A Brush With... The Countryside
I think I've previously mentioned the villagers, the non-urbanized Istanbul dwellers from the Turkish countryside who come to Istanbul mostly to find work. I've heard plenty about them from the native Istanbulians, such as all villagers are slow-witted, their speech is hard to understand, and other broad prejudices. But one of the more interesting criticisms I've been told is that the villagers are responsible from keeping Istanbul from being one of the great international cities of the world, such as Paris, London, New York, or Tokyo. (I always thought Istanbul ranked up there, but apparently I've been mistaken) The nineteen eighties saw large immigrations to Istanbul from the villages, and supposedly the resulting over-crowding is what has kept Istanbul from going big-time.
This is a strange view to take, but it might have some merit. I don't know much about Istanbul's reaction to villager migrations, the official population of Istanbul is around 15 million people, though migrant villagers push the number closer to twenty million. Government money for public works and the like is given to areas by population and most villagers work on a temporary basis, returning home for the census. So perhaps the person who spoke to me meant Istanbul was being 'worn down' so to speak by the villager population.
Or perhaps the person meant the villagers were keeping the appearance of Istanbul in poor light. One person was expressing their anger to me that when the earthquake in 1998 struck Istanbul the international media reports only showed poor families (probably villagers) who already lived in rubble by local standards. The villagers are the people leading horses through the streets selling watermelon, or pushing the carts calling out for people's discards, or just trotting down the street pulling a large sack mounted on a hand truck, filling it with cardboard. I can't help but see the villagers as occupying a place in Istanbul where they trade their work to keep the city functional, similarly to how many Turks from the countryside travel to Europe and work in industry and other jobs no longer wanted by the native populations. So, if this is damaging to Istanbul on the international scene, I see it as a result of inadequate response to a population influx. Not the fault of people migrating to find work.
That said I had a very interesting brush with the countryside last Sunday, coincidentally Sunday was the celebration of the fall of Constantinople. (For more information on this see "Istanbul (Not Constantinople)"[1, 2]) This is normally celebrated in Sultanahmet with plenty of dancing in traditional garb, and lots of tourists being sold carpets and fez caps. Out in Mecidiyeköy things ran a bit differently, to set the stage it's important to know the geography of where I was. There is an expressway that runs around Istanbul and cuts through the city to cross the Bogazici Koprusu, the southern of the two suspension bridges that cross the Bosphorus. Just next to the school is a gigantic intersection, where a large city street or two meets this expressway in a tangle of concrete and asphalt and at the center is a large triangle where no traffic goes, the occasional simit cart is parked there, maybe a guy selling bus tickets and cigarettes. But that night the intersection was packed, traffic was stopped, and the center was packed with busses. Our destination lay immediately past them, so we took a route through the bus camp.
For starters, I think Islam is fantastic, and living in a muslim country for six months now has been wonderful, this is a description of a political ruckus and not an attack on any religion. As we approached we couldn't see what was going on, at first traffic just seemed to be worse, but standing on one of the crosswalk islands were a couple young boys wearing blue and white cardboard hats decorated like the Turkish flag, but an extra star and some stripes. The boys were blowing horns like it was new years, and they were crossing the streets recklessly or incredibly hesitantly. (a sure sign they weren't from Istanbul) We got among the parked busses and I had a pretty good idea what this was about, busses named after suras of the Qur'ran, men in thobes and kufis and the ladies peering out from their abayas from the busses. We'd walked into a rally for the far right wing, islamist party in Turkey. I was with two Turkish friends of mine, proud to be muslim, but spaghetti straps draw some harsh looks anyway. It was later explained to me they were from the country and every year come to celebrate and make a political statement. After we made our stop we passing through again on our way home. The busses were pulling out, it seemed they were making a whistle stop tour of Istanbul, or maybe they were just heading back to the countryside.
This is a strange view to take, but it might have some merit. I don't know much about Istanbul's reaction to villager migrations, the official population of Istanbul is around 15 million people, though migrant villagers push the number closer to twenty million. Government money for public works and the like is given to areas by population and most villagers work on a temporary basis, returning home for the census. So perhaps the person who spoke to me meant Istanbul was being 'worn down' so to speak by the villager population.
Or perhaps the person meant the villagers were keeping the appearance of Istanbul in poor light. One person was expressing their anger to me that when the earthquake in 1998 struck Istanbul the international media reports only showed poor families (probably villagers) who already lived in rubble by local standards. The villagers are the people leading horses through the streets selling watermelon, or pushing the carts calling out for people's discards, or just trotting down the street pulling a large sack mounted on a hand truck, filling it with cardboard. I can't help but see the villagers as occupying a place in Istanbul where they trade their work to keep the city functional, similarly to how many Turks from the countryside travel to Europe and work in industry and other jobs no longer wanted by the native populations. So, if this is damaging to Istanbul on the international scene, I see it as a result of inadequate response to a population influx. Not the fault of people migrating to find work.
That said I had a very interesting brush with the countryside last Sunday, coincidentally Sunday was the celebration of the fall of Constantinople. (For more information on this see "Istanbul (Not Constantinople)"[1, 2]) This is normally celebrated in Sultanahmet with plenty of dancing in traditional garb, and lots of tourists being sold carpets and fez caps. Out in Mecidiyeköy things ran a bit differently, to set the stage it's important to know the geography of where I was. There is an expressway that runs around Istanbul and cuts through the city to cross the Bogazici Koprusu, the southern of the two suspension bridges that cross the Bosphorus. Just next to the school is a gigantic intersection, where a large city street or two meets this expressway in a tangle of concrete and asphalt and at the center is a large triangle where no traffic goes, the occasional simit cart is parked there, maybe a guy selling bus tickets and cigarettes. But that night the intersection was packed, traffic was stopped, and the center was packed with busses. Our destination lay immediately past them, so we took a route through the bus camp.
For starters, I think Islam is fantastic, and living in a muslim country for six months now has been wonderful, this is a description of a political ruckus and not an attack on any religion. As we approached we couldn't see what was going on, at first traffic just seemed to be worse, but standing on one of the crosswalk islands were a couple young boys wearing blue and white cardboard hats decorated like the Turkish flag, but an extra star and some stripes. The boys were blowing horns like it was new years, and they were crossing the streets recklessly or incredibly hesitantly. (a sure sign they weren't from Istanbul) We got among the parked busses and I had a pretty good idea what this was about, busses named after suras of the Qur'ran, men in thobes and kufis and the ladies peering out from their abayas from the busses. We'd walked into a rally for the far right wing, islamist party in Turkey. I was with two Turkish friends of mine, proud to be muslim, but spaghetti straps draw some harsh looks anyway. It was later explained to me they were from the country and every year come to celebrate and make a political statement. After we made our stop we passing through again on our way home. The busses were pulling out, it seemed they were making a whistle stop tour of Istanbul, or maybe they were just heading back to the countryside.
posted by Alex Gray at 11:58
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