History

Atatürk

Had it not been for Mustafa Kemal, there might not be Turkey today. Most Turks rejected the terms of the peace agreement and rallied behind him in a war of independence from 1912 to 1922, banishing the Greeks and deposing the sultan.

Mustafa Kemal founded the Turkish Republic on 29 October 1923 and took the name Atatürk, which means ‘Father of the Turks’. The sultanate was abolished and the capital moved inland to Ankara, while Atatürk set about modernizing the country, abolishing the power of Islamic Holy Law, replacing the Arabic script with the Latin alphabet, banning polygamy and even introducing votes and equality for woman. Western-style dress replaced the fez, the veil and the turban. Turkey had finally arrived in the 20th century.

Throughout the 1920s and 1930s, Istanbul played a second fiddle to Ankara. But the city’s natural resources, location and appeal, combined with a string of financial incentives to business, a wave of investment engulfed the city and the Marmara area, bringing thousands of migrant workers.

As a leader Atatürk was the personification of good-time Turkey. A man of immense energy, he drank and gambled all night, napped for a couple of hours and then got up to conduct the country’s affairs. He may have moved the capital to Ankara, but his heart was in Istanbul.

Atatürk died at 09:50 on 10 November 1938. His casket was placed in the throne room of Dolmabahçe Palace, where hundreds of thousands came to view the body. He was succeeded by Ismet Inönü, who had masterminded the Turkish forces in the war against Greece, but Atatürk has hardly been allowed to die and his image is still to be seen all over Istanbul today.

World War II

At the renewed outbreak of war in Europe, Turkey opted to remain neutral. Battle did go on in Istanbul, however, as the city became the espionage capital of World War II. No less than 17 different intelligence agencies operated there and half the population seemed to be making a living trading information. Packed with refugees from all over Europe, Istanbul was also something of a safe haven for Jews escaping the Nazis.

Turkey finally entered the war on the Allied side in February 1945 in order to secure a seat at the United Nations when it was founded later that year. During the Cold War Turkey also sided with the West. Under pressure from its new allies, Turkey introduced parliamentary democracy.

Turkey since World War II

The 20th century was hardly the period of calm Atatürk had envisioned. The Democratic Party won the first democratic elections in 1950 under Adnan Menderes, but throughout the decade the country fell into economic decline, to the extend that the army intervened and a new constitution was drawn up.

By 1965, the True Path Party was in power under the ultra-liberal, nationalistic Süleyman Demirel, but the army had to step in once again in 1970 for a further three years. Bülent Ecevit came to power in 1974 and led Turkey into the Mediterranean island of Cyprus, occupying the northern third of the island and causing a seemingly irreparable rift with Greece.

Yet another military coup took place in 1980, suspending all the political parties and also arresting their leaders. Turgut Özal, the leader of the centre-right Motherland Party, was elected prime minister of Turkey in 1983, and subsequently replaced in 1989 by his colleague Yildirim Akbulut.

The 1990’s were a series of political muscle chairs. Süleyman Demirel of the centre-right True Path Party was elected prime minister in 1991, where he stayed until 1993, by which the inflation was running at a whopping 70 per cent. In 1993, Demirel became president and Tansu Çiller became Turkey’s first female prime minister.

In the local elections of March 1994, the people of Istanbul voted in the 40-year-old Tayyip Erdoğan, making him the city’s first Islamist mayor in republican history. Erdoğan used his record as mayor of Istanbul - where even his opponents grudgingly admitted he improved services - as a platform to enter national politics. AKP, under the leadership of Erdoğan, received 34% of the votes in the 2002 general elections. He became prime minister in March 2003.

The year 1998 saw countrywide celebrations of the 75th anniversary of the Turkish Republic. However, just one year later a colossal earthquake struck north-western Turkey with devastating consequences, tragically killing thousands.

But the city continues to grow, not just outwards but upwards. Over the last 20 years a series of high-rise office blocks and luxury hotels have transformed the city’s skyline. Many have been built by large corporations that have grown rich on the back of Özal’s free-marker reforms.

In the meantime, the city has also regained much of its assertiveness and pride, becoming a regular venue for international conferences and sports events. Ambition off the field has been accompanied by success on it, particularly in football. In 2000 Galatasaray, one of the top three Istanbul teams, won the UEFA Cup. Meanwhile the Turkish national team, which invariably plays its home matches in Istanbul rather than Ankara, finished third in the 2002 World Cup. In 2003 Sertab Erener won the Eurovision Song Festival for Turkey with ‘Every Way That I Can’.

As Turkey edges closer to full membership of the EU, efforts are under way to transform Istanbul into a cosmopolitan European city. A long-awaited metro system has finally opened and more infrastructure improvements are currently being carried out, among which a tunnel under the Bosphorus to link the European and Asian shores and rail lines.

In 2007 AKP again emerged victorious (47%) in advanced elections after a crisis over the elections of the new president. Abdullah Gül is the current President of Turkey.

Although no one doubts that the city, for all its bewitching beauty, still faces major problems, a corner does seem to have been turned. For many years, the city slumbered in a kind of post-war gloom - but now the lights are all back on.

With thanks to TimeOut Istanbul

Ottomans at the Gate

The Seljuks had become a force to be reckoned with, growing from a small principality in Anatolia to a powerful army, known as the Ottomans. They ruled over the Balkans, the area all around Constantinople and much of the remainder of the Byzantine Empire.

The fall of Constantinople can be attributed directly to the brilliance of Mehmet II, the Conqueror. In 1451, Mehmet prepared two magnificent fortresses on the Bosphorus for his invasion. Anadolu Hisarı on the Asian side was strengthened, while a second fortress, Rumeli Hisarı, on the European side, was constructed in just a few months. Together, the two fortresses guarded the narrowest section of the Bosphorus.

Mehmet meanwhile brought in master craftsmen from Europe to build huge cannons, and in May 1453 started to build up his forces around the walls of Constantinople. The Byzantines had installed massive chain links across the Golden Horn, so Mehmet took them by surprise.
He bombarded the city walls by night and stealthily transported his ships overland, from a cove behind Galata where the Dolmabahçe Palace now stands, on rollers up the hill and down into the Golden Horn behind the chains. The emperor Constantine XI died fighting on the walls.

Ottoman Rule

Mehmet entered the city on 29 May and immediately went to pray in the Haghia Sophia, which was cleansed and declared a mosque. Many other churches were turned into mosques, although those areas which had not resisted the Ottoman forces were spared. Constantinople was renamed Istanbul, which stems from the Greek ‘Istanopolis’ or ‘to the city’, and declared it the capital of the Ottoman Empire.

Mehmet began the process of transforming Istanbul into a fabulously wealthy capital. He repaired the city walls and built a new mosque, the Fatih Camii, as well as Topkapi Palace and the Grand Bazaar. New districts of the city were established and seaside mansions constructed.

Under Süleyman the Magnificent (1522 - 1566), the Ottoman Empire was at its peak, extending from Vienna to the Arab peninsula and as far south as Sudan. Süleyman’s greatest landmark is perhaps the exquisite Süleymaniye Mosque, built in 1556.

Decline of the Ottoman Empire

After Süleyman’s death, the empire began to decline, falling behind Europe in technological innovation and under threat from Tsarist Russia in the north. The crack Janissary Corps, a much-feared army of former Christians who had been forcibly converted to Islam, rose up against Sultan Mahmut II in 1826 and was slaughtered en masse in Sultanahmet.

This, combined with a series of weak rulers, meant the empire lost more and more land, and gradually Greece, Bulgaria, the Balkans and Egypt won their independence. Istanbul nonetheless retained a kind of faded glory, with some of the magnificent 19th-century buildings, such as the Dolmabahçe Palace and the Yildiz Palace, still popular today.

World War I

The Ottomans entered World War I on the side of the German and Austro-Hungarian forces, a decision that was to prove a fatal mistake. The single bright spot in the whole of the war was the successful defense in 1915 of the Gallipoli Peninsula by a hitherto unknown colonel, Mustafa Kemal.

By the end of the war the Ottoman Empire was in ruins, its armies totally defeated, and Istanbul occupied by an Allied army. The sultan was in the power of the Allies, forced to sign a humiliating peace agreement that reduced the empire to a rump comprising Istanbul and part of Anatolia, while the Italians invaded Antalya and the Greek army marched towards Ankara.

In 334 AD, the city was invaded by Roman Emperor Constantine the Great, an act that was to shape the city’s destiny for the next 1000 years. Constantine crossed the Bosphorus to Chyrsopolis, now Üsküdar. He gained control of the city and declared it Nova Roma, or New Rome, the second capital of the Roman Empire. The city was converted to Christianity (Rome was still pagan) and became the most important capital in the world.

When the city was inaugurated in 330, Istanbul was named Constantinople and, like Rome, was built on seven hills. The surrounding domain was known as the Byzantine Empire. Many of the embellishments brought by Constantine from the far reaches of the Roman Empire can still be seen today, such as the Egyptian Obelisk on the Hippodrome.

Subsequent rulers added sections of city walls, as well as vast aqueducts and new defences. Attacks from outside were frequent, and occasionally from the inside as well. Much of the city was burned down in 532 during the Nike revolt and it was after this great fire that Emperor Justinian had to rebuild the spectacular church, the Haghia Sophia.

Constantinople flourished as a centre for the arts and culture as well as political power until the 8th century when, under Emperor Leo III, a puritanical movement known as iconoclasm evolved. All religious images, including elaborate mosaics and brilliantly coloured frescoes, were smashed and plastered over, while nuns and monks were prosecuted. Fortunately, this radical movement came to an end in 787.

The Cruel Crusader
Enrico Dandolo was the Dodge of Venice and one of the commanders of the fourth crusade, responsible for the occupation of Constantinople in 1204. This was a grim period of the city’s history, when thousands of Orthodox Christians were brutally murdered by the Catholic crusaders.
Before Dandolo died in 1205, he had insisted on being buried in the Haghia Sophia. When the Byzantine emperor recaptured the city in 1261, however, the legend has it that his bones were exhumed and tossed to the dogs.

The first Turks arrived on the scene in the 11th century, coming as nomads from the steppes of central Asia. Under an army general called Seljuk Alpaslan, the Turks defeated a Byzantine army and began a steady invasion of Anatolia. They were kept for another 370 years by a series of crusades designed to unite the Orthodox and Catholic Christians. But eventually, in 1204, the Crusaders turned on Constantinople, killing thousands of Orthodox Christians, plundering the city of its wealth and sending the Byzantine rulers fleeing to Iznik. In 1261, the Byzantines managed to recapture the city, but in its much weakened state, Constantinople was never the same again. The Ottomans were at the gate.