly seem to have something against them.
In case you decided to check out the history of Turkey, you also need to stop thinking about the Turkish society in American cultural war therms if you like to understand what is going on in Turkey.
Or maybe you are Turkish nationalist who believes in the mythology. Then yes, this would be a touchy subject to you because it is hurting your nationalist pride. You should hold nationalist pride parades.
Or even worse, are you believer of the AKP's alternative history where the Ottomans were the pinnacle of science&technology, Abdulhamit was a hero and Ataturk was a British spy? In that case, you should watch less series on the governments TV channels.
Also funny you say "western values" only started existing post-ww2 when Turkish national anthem very explicitly contains digs against it.
Turkey is one of the few countries in the world that has these pitiable individuals who despise their history and live in their own artificial "reality".
And the only answer they have is even more stupid arguments that directly connect to current day politics.
PS: By the way, I think I understand why you might be triggered. When you hear "Western values," you likely perceive something entirely different from what it means in Turkey. Just relax, the Western values I am referring to have nothing to do with the culture wars you are engaged in. In the context of the Ottoman Empire and Turkey, Western values pertain to scientific, cultural, and political progress that occurred in Europe during the decline of the Ottoman Empire. They are unrelated to whatever you may be imagining. It does not involve topics such as gay rights or the like, as the Ottomans were already quite tolerant in these matters, rendering them irrelevant in the context of the Ottomans and Turkey.
Or maybe you are not involved in the American culture wars, even then western values don't mean the thing you think it means in Turkey. In Turkey western values mean secular governance, secular judicial system, secular education, women's rights, families where one man is married to one woman and they have the same rights.
Your claim conflates "Western values" with scientific progress, and that's simply inaccurate. Let's disentangle scientific advancement from cultural hegemony. Science belongs to everyone, regardless of culture or religion. Generalizations like yours perpetuate harmful stereotypes, and we need to move beyond such outdated views.
Life would be so much easier if the anti-Islam rhetoric in Turkey were to be conducted straightforward and not in a hidden fashion with lies. If it was straightforward, the debate would have ended 100 years ago.
Atatürk was technically a dictator and a tyrant who executed quite a large number of islamic leaders in an attempt to curb the influence of religion. However, when contemporary Turks talk about being pro-Atatürk they mean the ideology of reducing the islamic influence on daily lives, education, judiciary etc. There are of course some people who would support extermination of religious people but those are just some crazies maybe you can find online and not a widespread position.
As you can see, the "Western values" in the context of Turkey are very specific set of ideals linked with the decline of the empire and formation of the republic and has nothing to do with the understanding of western values in other parts of the worlds or in philosophical sense. It's about practical implications on laws on marriage, inheritance, dress code, teaching the evolution Theory, funding of islamic education institutions etc. This is because Islam is not just something spiritual, it comes with instructions on governance -> the Sharia law.
I understand that it wasn't working anymore, and I agree that a change was much needed but the way it was dealt with and what was put into its place are things I do not condone. To this day, Turkey's problems stem from that enforced, makeshift and conflicting foundation that are incompatible with the society.
Thank you for the kind exchange of ideas.
You might want to reassess where you stand if you truly believe that. All I see is the decline of the scientific organizations (including universities where people are granted PhDs based on their political connections), the explicit desire to separate girls from boys in schools, spending many times more on ministry of religion vs ministry of education, and pro-government scientists making ridiculous claims like “cellphone use at the time of Noah”[0].
[0] https://amp.odatv4.com/guncel/hz.-nuh-ogluyla-cep-telefonuyl...
Until recently, people used to bring up a widely known joke about “Turks being muslim one month of the year”. You knew Ramadan was starting when the daily papers switched from news stories containing sexy pictures to giveaways of holy texts.
It’s less so these days since many people expect to gain political (= economic) favors through superfluous displays of their muslim faith, usually broadcasted through Instagram.
You should read some Turkish history. After the fall of the Ottoman empire, and being divided up amongst various winners of WWI, the modern Turkey led by Ataturk reclaimed their lost territory and established a country based on overtly western principles. The reforms were deep, and sweeping: A new alphabet, to make Turkish more approachable to people used to Latin scripts. Separation of Church (or mosque, more accurately) and State, to the extent that wearing religious garb in public was outlawed. A new calendar (to match the West's). Women's rights (when that was progressive even for the west).
Imagine if George Washington had decided we'd be writing in Cyrillic and banned the display of crucifixes.
There have been growing pains, but dismissing Turkey as "not western" is an extremely politically charged statement.
If china adopts latin script does that make china a member of the West? Of course not. 'The West' is called that for a reason. It's predominantly western ( the west ) european nations and their genetic colonial descendents ( aka colonies that have predominantly european blood, power ). We could adopt chinese as our official language and the US would still be a western nation. Religion, script, separation of church and state has nothing to do with being part of the west.
> There have been growing pains, but dismissing Turkey as "not western" is an extremely politically charged statement.
No. Saying they are western is politically charged statement. Saying Turkey is not a western nation is a statement of fact. You act like 'the west' is some club with membership requirements. It's not. It's a legacy of european colonization and domination of the world. Something Turkey was a victim of, not part of.
The only reason some claim Turkey is part of the West is due to geopolitical posturing. Just like some claiming kazakhstan is part of europe.
btw, its Türkiye not Turkey anymore.
Maybe he didn’t mean those countries?
Seems obvious?
What's your argument for this?
The runtime might have been much shorter without the theodosian walls as well
The mayor was peddling his own values. Why should the biggest radical assholes stop normal people from enjoying life anywhere? Whether islamists or christian evangelists, whether powerful enough to be able to kill people or not, they have no inherent entitlement.
* Believe it or not, I mean this affectionately - I've personally been enjoying your posts, I love a good moon landing hoax, and I don't think contrarianism is necessarily flamebait, though the two can be hard to distinguish. But we need you to use HN in the spirit of curious conversation, not derailing and dysregulation.
A certain dose of contrarianism is fine if it's part of a mix of using HN as intended. What's not fine is tossing molotov cocktails and leaving the site to suffer the consequences. If you want to post to HN, we need you to take care of the ecosystem the same way you would using a city park or a public campground.
Swing and a miss. Though I don't look down on the 'moon landing hoax' folks as many unfairly do, I actually believe the other extreme - we've been sending people to the moon nonstop since the 70s. Seems the likeliest of the 3 main scenarios. But ultimately, I'm was interested in a discussion as it one of the most fascinating topics of the modern era. Hope you aren't too disappointed.
Also, as you already know, I don't start flamebaits, I just participate in them. You should skip over me and climb up the comment tree to the source. Not telling you how to do your job but I believe that would be the most fruitful course of action. What do you think? Besides, I only post a comment or two for the edification of future readers. My intention certainly isn't to set the site on fire.
I'm glad you enjoy some of my comments and I hope you don't see me as the guy throwing molotovs, but the one pointing and shouting 'look! this guy is throwing molotov cocktails over there!'. A flamewar alarm bell if you will.
"Start" is rather a dubious concept to begin with, as everyone always feels like the other person started it and did worse. This is one of the most reliable phenomena on HN (and no doubt with internet forums in general) - you can set your clock by it.
I can't think of any I started. Even this thread wasn't started by me. And my response wasn't that flamebaity. I was simply giving my honest opinion to actual flamebait.
> "Start" is rather a dubious concept to begin with, as everyone always feels like the other person started it.
I suppose. But in most cases, you can just climb the comment tree to find the root.
Also, I see tons of flamebait here. I ignore most of them. For example, this guy loves to flamebait.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36722869
Yet you haven't censured him. It's only when I respond and bring the flamebait to light, that you would recognize it. Maybe it's time for comments to have a report link where we can report flamebait? Or is flamebait allowed as long as no one takes the bait?
Other people breaking the rules doesn't make it ok for you to break them, though. That should go without saying.
This style of bowing down to some altar of laic secularism and appealing to a western audience is quite overdone and out of touch with the modern day west, which mostly accepts freedom to practice religion especially in Anglophone countries.
Luckily with globalization and the internet, more and more these woven narratives are being exposed for their baselessness. It’s clear that Turkey as a whole has continued its choice to vote for its leader Erdogan of the AKP. This is a signal of the fact that most Turks still support this alternate approach to the country, compared to the changes going back to Ataturk which was imposed on the native population.
That is to say, I am always finding curious this group of white Turks and secularists who assume themselves to be above the others and irreverent to their beliefs. Perhaps this arrogance is what continues to be their downfall as they cannot accept sharing power with the other, more religiously oriented Turkey.
It’s true that Erdogan won in Turkey again, but we are talking about Istanbul here and in Istanbul he is no longer the most popular one.
Next, your characterization of Erdogan’s government as 20 years of absolute Islamist rule is a very loose definition. I do not think you can liken all of his rule as absolute and after all Turkey is still a democracy yet. Also he is not “Islamist” except in a loose terminology, as he did not change Turkey’s government system and overturn in favor of Sharia.
You also likened the protesters to an “old api” that interferes with new development… how is one to interpret that except you see the protesters and their values as an old impediment to progress, one which needs to be removed or “updated”? It’s not so long ago there were protests for Taksim square for Gezi park.
No one is obligated to please islamist, if they don't like the exhibition they should simply skip it.
It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for, and we've had to warn you about this more than once before.
Edit: it looks like your account is still using HN primarily for ideological battle. In fact, it looks like you've been using HN exclusively for ideological battle. That's seriously not ok. Since you've ignored our previous request to stop doing this, I've banned the account. We don't care what your ideology is, but we do care about not letting accounts abuse HN in this way—whatever they happen to be battling for or against.
If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future. They're here: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35760046 (April 2023)
It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for. We've had to warn you about this multiple times before.
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36700345.