Turkish Awakening (18 page)

I am aware these aspirations are not unique to Turkey; they are, and have been, a feature of society across the world for ages past. However, I feel that in the West there is a counterbalancing appreciation for what is timeless, or classic, in commercial circles as well as ideologically. I see very little of that appreciation in Turkey, at least in commercial aesthetics, and it is usually reserved for the splendour of Ottoman
history. Turkish tourists visit sites like Topkapı, the Ottoman palace in Istanbul, and love books or TV shows like
Muhteşem Yüzyıl
which glamorise the Ottoman look, but they stay well clear of it in their own houses. The past has a time and a place which is decidedly not here or now – nostalgia has absolutely no place in modern Turkish aesthetics.

When I was kitting out a new flat last year, I screwed my courage to the sticking point and headed to Ikea for a new mattress. It was absolutely heaving, and as I queued in the cavernous warehouse to collect my mattress like a body from a morgue, I had the slightly surreal experience of watching two ladies in traditional dress having an argument over the merits of two near-identical black laminated cupboards. The ladies occasionally consulted a catalogue, prodding emphatically at two entries and repeating ‘BIRKELAND’ and ‘KOPPANG’ in the unmistakable Arabic tones of Turks from the south-east. What really puzzled me was the fact that these two equally hideous cupboards were not even cheap – the average item of furniture from Ikea is way beyond the average Turk’s budget. They want them all the same, probably even more so because of the expense. Ikea is foreign, with a totally un-Turkish aesthetic, and its high prices probably affirm the Turkish expectation that these intimidatingly bland objects are Eminently Desirable and worth saving up for.

In my old neighbourhood of Tarlabaşı, there are many shops which call themselves
eskici –
literally ‘sellers of old stuff’ or junk shops. In any city in Europe, they would be called antique shops, because they are full of the most beautiful old furniture, either thrown out to make way for the plastic cupboards or simply forgotten. Most of the pieces I
have seen in these shops have come from Greek and Armenian houses abandoned in the 1950s and 60s after the race riots in Istanbul, all being sold for a song. In place of the mean, angular cupboards I could have bought in Ikea, I found in the
eskici
a statuesque, aged wardrobe made of walnut wood, with carved feet, little brass keys in the doors and old newspaper cuttings lining the lower shelves inside. It cost a third of the Ikea cupboard price, because no one else wanted it, and smelt like a distinguished library. I also got a couple of ancient wooden chests to cover with cushions and use as sofas to replace the horrible sofas blighting the flat I was moving into.

My landlord, Turgay, is a thoroughly nice man. His wife is an officer in the Turkish army and he has a profound respect for women. He told me I could change any of the furniture that I didn’t like in the flat, but could not hide his bewilderment when I rejected the grotesque twin leatherette sofas which faced each other in grim confrontation across the living room. They were a nauseating off-white, with matching cushions, but Turgay thought they were great. In an attempt to persuade me of their merits, he sat on one of them, stretching his arms out to demonstrate its expansiveness as though he were explaining something very obvious to a small child. ‘You see? Very comfortable. Very
şık
[chic].’ I nodded politely but stuck to my guns. Now, when Turgay visits, he pretends to like the divan-style chests I have set up but clearly thinks I am mad to have rejected a respectable pair of sofas in favour of some old wooden chests.

Again, Turkey is not alone in this social trait of wanting to keep up with the leather sofa-owning Joneses, but there
was a watershed moment in Turkish history when the country was reborn as a republic in the 1920s. This national rebirth sped up the shedding of old-fashioned Ottoman ways that was already taking place, and formalised the embrace of Western sophistication, which was seen as synonymous with a desire to progress, to modernise. This has only intensified with the march of globalisation in the last century. Who wants old wooden wardrobes your grandmother owned when brand new ones are available, imported from Germany or Sweden? Ikea wardrobes are a form of ostentation in Turkey, a sign to guests that you are attuned to foreign commercial trends, and, crucially, that you can afford the trappings of Western modernity. While in the UK Ikea symbolises uniformity and consumer laziness, in Turkey it sums up all that is desirable – how can you go wrong buying a brand with worldwide appeal?

While Turks like Turgay cannot understand the Western fondness for old things, others are very much attuned to it and have exploited it to make a lot of money. In areas widely patronised by foreigners, opportunistic and well-informed Turks call themselves
antik
(antique) sellers and charge prices approaching the European norm. These crafty men buy the ‘junk’ from
eskici
s
and sell them in foreigner-beloved areas like Çukurcuma to expats at five to six times the price. They get even more money for trinkets – old watches, cameras and sunglasses – which they can pass off to passing tourists as
otantik antik
s. In one
eskici
I saw an enormous Kodak movie camera, about the size and shape of a calf, hiding away at the back of the shop. It must have been incredibly old, a real collector’s item, and the
eskici
owner was rather unsure of what it
was – it had simply come in a haul from an abandoned house, he told me. The camera had probably been overlooked by the
antik
vultures because it was too big to sell to tourists, and too niche to be worth the bother of transportation anyway. I still regret not buying it.

Just as the antique dealers in Çukurcuma have learned to profit from foreigners’ appreciation of the past, so too have the Turks who own property in the little pockets of Beyoğlu that seem to be the areas of choice for expats moving to Istanbul. The so-called neighbourhoods of Cihangir and Galata are the best examples of areas which have been transformed almost beyond recognition into overpriced, foreigner-filled bubbles. Until fifteen or twenty years ago they were quite disreputable but fun, especially Cihangir – a mixed community of gypsies, Christians (in particular Armenians) and transvestites who would wander untroubled around this uniquely quirky neighbourhood, filled with beautiful Italian houses with grimy neoclassical facades. Quite quickly, the area became popular with artists and hippies, drawing foreigners who liked this slightly kooky side of Istanbul; it soon underwent an ironic process of gentrification to suit the elevated budgets of the foreigners who insisted on living there, and the original residents quietly left. Property has skyrocketed and expensive shops have opened everywhere. Cihangir has become
the
place to live, if one is a relatively bohemian, moneyed expat, but the irony is that most foreigners like living there because other foreigners already live there – it is one of the least authentically Turkish areas in Istanbul. While retaining some long-standing residents and Turkish artisans, the place is largely an artificial expats’ wonderland,
where they feel safe and unthreatened, surrounded by home comforts. It is full of New York-style coffee shops selling wheatgrass smoothies, boutique ateliers and shops like Carrefour, so the adventurous Turkey-dwelling expat can still buy Western staples like peanut butter and ham. In Cihangir, you can have the best of both worlds – you are in Turkey, with the fringe benefits of home. I would be a hypocrite to claim that it is not a nice place to live (it was the first place I moved into when I arrived), but there is something a little fake about it. For one thing, the area also attracts the kind of Western-aspiring Turks who love the New York/Parisian vibe – you see them sitting at café tables in the street, drinking frozen lattes all day, there to see and be seen.

Cihangir is crawling with celebrities who rent renovated apartments that were, until fairly recently, inhabited by families of eight. The owners of these houses have become millionaires by sheer good luck, and if they renovate the interiors to Western style norms they can charge rents which are unheard of by Turkish standards. Foreigners always compare house prices to those of London or New York, so they accept sale prices or rents which are actually way above what a Turk would pay. The whole area is a bubble inflated by hot air and ultimately, fear. A foreigner will often be afraid to live anywhere else but Cihangir or perhaps Nişantaşı or Bebek, because they can’t face the prospect of an area without skimmed milk options, or scary Turkish menus without English translations.

While I like to think of myself as different from the average bumbling expat, the uncomfortable truth is that, to most Turks, there is not much discernible difference between us. I
found this out when I went through the torrid process of trying to find a flat to rent with the ‘help’ of a string of progressively charmless estate agents, all of whom were convinced that they had struck gold when I showed up, another yummy
yabancı.

One incident in particular made crystal clear to me the perception that the average
emlakçı
(estate agent) has of the average foreigner. It was a rainy day, and Ahmet the Cihangir-based agent insisted that I take his umbrella as we trudged off the main road of Çukurcuma, away from the overpriced antique shops and down what could only be described as a muddy garden path (the irony escaped me at the time). A few hours earlier he had rung me to tell me of an exciting property just released onto the market, a three-storey house in Çukurcuma offered for the price of an apartment. He had not seen it himself, but was assured it was magnificent. Sceptical, I showed up and was initially impressed when we reached the beautiful
konak
at the end of the garden path. It was made of dark wood, one of the rare nineteenth-century houses still (just) standing in Istanbul. The hall smelt of damp but I was cautiously curious; we ventured inside to find a dusty kitchen with a huge fireplace fringed by broken tiles and a spiral staircase disappearing intriguingly into the gloom. Feeling like Alice taking the plunge down the rabbit hole, I took the lead as we creaked our way up the staircase. At the top, I opened a door into the face of a bearded man in a woolly hat – we both yelled. I apologised. He stared, wordlessly. A movement on the floor caught my eye, and I saw another man stirring on a mattress amid a confusion of guitar cases, mouldy mugs and what might have been another person’s limb. Whispering my
apologies this time, I turned to find Ahmet behind me, staring at the scene.

‘Ah. There is some mistake.’

‘Yes,’ said the bearded man. ‘We are living here.’

‘I’m so sorry, we must leave,’ I said. By now I had recognised the men – they were buskers who often played Algerian jazz on the main shopping street in Beyoğlu. Much as I admired their musical abilities, I did not want to linger and question their status as legitimate tenants of this house. Ahmet, only moderately embarrassed, led the retreat, all the while pointing out features like the height of the ceilings and the curvature of the bannisters. ‘Disgusting tramps – but look! Such ceilings! Such bannisters! Do you know how rare these features are, Madam Alev? It is an excellent price, really.’

As we set out into the rain, he was still trying to persuade me that these squatters were only a temporary problem, that the damp was a minor matter, and that I would be mad to miss out on such a splendid property. I am absolutely certain that no Turk would have set foot in the house, let alone retain any interest after a disquieting encounter with smelly buskers. The fact that I was a foreigner wanting to live in this area was enough to convince Ahmet that I would love this dilapidated old wreck because it was old and atmospheric. No doubt I would spend vast sums renovating it. That was not his concern – he wanted his commission and those buskers were not going to stand in his way. I do not blame him. Based on a quick appraisal, I was a clueless foreigner: fair game.

Turkish estate agents are in no way a reflection of Turks in general. The world over, estate agents plumb the depths of low cunning, and the agents of Istanbul are only doing their
modest part in the whole. They have neither the pinstripe suits nor the shiny company cars that add the extra oily sheen to a Foxtons employee but they are just as ruthless in the pursuit of their cut (typically twelve per cent), and foreigners are particularly easy prey.

It is a far bleaker picture further south than Istanbul, where tourists flock to towns on the Aegean and Mediterranean coasts and even less principled estate agents lurk to welcome them off the plane. Dazzled by the sun, happy to be on holiday, British tourists can be talked into almost anything – including buying property. Having spent a bit of time in towns like Bodrum, Kalkan, Ölüdeniz and Marmaris, which welcome hundreds of thousands of tourists in the summer months, I know the drill in the Costa del Turk.

Walking down the high street of Kalkan, one is assailed by the distinctive, practised tones of tourist-soliciting locals: ‘Hello, lady, nice fish for you. Delicious chips. You like beer?’ Every shop, restaurant and bar bears the unmistakable stamp of a community which depends on and caters almost solely for its summer influx of Brits on Tour. To my left, Tesko’s supermarket has a newspaper stand displaying imported copies of
Hello
,
OK!
and the
Daily Mail
. To my right, Ali Baba’s All Day English Breakfast has a large plasma TV showing
Match of the Day
. At night, the marina comes alive with the sweet strains of Rihanna and other UK chart-toppers, and Mojito’s Bar is doing a roaring trade in Jägermeister shots and Red Bull cocktails. Sterling is welcome, and the local economy is thriving. To give some idea of the bubble which is Kalkan, a few miles up the road in the Taurus mountains are villages with names like Islamlar (‘The Muslims’), where no
one speaks English and Ramadan is strictly observed. A loaf of bread costs half what it does down on the coast, and your proffered English fiver will be met with bemusement.