Culture Clash

We are in Istanbul, and strangely it’s a place that I haven’t been to before, despite it being part of Europe. Quite why I don’t know, because this place is certainly worth a visit. It seems on this May 1st holiday weekend that quite a lot of other people had the same thought.
The 1st impression of this place is that by European standards, it's huge. A city of 15 million people with not so many tall buildings. The other immediate impression is that it’s a pretty location, and down town, the old mosques are simply stunning. Throw in good food at reasonable prices and what more could you want? ( A beer at less than $8, actually 😊)
So its quite fun to explore and I always enjoy plugging the gaps in my knowledge of history, although when I asked the guide why the Ottoman empire fell apart, his answer was supremely vague, “corruption”. So, I am going to have to Google to fill that gap.
In the first two of four days here we have visited Hagia Sophia (the worlds oldest cathedral, now a mosque), the Blue Mosque and the remnants of the Roman Hippodrome, as well as the cistern, ( a massive underground water storage that dates from the 6th century AD. We also visited the Topkapi Palace which was the seat of the Ottoman sultans, and there we were one of the first to visit the whole place, since it only opened in full two weeks ago, after a major renovation.
This is a place where cultures clashed throughout the ages. That conflict is neatly summed up in Hagia Sophia being the worlds 1st cathedral, then becoming a mosque, then a museum, and now in the last two years a mosque again. Unfortunately, unless there is a change of President on May 14th, the creeping Islamisation is likely to continue. That’s a sad modern situation that the Sultans would not have agreed with as they quite explicitly did not shut down Christianity in the Ottoman Empire. Despite this growing conservatism, Istanbul is certainly not like many parts of the Middle East, there are no odd looks or hassles for women without covered heads in the streets, but there is no option but for women to cover their heads if they wish to see inside the mosques. Our “girls” dealt with that clash with some innovative forms of head coverings.Читать далее