Constantinople

"This is by Edmondo de Amicis, an Italian travel writer. He’s an observer; he doesn’t go into philosophical depths about anything. The book is very well translated, so it’s very accessible. The reason I like it is that the late-19th-century, early-20th-century Ottoman Empire shares a lot of commonalities with today. As a society, it was an easy-going place, and Turkey today is much more easy-going than it was. Istanbul at the time was the imperial capital and it was connected to the Balkans, and connected to the Middle East . It was a hub; it was a place that had to be taken into account, it had a sense of destiny. De Amicis has this great description of walking over the Galata Bridge, flows of people from all over the Empire wearing different costumes, and the great heterogeneity of Istanbul. That’s what we have again in Istanbul today. I live on Istiklal Street, which is now a pedestrian precinct, and I’m absolutely astonished at the Tower of Babel of languages that are coming past, five abreast. People are not dressed that differently any more, but you do have this feeling of a huge variety of lifestyles. I still treat Istanbul with some caution, because when I came 23 years ago Turkey was a very proud, end-of-the-road and difficult-to-know place. Now people treat it as a party town, a place where things are happening. De Amicis’s book captures that sense of a very diverse city, a hub with a great regional reach that you can really feel now if you go to Istanbul airport. When you look at the departures board, it’s like reading a map of the Ottoman Empire and all the places in Central Asia and even Africa that the Sublime Porte once connected with. I feel that many of those old connections are coming alive; this book gives you a feel of that. It’s definitely being reassessed. The Turks are reassessing it. So are the Arab countries – especially the Baathist countries. They spent a great deal of energy dissing the Ottoman Empire to try to legitimise their own revolutions that were going to be so different and so new. They’ve given up a bit on that recently. They used to feel that way. They used to feel very resentful of the Turks, and they viewed the Kemalist regime as godless infidels who had stolen one of the Muslim peoples and hammered them unwillingly and unnaturally on to the flank of the Western behemoth. Now you have a completely different view. There are Turkish products everywhere in the Middle East. Turkey is seen as commercially attractive. Turkish sitcoms are now all translated into Arabic and viewed all over the Arabic world. It’s also political. Erdogan has won several completely free elections and proven himself to be a very effective, legitimate leader. He’s clearly independent of the West, speaking critically about Israel and other matters close to Middle Eastern hearts. There is no one in the Middle East who can do that in the same way. Arab societies feel that the pluralism in Turkey, and the commercial dynamism, is something they would like to have. I don’t think anybody wants to become Turkey, but they’re definitely very interested in learning more about the Turkish experience."