[-empyre-] who owns the city? (Istanbul)

[A.Andreas]

i agree

started with the renaming of Constantinople to Istambul (litererally  
Big City)

after all the turks are a kind of germans / americans when it comes to  
regional domination

i was in North Syria from Damascus by plane to Allepo ( melting  
cultures for ages already, the Gay capital of the arabic middele east)  
sitting next to an eldery woman who told me the story of her fathers  
hiding in the pit of their garden when the soldiers of the Ottomanian  
empire went looking for young men to be enslaved in its army

these memories are lively and worth remembering

Ataturk tried to 'modernize' the empire and succeeded to eradicate age  
old kurdish, armenian, christian and jewish culture

The price he paid for that  is still reflected in the reluctant  
attitude towards Turkey's ambition in being part of Europe

Do not forget the expulsions of the Greek population in 1919 (Smyrna)  
and the genocide on the Armenians , a real obstacle towards the  
acceptance of an European membership

Also its pact with the German Empire (1914-1918) did the region no  
good for the victors of this culture clash resulted in the occupation  
of the Middle Eastern former Ottomanian Empire (including Palestina-  
now called Israel) by French and British ursurpators. A situation  
directly leading to the current instability in this region

btw the Haya Sophia once was the biggest Eastern Orthodox Church,  
turned into a Mosque after the conquest of Constantinople around 1500  
or so

In still earlier times the city was called Miklagrad by the Vikings,  
who had their empire there and all the way to Norther Europe

Forgive me my unsollicited history lesson , but as most of this list  
is not directly Europe related , I took this liberty

best

Andreas Maria Jacobs aka

Agcharim Ben Ab

Sent from my eXtended BodY



On 21 sep 2011, at 14:43, Ana Valdés <agora158 at gmail.com> wrote:

> I was there a week only but all ppl I met (Turks everyone) told me  
> they felt the "turkization" and the erasing of the Byzantine past,  
> very well related in the book "From the Holy Mountain", by William  
> Dalrymple.
> He did a trip between the monasteries in Syria, Palestina and Turkey  
> and saw the intentionality of the erasing of all traces of former  
> cultures.
> Did you enter the Hagia Sofia? Crumbling away with zero maintenance...
> Ana
>
> On Wed, Sep 21, 2011 at 8:48 AM, Michel Bauwens <michel at p2pfoundation.net 
> > wrote:
> hi Ana, just wondering why you feel 'all the remnants of the past  
> are crumbling away' ? On the contrary, I feel the successive layers  
> of history are very much alive, and also the mixity of the  
> population and the neighborhoods
> , with so many recent first-generation immigrants from the rural  
> Anatolian countryside, represent quite a mixture of temporalities,  
> etc ... very unlike western europe, where only the buildings  
> remain ... extented families and village cooperative solidarity also  
> remain realities, as far as I could ascertain from speaking with  
> Turkish friends (I gave a lecture to an all-turkish audience  
> yesterday)
>
> Michel
>
>
> On Wed, Sep 21, 2011 at 6:36 AM, Ana Valdés <agora158 at gmail.com> wro 
> te:
> I am bit curious about how did the people who travelled to Istanbul  
> for the first time experienced the city itself, Turkey and all the  
> contradictions and the multiple layers of meaning residing in this  
> old city where all the remnants of it's past are crumbling away. As  
> you know many Turks want to be a part of Europe and join the EC, but  
> many others want keep the country's isolation.
> Ana
>
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