Istanbul
For centuries, Ottoman sultans dreamed of conquest in the name of Islam. When they failed on the battlefield they sought glory in building mosques. Eighty years after the Caliphate was abolished to make way for a Western-style republic, the tradition is being revived by Turkey’s current leaders.
Led by the ebullient Recep Tayyip Erdogan and inspired by an ideological hodgepodge labeled “neo-Ottomanism,” they are using urban architecture to kill the European dream of secular Turks.
Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the founder of the republic, adopted the Latin alphabet, purged Turkish of Arabic words and brought mosques and religious endowments under state control. He also enlisted a team of French ethnologists to invent the myth of a Turkish nation related to Hungarians and Finns and stretching from Central Europe to Central Asia.
For decades, Turkey’s Islamists tried to undo as much of Ataturk’s “reforms” as possible but failed because a majority of Turks would not vote for a party with an Islamist agenda. Erdogan solved that problem by uniting some 20 different Islamist groups into a new party that made no mention of Islam. His Justice and Development Party (AKP) won three successive general elections on a platform of fighting corruption and ensuring economic growth.
Thanks to average annual growth rates of 6 percent for a decade, the AKP has scored well. As far as fighting corruption, however, its record is one of under-achievement, to say the least. If one regards favoritism as a form of corruption, the AKP administration emerges as the most corrupt since the fall of the Caliphate.
Nowhere is favoritism more evident than in Istanbul, Turkey’s largest city and a candidate to host the summer Olympics in 2020.
Erdogan, who was Istanbul’s mayor before he became prime minister, is turning the city into the largest building site in the world. Projects under construction or in the pipeline include a third bridge on the Bosphorus River, a canal to absorb part of the strait’s traffic and four giant shopping malls. Other projects include a third airport designed to be the largest in the world, handling 150 million passengers a year, and a new business district, again billed as the world’s largest.
There are at least three problems with Erdogan’s folie de
grandeur.
First, almost all the projects, expected to be worth $100 billion over a decade, have been granted to individuals or corporations controlled by Islamists close to the AKP.
Next, the urban plan is used to redefine Istanbul’s image as a cosmopolitan center where many cultures, faiths and ethnic communities lived together for centuries. Near the Taksim Square, an old Armenian hospital is to be transformed into a shopping mall. Some 50 neighborhoods are being transformed with new housing projects, eliminating historic cultural centers of minorities such as Christians, Kurds and Tzigans. The Ataturk Cultural Center, inspired by European architecture, is to be replaced with an opera built in the Ottoman style. Istanbul’s oldest cinema, Emek, is to be razed to the ground while many buildings representing the city’s Byzantine heritage will make way for neo-Ottoman structures.
A new shopping center is to be built as a replica of an Ottoman “rabat,” where “Ghazis” (holy warriors) assembled for jihad against the Infidel. In the downtown Beyoglu district, terrace cafés and kebab-houses will make way for “clean” restaurants, where no alcohol will be served on the terraces.
To cap it all, the project includes the building of a mosque whose minaret is to be the highest structure in the world. Islamic tradition insists that the Infidel should not be allowed to build edifices higher than those that belong to Islam. Over the past 30 years, Malaysia, Saudi Arabia and Dubai have built tall buildings to catch up with Infidel edifices. Now, Erdogan’s mosque would ensure Islamic ascendancy for a generation. The planned mosque, located on 30 square miles of prime urban land, will host more than 50,000 at prayer times.
The trouble is that Istanbul is unable to fill its 1000-plus mosques, including one named after Sultan Muhammad the Conqueror, the man who seized Constantinople for Islam in the 15th century.
Many Turks feel uncomfortable with a large-scale attempt at stirring past memories. The new Bosphorus canal is to be named after Sultan Selim, known as “The Blood-sucker,” who won infamy by massacring Shi’ite and Alevite minorities. Models of neo-Ottoman and neo-Seljuk buildings emanate an air of kitsch to Turks who do not want centuries of struggle against religious despotism scripted out of their urban landscape.
Finally, the gargantuan project is becoming a machine to transform public space into private property. Many buildings and parks are part of religious endowments controlled by the state. Erdogan is selling them to political allies for a song. The result would be the creation of powerful business blocs linked to the AKP. Some Turks see that as an attempt at creating a state within the state. This is why they have been protesting for the past few weeks.