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3.97 AVERAGE
3.97 AVERAGE
For the longest time I have felt that Paris, with it revolutions and rebuilding, is the most interesting city in the world. But if I cast my sight east, I land on Istanbul, a city that makes Paris looks like child's play. While Paris might straddle the Seine, Istanbul straddles two continents. Despite its revolving door of governments and being razed and reimagined by Napoleon III, Paris has always been decidedly French. Istanbul, in contrast, has a long history of Romans, Greeks, Jews, and Muslims and was under Ottoman rule that collectively managed this hodgepodge of cultures for hundreds of years. Turkey's one great revolution at the hands of Mustafa Kemal irrevocably altered the demographics and way of life for everyone-- mostly to devastating effects as it resulted in genocide, ethnic cleansing, and forced relocation.
This shift from empire to nation state is brilliantly recounted in Charles King's "Midnight at the Pera Palace: The Birth of Modern Istanbul". In a deft 378 pages, King explains the death of the Ottoman Empire and how Mustafa Kemal (Ataturk) raised forces against Western occupiers to create a new, modern nation. To bring the country out of the past and into the present, everything was overhauled from changing the calendar, providing equal rights to women, and a forced homogenization of the population. At the center of this historical narrative is the Pera Palace Hotel, built in the late 19th century and home to political intrigue in the first half of the 20th. In a combination of social and political history, King draws upon a wide range of research to make this an informative, entertaining, and at times, heartbreaking, read of a nation that completely reimagines itself and the city at the heart of it all.
This shift from empire to nation state is brilliantly recounted in Charles King's "Midnight at the Pera Palace: The Birth of Modern Istanbul". In a deft 378 pages, King explains the death of the Ottoman Empire and how Mustafa Kemal (Ataturk) raised forces against Western occupiers to create a new, modern nation. To bring the country out of the past and into the present, everything was overhauled from changing the calendar, providing equal rights to women, and a forced homogenization of the population. At the center of this historical narrative is the Pera Palace Hotel, built in the late 19th century and home to political intrigue in the first half of the 20th. In a combination of social and political history, King draws upon a wide range of research to make this an informative, entertaining, and at times, heartbreaking, read of a nation that completely reimagines itself and the city at the heart of it all.
It's I guess a pretty decent history of Turkey from ~1898-1950, and there are some great little tidbits in there about the first Turkish beauty queen, retired eunuchs, and other empire-to-nationalism desiderata.
But it's one thing to talk about a largely international city, and another to just ignore non-English sources. It's really frustrating to read about how all these spy networks, refugees, and other bits of the world come to Istanbul, but have the actual city they live in and the laws they work around as nothing as a backdrop. This was especially obvious in the final third, where the book focuses on the Holocaust and refugees, but only mentions Turkish government actions (and inactions) tangentially, when they interacted the protagonist.
It works in fiction, since we care about the protagonist and all. But when the book is nominally a history of a city, it's a bit silly to make the city simply background for people around for 40-50 pages. It makes what would otherwise be a good history into Paris, Je t'Aime.
So between starting out with "Anatolian carpet" analogies and....that, it's not great. There's some good tidbits in there, but that's no reason to go through 380+ pages. Which is a bummer, since a lot of good people worked on this book.
But it's one thing to talk about a largely international city, and another to just ignore non-English sources. It's really frustrating to read about how all these spy networks, refugees, and other bits of the world come to Istanbul, but have the actual city they live in and the laws they work around as nothing as a backdrop. This was especially obvious in the final third, where the book focuses on the Holocaust and refugees, but only mentions Turkish government actions (and inactions) tangentially, when they interacted the protagonist.
It works in fiction, since we care about the protagonist and all. But when the book is nominally a history of a city, it's a bit silly to make the city simply background for people around for 40-50 pages. It makes what would otherwise be a good history into Paris, Je t'Aime.
So between starting out with "Anatolian carpet" analogies and....that, it's not great. There's some good tidbits in there, but that's no reason to go through 380+ pages. Which is a bummer, since a lot of good people worked on this book.
History doesn't get much better to read than this pacy and fascinating story of modern (20thC) Turkey with the comings and goings from the Pera Palace hotel as a reference point. Great to savour it just before I visited Istanbul for the first (and hopefully not last) time
I took the opportunity of a summer vacation in the Mediterranean to brush up on the ancient history and contemporary history of the region. It was in this context that I began reading Charles King’s fascinating history of 20th century Istanbul.
The following remarks notwithstanding, I found Istanbul a great place to visit. There is such a wide variety of things to do, good meals can be found outside of the regular tourist traps quite easily, and wandering off the beaten path yields some terrific finds.
The Nevmekan Sahil, a new library on the Asian side of the Bosphorus comes to mind. The gorgeous dome over the upper reading area is a modern classic. And the entire public library is served by a cafe and table service for the readers. It is to my mind an oasis for the cultured mind.
We also visited Pera Palace, the 19th century hotel and centrepiece of King’s book. The hotel’s original elevator and tea room have been exquisitely restored. You can stay in the Agatha Christie Room or the Alfred Hitchcock room for a small premium. We indulged by purchasing a copy of the Agatha Christie room key where legend has it she wrote Murder on the Orient Express. (She didn’t) And we purchased a Turkish Coffee set.
Of course, you cannot visit Istanbul without visiting Hagia Sophia, the massive basilica built by Byzantine Emperor Justinian in the 6th century AD and converted into a mosque by the conquering Ottomans more than 900 years later. Even if you know nothing about architecture or Roman arches you cannot fail to be blown over by the scale of the church.
Outside of the Basilica is another matter. Attempts to modernize the surrounding environs feels very much Stalinist in its coldness. Hundreds of thousands of people visit this monument each year, and the old ottoman place Topkapi, the basilica to Empress Irene, and the great mosques including that to Suleiman the Magnificent.
The young Turkish government mowed down the surrounding streets some years ago to open up a square. And as King makes clear in the book, they took great pains to modernize other sections north of the Golden Horn inlet as well.
A young regime in a very old and historically very popular crossroads. This is very much King’s story.
The Pera Palace opened in 1870 was Turkey’s first European-style hotel. It had Turkey’s first elevator and became the terminus for visitors taking the trans continental Orient Express train from Paris.
Like the Chinese in the east, the Ottoman rulers badly let the west sprint by them in commerce, technology, and government. On the losing end of WWI, the Ottoman rulers lost control over their massive empire to the Allies, and Turkish nationalists stepped into the breach to salvage some of what the Ottoman Sultan had lost.
In many significant ways, Turkey picked up the least valuable assets of the Ottoman Empire. It didn’t include the oil fields of the Middle East, and they lost the great agricultural lands of the Balkans, but then again they didn’t inherit some of the ingrained cultural tensions of the Balkins either.
Mustapha Kemal Ataturk and his junta forced out the Sultan and the Allies after him. His government radically changed Turkish life. For example, the gov’t mandated last names for Turks starting in 1930. It separated church from state and it got Turks to agree on a unified calendar. It mandated a latinate script for the Turkish language. It even outlawed the fez, for those who have never seen it, a red plush cap with a tassel on it. (You still see them on Shriners in parades.)
It was a really big deal, so big in fact that even today you will see portraits of Ataturk even in the Herz Rent-A-Car kiosk at the beautiful Izmir Airport. Many of the young people today look back fondly at those days. At least he was a strongman who kept the economy moving in the right direction, one fellow moaned to us.
But Turkey still labours under oppressive rules against free speech and freedom of the press. It jails more journalists than any nation in the world. Turkey didn’t have free elections until 1950, and then later jailed and executed its first freely elected president. More juntas followed, three or four of them depending on how you count.
Turkey’s freedom was purchased with a massive exchange of Muslims from Salonica for Greeks, Jews, and Armenians. The Armenian genocide is still not acknowledged in official circles. Turks committed pogroms against Jews and Greeks. Turkish government levied prejudicial taxes against ethnic groups.
In some ways, Turkey followed the same route as Israel. While they dis-established religion, they entrenched the ruling ethnic majority. It is a democracy but stacked a little for the Muslim Turks.
I think what King accurately builds is an argument for Turkey having built a national myth out of the ruins of the Ottoman reign. It got them on the rails and moving, but it has a dark side. It wants an ethnic purity.
Mention to an Istanbulu that the city has 15 million people and he will tell you it has 15 million Turks and one million Syrian refugees. In fact, Turkey has taken in four million Syrian refugees, a gesture of brotherhood with fellow Sunni Muslims, but many urban Turks aren’t happy with it.
Some say that President Erdogan took a calculated risk that saving Europe from a flood of even more refugees would guarantee him entry into the European Union. And entry into the EU would bring more jobs. So far, that hasn’t happened and Turkey has been trying to fully join the EU since 1987.
He seems to be fighting back with make-work projects to keep the unemployed busy.
You won’t find many monuments to the exiled Greeks in Istanbul. Not to the Armenians, or Jews, or many other minorities who made Istanbul such an incredible cosmopolitan centre, and at one time, the greatest city on earth.
Which brings me back to the Hagia Sophia.
With the exception of the Hagia and few odds and sods, the Ottomans buried the Roman presence, as Rome buried the civilizations it was built on, and as our contemporary politicians do through the media every day. Out with the old and in with the new.
King’s book is very good. If I have one small quibble it is that the climax of the story is the Turkish indifference to the Jews of Eastern Europe trying to escape Hitler’s death camps. While I agree this is important history, it feels odd in this particular book as the defining moment of Istanbul or the Turkish people. There are many worse and many better moments to choose.
It is the story of a very young regime in a very old and popular crossroads, much like the hotel itself.
The following remarks notwithstanding, I found Istanbul a great place to visit. There is such a wide variety of things to do, good meals can be found outside of the regular tourist traps quite easily, and wandering off the beaten path yields some terrific finds.
The Nevmekan Sahil, a new library on the Asian side of the Bosphorus comes to mind. The gorgeous dome over the upper reading area is a modern classic. And the entire public library is served by a cafe and table service for the readers. It is to my mind an oasis for the cultured mind.
We also visited Pera Palace, the 19th century hotel and centrepiece of King’s book. The hotel’s original elevator and tea room have been exquisitely restored. You can stay in the Agatha Christie Room or the Alfred Hitchcock room for a small premium. We indulged by purchasing a copy of the Agatha Christie room key where legend has it she wrote Murder on the Orient Express. (She didn’t) And we purchased a Turkish Coffee set.
Of course, you cannot visit Istanbul without visiting Hagia Sophia, the massive basilica built by Byzantine Emperor Justinian in the 6th century AD and converted into a mosque by the conquering Ottomans more than 900 years later. Even if you know nothing about architecture or Roman arches you cannot fail to be blown over by the scale of the church.
Outside of the Basilica is another matter. Attempts to modernize the surrounding environs feels very much Stalinist in its coldness. Hundreds of thousands of people visit this monument each year, and the old ottoman place Topkapi, the basilica to Empress Irene, and the great mosques including that to Suleiman the Magnificent.
The young Turkish government mowed down the surrounding streets some years ago to open up a square. And as King makes clear in the book, they took great pains to modernize other sections north of the Golden Horn inlet as well.
A young regime in a very old and historically very popular crossroads. This is very much King’s story.
The Pera Palace opened in 1870 was Turkey’s first European-style hotel. It had Turkey’s first elevator and became the terminus for visitors taking the trans continental Orient Express train from Paris.
Like the Chinese in the east, the Ottoman rulers badly let the west sprint by them in commerce, technology, and government. On the losing end of WWI, the Ottoman rulers lost control over their massive empire to the Allies, and Turkish nationalists stepped into the breach to salvage some of what the Ottoman Sultan had lost.
In many significant ways, Turkey picked up the least valuable assets of the Ottoman Empire. It didn’t include the oil fields of the Middle East, and they lost the great agricultural lands of the Balkans, but then again they didn’t inherit some of the ingrained cultural tensions of the Balkins either.
Mustapha Kemal Ataturk and his junta forced out the Sultan and the Allies after him. His government radically changed Turkish life. For example, the gov’t mandated last names for Turks starting in 1930. It separated church from state and it got Turks to agree on a unified calendar. It mandated a latinate script for the Turkish language. It even outlawed the fez, for those who have never seen it, a red plush cap with a tassel on it. (You still see them on Shriners in parades.)
It was a really big deal, so big in fact that even today you will see portraits of Ataturk even in the Herz Rent-A-Car kiosk at the beautiful Izmir Airport. Many of the young people today look back fondly at those days. At least he was a strongman who kept the economy moving in the right direction, one fellow moaned to us.
But Turkey still labours under oppressive rules against free speech and freedom of the press. It jails more journalists than any nation in the world. Turkey didn’t have free elections until 1950, and then later jailed and executed its first freely elected president. More juntas followed, three or four of them depending on how you count.
Turkey’s freedom was purchased with a massive exchange of Muslims from Salonica for Greeks, Jews, and Armenians. The Armenian genocide is still not acknowledged in official circles. Turks committed pogroms against Jews and Greeks. Turkish government levied prejudicial taxes against ethnic groups.
In some ways, Turkey followed the same route as Israel. While they dis-established religion, they entrenched the ruling ethnic majority. It is a democracy but stacked a little for the Muslim Turks.
I think what King accurately builds is an argument for Turkey having built a national myth out of the ruins of the Ottoman reign. It got them on the rails and moving, but it has a dark side. It wants an ethnic purity.
Mention to an Istanbulu that the city has 15 million people and he will tell you it has 15 million Turks and one million Syrian refugees. In fact, Turkey has taken in four million Syrian refugees, a gesture of brotherhood with fellow Sunni Muslims, but many urban Turks aren’t happy with it.
Some say that President Erdogan took a calculated risk that saving Europe from a flood of even more refugees would guarantee him entry into the European Union. And entry into the EU would bring more jobs. So far, that hasn’t happened and Turkey has been trying to fully join the EU since 1987.
He seems to be fighting back with make-work projects to keep the unemployed busy.
You won’t find many monuments to the exiled Greeks in Istanbul. Not to the Armenians, or Jews, or many other minorities who made Istanbul such an incredible cosmopolitan centre, and at one time, the greatest city on earth.
Which brings me back to the Hagia Sophia.
With the exception of the Hagia and few odds and sods, the Ottomans buried the Roman presence, as Rome buried the civilizations it was built on, and as our contemporary politicians do through the media every day. Out with the old and in with the new.
King’s book is very good. If I have one small quibble it is that the climax of the story is the Turkish indifference to the Jews of Eastern Europe trying to escape Hitler’s death camps. While I agree this is important history, it feels odd in this particular book as the defining moment of Istanbul or the Turkish people. There are many worse and many better moments to choose.
It is the story of a very young regime in a very old and popular crossroads, much like the hotel itself.
Istanbul has a long history at the crossroads of the world, where two major continents come together. First it was a Greek village, Byzantium. Then it was a Roman capital, Constantinople. Then it became a third pole in the Muslim world, with Mecca and Medina, as the capital of the Ottoman Empire, Istanbul. But this book isn't about any of that, and spends only a little time on those aspects of the city's history.
This book has an initial energy that reflects the maturation of Istanbul into a melting pot of different religions and ethnicities. Muslims, Jews, and many denominations of Christians all shared the same space, as did Arabs, Turks, Greeks, Western Europeans, Armenians, and Eastern Europeans. There was a time in the city's history when, as the author says, "questions were asked on the Grande Rue in one language and answered in another."
But Istanbul declined, and it's with that decline that the story leaves off. It leaves you with a sense of sadness for the passing of a once-vibrant city. In the constant tension between Islamic conservatism and the desire for Westernization, there was a victor, and that victory destroyed the vibrancy of the city, the sense that there was something illicit in the pleasures.
King spent pages upon pages illustrating the failure of the Turkish government in helping Jews escape from Europe during WWII. However, while he does not gloss over the Armenian genocide during the first World War, he does not devote a similar amount of time to it, to an era and an atrocity that has been vastly underreported for nearly a century.
This book has an initial energy that reflects the maturation of Istanbul into a melting pot of different religions and ethnicities. Muslims, Jews, and many denominations of Christians all shared the same space, as did Arabs, Turks, Greeks, Western Europeans, Armenians, and Eastern Europeans. There was a time in the city's history when, as the author says, "questions were asked on the Grande Rue in one language and answered in another."
But Istanbul declined, and it's with that decline that the story leaves off. It leaves you with a sense of sadness for the passing of a once-vibrant city. In the constant tension between Islamic conservatism and the desire for Westernization, there was a victor, and that victory destroyed the vibrancy of the city, the sense that there was something illicit in the pleasures.
King spent pages upon pages illustrating the failure of the Turkish government in helping Jews escape from Europe during WWII. However, while he does not gloss over the Armenian genocide during the first World War, he does not devote a similar amount of time to it, to an era and an atrocity that has been vastly underreported for nearly a century.
adventurous
informative
inspiring
mysterious
reflective
fast-paced
informative
medium-paced
This was absolutely wonderful - one of my favorite books I’ve read all year!
I was brought to this book by the Netflix adaptation of the same name, which is actually quite different but which I randomly found recently and really enjoyed. I’ve become super interested in Istanbul over the past few years, and this was an engrossing dive into a fascinating part of its past. (It’s definitely one of the top destinations worldwide I want to visit now.)
I was especially interested in learning about Mustafa Kemal, of whom I had somehow never heard before the show/this book. I was also fascinated to learn about Turkey’s position in WWII, of which I also knew pretty much nothing before this.
All in all, this is emblematic of the kind of nonfiction I love best: a completely engaging subject brought to life by a talented storyteller. And thank you Netflix algorithm for bringing me here!
I was brought to this book by the Netflix adaptation of the same name, which is actually quite different but which I randomly found recently and really enjoyed. I’ve become super interested in Istanbul over the past few years, and this was an engrossing dive into a fascinating part of its past. (It’s definitely one of the top destinations worldwide I want to visit now.)
I was especially interested in learning about Mustafa Kemal, of whom I had somehow never heard before the show/this book. I was also fascinated to learn about Turkey’s position in WWII, of which I also knew pretty much nothing before this.
All in all, this is emblematic of the kind of nonfiction I love best: a completely engaging subject brought to life by a talented storyteller. And thank you Netflix algorithm for bringing me here!
I enjoyed this book but I found it to be strange. It didn't quite know if it wanted to be a history of all of Istanbul or just a history of the Pera Palace. It was still an interesting read about a part of the world I know so little about.
informative
slow-paced
Check out my review at https://tintededges.wordpress.com/2016/08/22/midnight-at-the-pera-palace/