ON THE BOSPORUS, A SCHOLAR TELLS OF SULTANS, WASHERWOMEN AND SNAKES
By Sabrina Tavernise

New York Times
October 24, 2008
United States

ISTANBUL — Murat Belge is one of Turkey’s most important
intellectuals. He is also — when the mood strikes him — one of this
city’s most erudite tour guides.

Johan Spanner for The New York Times Murat Belge. – Photo

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Johan Spanner for The New York Times Boat passengers on the Bosporus
learn about yalis, 19th-century wooden waterfront houses that are
replete with stories.

So when he boards a boat on Sunday mornings for a trip up the
Bosporus to talk about his beloved city, several hundred people line
up to listen.

His interest is history, and his talks are bursting with 19th-century
gossip. The paranoid sultan who lived directly on the sea to be able
to control it. The maid who went into prostitution to support her
mistress, whose Albanian husband had stolen the couple’s money. A
Crusades-era tree that was cut down in 1934 for a gardening school.

History can be slippery in Turkey, which became a modern state in
1923, assembled from the ethnic patchwork of what remained of the
Ottoman Empire. The official version is kept under lock and key,
and writers can be punished for trying to open it.

Mr. Belge (pronounced BEL-geh), a prominent leftist who teaches
comparative literature at Bilgi University in Istanbul, knows this
well. He was imprisoned for two years during a military coup in the
1970s, and has been prosecuted (but not jailed) in recent years,
on grounds including columns he wrote in support of a conference on
Armenians in the early 20th century, the time of the genocide of the
Armenian population in the Ottoman Empire.

But that does not seem to have dented his irreverence, which flowed as
freely as the anise-flavored liqueur during lunch at a fish restaurant
during a tour this summer.

"We have a very unhealthy relation with our history," he said. "It’s
basically a collection of lies."

In Turkey’s painful birth, at the end of World War I, its founder,
Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, disassembled the structure of the Ottoman
state, which had been in place for 600 years. Instead of forging a
national identity based on the Ottomans, he emphasized "Turkishness,"
reaching back to the Hittites in 2600 B.C.

"To set up a state is easy, but to create a nation is extremely
difficult," Mr. Belge said. "We are still suffering the consequences."

But confrontation is not his objective. On the contrary, his strong
affection for this beautiful city — piled on top of itself throughout
the centuries — and his loving attention to detail gives audiences
a fresh look at their own environment.

The journey begins in Europe (part of the city is in Europe and part
in Asia), not far from Dolmabahce, an Ottoman palace built in the 19th
century when the empire was already in deep decline. The balconies,
Mr. Belge said, were brought to Turkey by European designers.

"Tanzimat emerges from that peninsula," Mr. Belge said, motioning
to a green finger of land, where minarets of the 17th-century Blue
Mosque spike the skyline.

Tanzimat, a 19th-century period of reform, was a brief stab at
modernization when the Ottomans established a Parliament and, briefly,
a Constitution, as well as giving more rights to ethnic and religious
minorities.

It was a time of brisk international trade, with far more ships coming
to port than in the early years of the Turkish republic, he said,
adding, "Ottomans were much more globalized in that respect."

The Ottomans wanted no competition to their power, so in contrast
to European society, there was no class of landed gentry, Mr. Belge
said. People could quickly gain wealth and status.

So it was for one illiterate military officer, who became chief
commander of the army. He signed his name using the Arabic script
numbers 7 and 8, and a few squiggles in between, because that was what
writing looked like to him. His wife, a washerwoman, never became
accustomed to her important new status, and embarrassed hosts by
refusing to sit down in their presence, something that was unacceptable
for servants at the time.

The wooden waterfront mansions, or yalis (pronounced YAW-luhs),
are among Mr. Belge’s favorite features of the Bosporus. He lived in
one for a summer in 1974 and has been trying ever since to unearth
their stories.

This, in fact, is how he became interested in giving tours. As a
professor and writer, he likes sharing what he knows, so he began to
lead walking tours. By the 19th century, even tradesmen were living
in the waterfront yalis. Mr. Belge pointed out one that is referred
to as the "shoe-leather maker’s yali."

The snake yali got its name when a sultan spoke admiringly about it
to a servant. The man happened to know the owner, and fearful that
the yali would be taken by the sultan, replied that it looked nice
from the outside, but was infested with snakes.

Mr. Belge pointed to a court office that had burned. "In Turkey,
there is a habit that justice buildings burn so that the archives
disappear," he said mischievously. Then he indicated an empty space
where a yali had been destroyed by an out-of-control ferry. "Living
on the Bosporus is good, but there are consequences," he said.