The Pleasure Of Walking In Istanbul,The City Of Orhan Pamuk

By Vidyadhar Date

15 April, 2016
Countercurrents.org

One of the great joys of being in Istanbul is the ease with which you can walk. On the famous Galata bridge there are walkways on both sides which are so wide, one initially feels disoriented. Some motor car may come from behind, you feel. But that is only for some time. After that you leave behind the constant fear, the trauma caused by the motor car-dictated pattern of India’s roads.

Even in the countryside in Turkey there are wide roads exclusively for walking. I walked some 3 km from the town of Selcuk to the ancient Greek city of Ephesus, on one such road. The settlement is said to have been founded in the 10th cent. B.C. . On the way I saw a board giving a map of a cycling track to several archaeological areas covering a distance of 687 km in the Izmir area.

On Galata bridge connecting the European part of the city with the Ottoman period beautiful sites on the Asian side, there is are separate roads for trams and motor vehicles and of course the wide pedestrian paths.

There is a pedestrian path even on the parallel bridge of the Metro train across the sea. And further beyond on the older Ataturk bridge. I walked on the Ataturk bridge as well.

One has to simply walk along the footpath by the side of the tram track to see the some of the most fascinating sites of the old city, you go past the Topkapi palace, the beautiful Gulhane garden, the Sultanahmet mosque, Aya Sofya , the Grand Bazar and so on.

On the European side, the entire Istiklal Cadessi, the fashionable street is exclusively for pedestrians and a stroll here is a must. But for me it will have a different memory as well since a terrorist bomb blast took place hours after I had walked on it last month. While there are big public spaces in Turkey which are essential for democracy and social interaction among people, there are also restrictions on freedom. There was little coverage of the blast on television. I was alerted by my former Times of India journalist colleague Bharati Sadasivam who is a United Nations Development Programme official posted in Istanbul. I was to meet her the same day.

Later on this road I went to the beautiful church of St Anthony of Padua where I met an Indian nun who wondered how I travelled alone when even local people were afraid of possible terrorist attacks. She told me about her Little Sisters organization which ran an old age of the home in Andheri which I had heard about.That is part of its worldwide work.

Several consulates on this road in the former capital of Turkey have little plaques at the gate which give a history of each building. The plaque at the Swedish consulate mentions that the funding came from parishes to free Christian slaves from Ottoman captivity. The land was bought by the Swedish government in 1757, it is the oldest Swedish property abroad.

At the Russian consulate one learns that the soil for the construction was especially brought by sea from Russia. The building was constructed in the middle of the 19th century in the neo classical style. All this makes for an interesting streetscape apart from the excellent architecture of the area.

In India one can learn from these plaques as a way of reminding us of history, our link with the past. In Mumbai several textile mills and working class areas has been insensitively razed without leaving any trace of the past. We could at least have some plaques outside each building about the kind of structures which existed earlier, the people who lived there. The callousness shows extreme ingratitude to the people who contributed to the metropolis.

India also has much to learn from the priority public transport is given in Turkey. Turkey is economically far more advanced than India and yet, and that is the point, it concentrates on public transport, and much of it is spotlessly clean and very very green. In Istanbul apart from the Metro, the bus and the tram the ferry is a very popular and pleasant form of transport across the Golden Horn and the Bosporous. And elsewhere ferries are widely used. Near the Galata bridge I saw a beautifully decorated ferry serving as a kitchen constantly providing a supply of fish and bread and other foodstuffs to scores of people sitting in the open at the eatery on the seaside.

The bus station in Istanbul for travel to other cities has to be seen to be believed for its size and efficiency. It is spread on both sides of the Otogor Metro railway station, has 324 platforms, caters to some 600,000 passengers daily, is spread over several acres of land and has over 3000 employees looking after an operation of hundreds of buses. Bus transport is privatized but well regulated and efficient and comfortable. There are several such bus stations resembling airports all over Turkey. Travelling is a bit like in a plane. A steward serves refreshments and sprays your palm with a cool perfume.

No one expects such comforts from our Indian bus transport system We need to first get at least basic services..But how criminally neglected it is. The Bombay Central bus depot, for example, is the same as some 50 years ago, no expansion there or anywhere. In fact, there is a sharp deterioration of a once efficient system. Even now, despite all the odds, ST buses do run on time and are more efficient than private buses. But there are serious problems as well. It is a continuing shame that most of the state-managed bus traffic between Mumbai and Pune is operated from the road space below the Dadar flyover. Some people pride themselves on travelling by the air conditioned Volvo buses but don’t care that we need basic infrastructure to run these buses. And the elite is obsessed with the new airport and has neglected for decades the demand for an inter-state transport bus depot. Even the land has not been allotted yet. How can it be ? They are all busy making money. Shamefully, some of the ST buses are covered with Shiv Sena slogans with a picture of Mr Bal Thackeray and exhortation from Sena’s transport minister Diwakar Raote. I noticed several such buses in the last few days at the Dadar depot, if you can call that little congested space. The condition of the private bus system is even more appalling.

Coming back to the theme of walking in Istanbul, walking in the city is also immortalized by Orhan Pamuk, the Nobel prize winning novelist, who is born and brought up in the city and is greatly devoted to it. His novel A Strangeness in my Mind is centred on walking in the city and the protagonist is a street pedlar. Through his eyes, he sees the city. This is extremely important from the democratic point of view. Street vendors are an important part of urban life and democracy. Istanbul’s streets are among the most colourful and vibrant in the world because of such common people and the life, enthusiasm they bring to the city. The common people are also very friendly.

I reached Selcuk by bus late in the evening and was wondering how to go to the hotel when a man I encountered in a restaurant, voluntarily gave me a ride on his motorbike, holding my bag in one hand. He talked of the friendly people of Kashmir with whom he traded in saffron. That gave me a clue. The saffron in Istanbul’s colourful , spice market, at least some of it, may be from Kashmir !

And finally, just as Pamuk’s humble protagonist dreams of a cleaner and more beautiful Istanbul, let us hope for more inclusive, livable cities in our land in spite of the kind of politicians and bureaucrats we have. Rather we will have to educate them to be more humane, people friendly and not servile to big money.

(Mr Vidyadhar Date is a senior journalist who likes to walk and is the author of a book Traffic in the Era of Climate Change. Walking, Cycling, Public Transport Need Priority).