The plane was delayed and the Istanbul gate (56) is the most distant of all at Heathrow’s Terminal One. Rough patches punctuated the flight and the visa process in Istanbul was messy. Have $US20 in hand. If you are an American, have $US100. The insult is calculated, though still swallowed by many. In Turkey, one is aware of elements of national interest that may seem trivial in an American imperium: Kurdish separatists in Iraq, the question of Turkish deployment to Iraq despite the country’s deep opposition to the war, the role of Turkey in mediation between Israel and the Palestinians. It’s a long way from Texas.
The cab tracked down by the Sea of Marmora. On the other shore the driver identified ‘Asia’. At Istanbul, famously, two continents meet—but as Turkey presses to be considered by the end of 2004 for membership of the European Union, its Asian land mass and the Muslim religion of most are being used against it. Especially by the right: a French politician asked how a Eurasian nation could be part of Europe, while a German warned that ten million Turks would head for his country if acceptance was granted. Sober EU commissioners talk, instead, of human rights problems and a 22.7 per cent inflation rate.
The hotel recommended to me was in the Sultanahmet district. At breakfast time, on the eighth floor, seagulls as big as chickens strutted the balcony. Behind them were the Blue Mosque, Aya Sophia, the Topkapi Palace and the Bosphorus, with ships lying in its roads in a warm haze. This was once Byzantium, then Constantinople as the capital of the Roman Empire moved east. Nearby are the great works of Justinian’s rule—the cistern (525 ad), the dome of Aya Sophia and across the Golden Horn, the Galata Tower, captured by the forces of Mehmet the Conqueror 550 years ago, when Constantinople ‘fell’.
The boat trip up the Bosphorus to Anadolu Kavagi, on the Asian side, at the entrance to the Black Sea, is one of the great (and cheap) journeys in the world. There are palaces and fortresses, luxury hotels and residences coming down to the water in a manner oddly reminiscent of Venice. The end of the trip is a small village with cheap fish restaurants. Through this strait the Allies intended to provision Russia in the Great War—once the Dardanelles, the narrows between the Sea of Marmora and the Aegean,