Do the Hussle! Istanbul is on the........Grow!

Happy New Year!

Out last night whooping it up with the young and hip here in Istanbul. Every city has a place where people who can't come up with better plans, converge on New Year's Eve. Here in Istanbul that place is  Taksim Square.  Thousands of people out last night easily. I walked through on my way to a party with some famous Turkish people. Just so we're clear. I had better plans. Of note was how the revelers where wearing Santa Claus caps. It seems that, due to the fact that most folks here are Muslims, there has been a blurring of what symbolises Christmas and New Year's Eve. I can appreciate how this is confusing given that the two events are so close together. Vendors where selling Santa caps that lite up. The drunkest of the guys where wearing them. One was even selling smallish inflatable Santas. Awesome.

One of the biggest stories about Turkey in the last 20 years or so has been economic growth. It’s tough to talk to people about this here as the idea of growth can also somehow be an implicit endorsement for the current government. Touchy subject for many reasons I have yet to completely understand. I may never understand. One obvious area of growth, economic or otherwise was the city of Istanbul. This city has exploded in terms of population. Data I dug up says the population here in 1970 was 3 million. The population now is ball parked at around 16 to 18 million. A huge flow of people just poured into Istanbul mostly in the last 20 or so years. Why? Work. Almost all of the migration is from within Turkey itself though you do see some women coming here from Turkmenistan to play the role that Filipino women play in Canada. What kind of impact does this have on a city? Neighbourhoods have been completely transformed. Virtually all of the living space is in apartments, traffic is breath taking and well the place is a little crowded.

How did this transformation happen so quickly? Imagine this. You own a house with a garden. A developer comes knocking and makes you an offer to build an apartment building on your property. There will be say 16 units. You get to have 4 of them. You may live in one of them and A. sell the other 3 for 200 to 300 thousand Lira each and never work again or B. rent out the other three for 1,200 Lira a month and never work again. Would you take this offer? Or how’s this? You live in a building with 8 units. Same developer comes knocking and wants to build an apartment building with 16 units. The deal requires that you move out for a year or so. During this time they will pay your rent. When the new building is complete, you move back into a brand new apartment that would be bigger and much nicer than the one you once had. Pretty tempting? Obviously, most folks took up these offers. People made money. Lots of it in some cases, by unlocking the value of their property. Many buildings also went up illegally. Three story buildings with running water, electricity and such, but not up to code and built without the city’s blessing. These buildings, if they last longer than a 20 year statute of limitations are also eligible for the sweet deals I mentioned earlier. I know of one man who worked all his life as a janitor. Don’t think about those guys who worked at your high school. These gigs here are very low paying. He happened to live in one of these illegal buildings beyond the 20 year mark and is now the proud owner of 4 units in a brand new building. 

So, suffice it to say, virtually everyone went after these deals when they had the chance and the city boomed under construction and real estate. This of course came with a price. Consider the streets themselves. Once residential, now, still residential but completely lacking the charm that came from a street full of houses. Children are rarely seen on bicycles or skateboards and such. The roads have been completely taken over by cars.

Many of the apartment buildings where not exactly constructed with aesthetics in mind. Most of the designs are virtually identical to the other. Colour choices seem odd as well. From khaki green to hot pink. We are a long long way from the Ottoman villas that used to grace my part of the city. Some still remain. Unfortunately though the city didn’t get around to enacting a law that stated these beautiful wooden villas be preserved in any way until most of the transformation was complete. Its rather strange now, due to this you will find old derelict wooden buildings in certain districts that never got developed and whose cost for a rebuild (you tear it down you need to replace it with something of the same style) exceeds any sort of financial gain you may realize. They lie empty, and for sale. These are people who I guess waited too long and missed out.

Istanbul for many years enjoyed a rather “with it” lifestyle. The British, French, Italians as well as the Germans all established universities or private high schools here. There was a sizable Greek community as well as Armenians. Certain areas where more sophisticated than others of course, but by and large an Istanbul’a was someone that enjoyed the arts, was mostly of a secular mind set, and enjoyed urban pleasantries. There are long standing yacht clubs, opera houses and theatre companies. With these tastes an education is typically also part of the equation.  You smile and say hello to people in the morning. A great deal of this was altered by the massive influx of people over the last 20 years.
  The huge numbers of people that flowed into Istanbul where very different than the natives. Folks from Anatolia, central and eastern Turkey, have their own virtues make no mistake. Having an urban mind set is simply not one of them. By and large they brought with them their more religious values and their more traditional ways. An education, regrettably for many of these more rural communities, stops after elementary school.  If you don’t have an education in Turkey you severly limit your prospects in the field of employment.  Its not to say that wealth can’t happen through some sort of business success, but it likely won’t happen through employment. Many people from these areas, where also the ones that capitalized on the real estate boom and became developers themselves, bringing their deep pockets in from the hinterland, they conquered the big city and made even more money.
  

Let’s try to give this a little context. Consider the city of Toronto. Here is a place that has absorbed immigrants very well. Now consider having, over the course of say a decade, the entire population of Alberta moving into town. In another ten years throw in everyone from British Columbia for good measure. Now this would obviously change the landscape of the city. More condo’s for sure. How about the culture of the place? Wouldn’t that change too??  Would you still like it?  Much of your hometown has now been remade by those who never really had any stake in it and well, are there for the money. Thoughts about aesthetics, communities and such where passing at best. The sheer speed of the transformation was amazing. It can be felt still even now.  The mind set was not one of “city building”.  It appears, unfortunately to have been more about making a quick few bucks. Nothing at all wrong with making money. Particularly if you’re poor.  The impact on the livability of the city was never made priority regretably during the frenzy.

  So, the city you grew up in doesn’t resemble the city you remember, the people are very different from how you are, and of course traffic has become a complete nightmare because the infrastructure simply hasn’t kept up. Imagine a city of 16 million people without a proper subway system. They’re only now getting to actually building one on the Asian side of the Bosphorus. The subway on the European side is remarkable for its cleanliness and how un-crowded it is. It’s brand new at about 5 or 6 years old. People haven’t organized their lives around this sort of public transit yet. There is a tramway that is well used but still has a seemingly small network for a city this size. Istanbul is playing catch up to the people here. Taksim to Suadiye near where I live. With decent traffic levels this trip can take 30 or so minutes. At peak levels, you could be looking at a commute of 1 and a half to 2 hours. This is roughly a 20 kilometer distance.

Traffic is brutal but I must add I absolutely love driving in Istanbul. It allows me the opportunity to be the driver I’ve always wanted to be. Discourteous, aggressive and unencumbered by things such as traffic signs.  Parking is an act in creativity rather than ticket avoidance. There are some rules that guide driving activity. They are in no particular order:

1. Let the bigger guy win. Especially the Minibüs drivers, those guys are nuts. Pedestrians beware. You are smaller than a car. Cars win. This is very important at the “4 way stop” as we call them in Canada. There is nothing of the kind here. Just take your turn when you can.

2. Get out of the way at all costs. Reaction time cannot afford a check of the blind spot, There simply isn’t time. Don’t worry, the guy in your blind spot expects something to happen.

3. Expect others to be unpredictable, discourteous and dangerous: No one gives way unless they have to. This means getting in their way, cutting them off and such. Work the horn for what its worth. It gets peoples attention most of the time.

4. Never let the other guy in if you can help it: This is a by-product of being discourteous. If you don’t embrace the mentality, you’ll never get to your destination. If the opportunity is there to cut off the last guy in a line, take it rather than waiting. He’d do the same thing to you.

5. Traffic signs and lights are merely guidelines, unless there is a camera to catch you. Ever find yourself stuck with a one way street taking you in the wrong direction? All you have to do here is turn around and go the other way. Its okay, no one will honk at you or freak out because you’re going the wrong way. They would expect you to get out of their way should it be tight, but that’s about it. I’ve seen school buses go the other way on a one way street. Its never done for an extended drive. It is faster going the right way down a one way rather than the wrong way after all. This can also apply to highway driving as well. I saw a guy going in the wrong direction on the highway this past summer. It was okay though, he wasn’t going THAT fast, and he had his hazard lights on too. No right turn? Anyone looking? Anyone coming? No? Go for it.

Because driving here through the tough traffic can be such an adventure, a ten minute drive to the bakery can be filled with more excitement than a Toronto driver will see in a week. The Gardiner is for wimps. The 400 for light weights and the 401 for kids on their tricycles. My understanding of other places in the world put Istanbul in say the “upper intermediate” category as far a driving skill level is concerned. I hear that Cairo and India can be very challenging places to drive due to the variable that cattle and other livestock represent. I can only imagine certain locales in South America and China as also being very challenging. Amazingly, I’ve seen very few car accidents on the road. It may appear insane, but it also appears to work. With this in mind I can’t help but have my thoughts wander back to my trip to Calgary in 2008. When viewed in the global context it makes the ever dutiful Calgarian pedestrian waiting at the red light even when there is no traffic coming at all, that much more bizarre.

  I wouldn’t want to wrap up without emphasizing that Istanbul, despite some of the things I have mentioned remains an amazing place. Its by the sea, has excellent restaurants and a night life to envy. You would be forgiven if you confused certain areas of the city for Paris or Madrid. The people can be just as fashionable and sophisticated. The maintenance and care of many of the Ottoman palaces, summer homes and guest houses are excellent and any one of them would put Casa Loma to shame. Huge efforts are underway to play catch up and make the city more livable. A tunnel running underneath the Bosphorus connecting Europe and Asia seems to be sparing no expense. A Third bridge is also being planned. The subway system is only a few years away, and other developments of certain areas of the city are also in the works.  Consider also an economic plan that would bring work to Anatolia. 5 million people would leave Istanbul over night if you could ensure them a decent living in their hometowns. Consider also that Istanbul/Constantinople has had people living here for a couple of thousand years.  20 years of modern history isn’t even a drop in the bucket.