Fate has not been kind to the Turkish tourist industry. An earthquake
60 miles from Istanbul, the bomb attacks in the heart of the city that
destroyed the British consulate and two synagogues, and overshadowing
it all the conflict in Iraq.
The result – though you might not believe it as hordes of tourists are
guided round the Blue Mosque, Topkapi Palace and other sites – is that
the number of visitors to Istanbul this year is the lowest for a
decade. The government argues otherwise, citing figures that show an
increase. Ask the tour operators, though, and they’ll tell you the
government’s figures are massaged and the tourists are staying away.
I was last in Istanbul as an ITN reporter covering a hostage release
sometime in the 1980s. I remember it as a sprawling, chaotic city, with
crazy drivers and lethal traffic. None of that has changed. But think
of old men outside cafes, drawing leisurely on their water pipes and
playing backgammon, and you are thinking of an Istanbul that is long
gone.
Istanbul, as every guidebook will tell you, is the only city in the
world that straddles two continents. You will also read that Turkey is
the only secular country in the Muslim world. Istanbul may have 2,000
mosques, the call to prayer may reverberate across the city five times
a day, but there is no official state religion, and the younger
generation is not beating a path to the mosque’s door.
And Istanbul is a surprisingly young city: 60 per cent of the
population is under 24. Ask them if they consider themselves European
or Asian, and the answer is so obvious they’ll laugh.
In the main pedestrianised shopping street, just 50 metres from the
boarded-up British consulate, young women gaze longingly at
designer-shop windows. For every headscarf there are a dozen miniskirts
or pairs of jeans. Western pop music blares out on to the street, and
it’s said there are more McDonald’s outlets in Istanbul than Manhattan.
Istanbul may have just played host to Nato, but the city is far prouder
that it successfully staged the Eurovision Song Contest in May.
I was told that wealthy young Istanbulis like to go yachting off the
south-west coast and frequently find themselves straying accidentally
into Greek waters. If a Greek coastguard vessel approaches, the girls
whip off their tops. Can’t possibly be Turkish, say the Greeks; no
Muslim would behave like that. And the Greeks steam off, no doubt
grinning from ear to ear.
Daytime television offers a diet of pop music and fashion, lithe models
showing off bikinis and revealing dresses for the summer. If a young
Istanbuli asks you where you are from and you say ‘England’, it is not
enough. ‘But where?’ Name a large city, and you invite a recitation of
English footballing names. In the Grand Bazaar young carpet salesmen –
who have taken over from their fathers – will want to talk football as
well as the double knot that gives Turkish carpets their unique
durability. The Premiership is carried on Turkish television, there are
no more ardent Chelsea, Arsenal or Man U fans than in Istanbul, and my
taxi driver knew just two words in English: ‘David Beckham’.
All of which should mean that Istanbul is a multiracial, cosmopolitan
city like Paris, London or New York. All the more so when you consider
that Istanbul was the capital of the Ottoman Empire, one of the longest
and most successful empires in history because of its tolerance of the
customs and religions of its subjects in the vast areas it ruled.
Istanbul should be a real melting pot, but it is not. The streets
should be a Tower of Babel of exotic tongues, but they are not.
Colourful sounds, dress and traditions from the lands of empire should
enliven the atmosphere of the city, but they do not.
All but 5 per cent of the people who live in Istanbul are Turkish
Muslims. Turks rate among the most hospitable people on earth. Nothing
is too much trouble. Restaurants will send a car to your hotel to pick
you up and deposit you back again (free). Refuse an offer of a cup of
tea in any shop and you will cause sadness. Yet throughout the 20th
century, Turkey as a nation has been unwelcoming to outsiders,
particularly to those from the old enemy Greece.
Ask a Turk what he thinks of Greeks and he will say, ‘Greeks, Turks,
same thing’ – in fact, he’s likely to speak more kindly of Greeks than
Greeks do of Turks. Nationally, though, Greeks have consistently been
made to feel unwelcome. Tens of thousands of Greeks left Istanbul after
orchestrated anti-Greek riots in the 1950s. Today there are 100 Greek
churches in Istanbul but only around 2,000 Greeks. The huge
fortress-like Greek school on a hill above the Golden Horn that could
easily accommodate 500 pupils has only 30.
Other minorities fare little better. Unusually for a great city, there
is no real Jewish quarter. There are few Jews in the city – even fewer
since the bomb attacks on the synagogues and the announcement by the
government that all synagogues would stay closed for two years.
Turkey denies genocide against the Armenians in the early 20th century,
and points to freedom of worship for Armenians in Istanbul. We went to
an Armenian church in the centre of the city. The priest was concluding
a service, then turned to bless the congregation: just us.
Istanbul does have a sizeable minority, which in the past it has done
its best to rid itself of: Kurds, who make up as much as 20 per cent of
the Turkish Muslim population. They are the underclass, but Turkey has
reformed laws which openly discriminated against Kurds – it was
forbidden by law to make a public speech in Kurdish, for instance – and
has now started a Kurdish-language television station.
All this in response to European demands for reform if Turkey wants to
achieve its long-held ambition to join the EU.
Yet Turkey is now, and historically, the most tolerant of nations. My
wife Bonnie obeyed the notice asking women to cover their heads as we
entered Istanbul’s crowning glory, the Blue Mosque. She was practically
the only woman tourist in around 100 to do so, yet none of the many
Muslim officials complained at this lack of respect.
The most impressive example of such tolerance is Istanbul’s Hagia
Sophia, with its vast dome and four minarets. A mosque, then? No. A
church for 916 years until the Ottomans introduced Islam, then a mosque
for nearly 500 years. But the imams found the altar faced south, not
south-east towards Mecca. Simple answer: pull it down and start again.
Even simpler answer: move the altar just a little to the right, where
it stands – off-centre – today, below a mosaic of the Virgin and Child.
Then in 1935, so as to offend neither Christians nor Muslims, the new
secular Republic of Turkey declared Hagia Sophia a museum, which it
remains today. So you can enter it without removing your shoes and
women do not need to cover their head.
Another example of religious tolerance can be found in Cappadocia, the
extraordinary region in central Turkey where there are 300 churches
within a few square kilometres, a higher density than anywhere else in
the world. Three million years ago volcanoes spewed lava across this
high flat section of the Anatolian plateau. Erosion – wind, rain and
snow – wore the lava down, leaving weirdly shaped hills and mounds made
of soft volcanic rock called tuff, or tufa.
They were so soft that people made homes in them. Cave houses, tens of
thousands of them, in which, over the centuries, they successfully hid
from invaders. Christians evaded the Romans, then the Persian army,
then Arab forces. They built entire underground cities that descended
60 metres – which you can enter today and marvel at – and that were
impregnable, unbreachable. Tunnels allowed them to move around between
these underground cities and caves, just as the Vietcong did during the
Vietnam war, and Osama bin Laden did in Afghanistan to evade American
forces.
Before the arrival of Islam the area was Christian, hence the churches,
all cut into the soft, volcanic rock, many with magnificent
thousand-year-old frescoes whose rich colours are preserved by the cool
dark air inside. Whose image is painted on wall after wall? None other
than local lad St George, in the act of slaying the dragon. He was
appointed patron saint of England by Richard the Lionheart after
appearing in a vision and promising him victory in the Battle of
Antioch during the now politically incorrect Crusades. How many
football fans waving the red cross of St George during Euro 2004 knew
they were honouring a Turk born in Cappadocia, or realised just what a
busy saint he is (England shares St George with Moscow, Georgia –
naturally – and Aragon).
When the volcanic lava eroded it left thousands of curiously shaped
conical rocks which more than anything give Cappadocia its uniqueness.
These extraordinary creations look as if they have burst through the
ground and grown up. In fact the opposite is true. As wind, rain and
snow whittled away at the lava, the harder portions remained.
Like so many battalions of phalluses, they dominate the landscape.
Local people – with a glint in their eye – will tell you it has nothing
to do with erosion. The priapic rocks grew up in honour of Priapus, god
of procreation, born in Turkey and famed for the only weapon he
carried, his gigantic penis – and they’ll sell you erect marble penises
in his honour.
The best way to see them is from above, gliding softly and silently
over them in the basket of a hot-air balloon. ‘Love Valley. Feast your
eyes, girls,’ said our pilot as she expertly guided the balloon across
the tops of the giant rock erections. She hails from Devon and, with
her Swedish husband, has been ferrying open-mouthed tourists up to
4,000 feet and down to a few inches off the ground for 14 years. ‘Best
ballooning country in the world,’ they say. ‘Perfect weather, unique
topography, and no animals or crops to disturb.’
Bonnie does not like heights, and as our small basket rose and rose her
face turned white – but only slightly whiter than mine. Amazingly, our
nerves settled and we marvelled at the extraordinary work of nature as
we floated serenely across its eccentric sculptures. The first European
to discover the rock formations of Cappadocia was a Frenchman 300 years
ago. When he showed drawings of the giant phalluses back in Paris, he
was taken for a fool. Two hundred years later, in the early 19th
century, another Frenchman came to Cappadocia, christened the rocks
‘fairy chimneys’, and reported back. This time they believed him, and
the French have been coming here ever since; 60 per cent of the
tourists in Cappadocia are French, just 1 per cent are British.
No one knows why, but for some reason this tiny corner of the world has
never caught the imagination of the British tourist. It cannot be just
the first call to prayer of the day, which in the summer echoes across
the thin air, amplified by crackly loudspeakers, at 4.10am, stretching
religious tolerance to the limit.
As in Istanbul, this is the worst year in Cappadocia for tourists –
French or otherwise – for a decade. In the four days we were there, a
new road was laid out to the town of Ürgüp, where we stayed
in a luxury, all-mod-cons cave house, occupied in more primitive form
for centuries before. It’s a new road to make it easier for tourists to
get here. They’re now praying there will be some tourists to use it.
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