The City Between Two Worlds: Istanbul and the Traveler

They just keep bringing things.

You go for breakfast and somehow it's lunch.

El desayuno español también es muy bueno, Fletcher.

The Spanish breakfast is also very good, Fletcher.

A piece of toast with tomato and olive oil is genuinely great.

I'm not disputing that.

But it is not fifteen dishes.

Anyway.

The food aside, what about the history?

Because as a traveler, the thing that leveled me was walking into Hagia Sophia for the first time.

Hagia Sophia es muy antigua.

Hagia Sophia is very old.

Tiene casi mil quinientos años.

It is almost one thousand five hundred years old.

Built in 537 AD by the Byzantine emperor Justinian.

And the thing that gets me is what it's been across those fifteen centuries: a Christian cathedral for nearly a thousand years, then a mosque for five hundred years after the Ottomans took Constantinople in 1453, then a secular museum for most of the twentieth century under Ataturk, and then a mosque again from 2020.

The building itself is a timeline of competing civilizations.

Es un edificio muy importante.

It is a very important building.

Para los griegos, para los turcos, para todos.

For the Greeks, for the Turks, for everyone.

And that reconversion to a mosque in 2020 caused real diplomatic friction.

Greece was furious.

UNESCO expressed concern.

The European Parliament condemned it.

Because for a lot of people, Hagia Sophia as a museum felt like neutral ground, a place that belonged to human civilization rather than to any one religion or state.

When Erdogan changed that, it felt like he was making a statement about which story of Istanbul he wanted to tell.

Los viajeros todavía pueden entrar.

Travelers can still enter.

No hay problema para los turistas.

There is no problem for tourists.

That's true.

Non-Muslims can visit during non-prayer times, you take your shoes off at the door, women cover their heads.

And the building is still astonishing.

The dome sits 55 meters above the floor and when the Byzantines built it, it was the largest interior space in the world.

For a thousand years, nothing surpassed it.

Los turcos son muy amables con los turistas.

Turkish people are very welcoming to tourists.

Estambul es una ciudad abierta.

Istanbul is an open city.

That was my experience too, all three visits.

Genuinely warm.

People would see me looking lost and just, unprompted, walk me to wherever I was trying to go.

Which in the Grand Bazaar, with 4,000 shops and 60 covered streets, happened more than once.

El Gran Bazar es muy viejo.

The Grand Bazaar is very old.

Tiene más de quinientos años.

It is more than five hundred years old.

Built by Mehmed the Second right after the Ottoman conquest.

And it was always the commercial heart of the empire.

Spices, silk, ceramics, gold.

The whole Ottoman trading network passed through that market.

Now it's mostly lamps and carpets for tourists, but the bones of the place are genuinely ancient.

El bazar de las especias también es muy bueno.

The spice bazaar is also very good.

Más pequeño, más auténtico.

Smaller, more authentic.

The Spice Bazaar, yes.

And that's actually good travel advice that I wish someone had given me the first time: the Grand Bazaar is the famous one, but the Spice Bazaar two kilometers away is where you get a better sense of everyday Istanbul.

Local vendors, locals shopping.

The smell when you walk in is incredible.

Y el té turco.

And the Turkish tea.

En Turquía, el té es muy importante.

In Turkey, tea is very important.

The çay.

The little tulip-shaped glass.

You're offered it everywhere, by shopkeepers, by people you've just met, and refusing it feels almost rude.

Tea is the social lubricant of that city the way coffee is in, say, Italy or Argentina.

En España también tomamos mucho café.

In Spain we also drink a lot of coffee.

Pero el té turco es diferente.

But Turkish tea is different.

Es muy fuerte.

It is very strong.

Now, I want to come back to the protest angle, because it's the news hook for today.

Five hundred and seventy-six people detained on May Day, all released within 24 hours.

And the question for a traveler thinking about Istanbul is: how does political unrest actually land on the ground?

Is it something you feel as a visitor?

Taksim es famosa para las protestas.

Taksim is famous for protests.

Los turistas van a Taksim también.

Tourists go to Taksim too.

Taksim Square is the symbolic center of modern Istanbul, the way Tiananmen is to Beijing or the Zócalo is to Mexico City.

It's where political life spills into public life.

The Gezi Park protests in 2013 started right there and became a genuinely historic moment, millions of people eventually, about what kind of Turkey they wanted to live in.

Yo recuerdo el Gezi.

I remember Gezi.

Era muy importante para los jóvenes turcos.

It was very important for young Turkish people.

And the authorities' response then, tear gas, water cannons, mass arrests, felt like a warning about where the country was heading under Erdogan.

Thirteen years later, we're still seeing May Day detentions in that same square.

For a traveler, I think the honest answer is: you probably won't encounter that unless you're there on a politically charged day.

But the tension is there if you know where to look.

Estambul es una ciudad normal.

Istanbul is a normal city.

La gente trabaja, come, vive.

People work, eat, live.

And that's maybe the most important thing to say.

Fifteen million people have to get up and go to work every morning regardless of what the government does.

The city I saw was full of young people, coffee shops, bookstores, music, nightlife on the European side along the Bosphorus.

It has that energy of a city that knows it matters.

¿Y el precio?

And the price?

¿Es caro viajar a Estambul?

Is it expensive to travel to Istanbul?

This is actually one of the more interesting parts of the story.

Turkey has had serious inflation problems over the past few years, the lira has lost enormous value against the euro and the dollar, which creates this odd situation where for Western European or American visitors, Istanbul is quite affordable.

Hotels, restaurants, transport.

But for Turkish people, especially those earning in lira, everyday life has become genuinely hard.

Sí.

Yes.

Para los turcos, los precios son altos.

For Turkish people, prices are high.

Para los europeos, es barato.

For Europeans, it is cheap.

Which is one of the hidden ironies of tourism in a struggling economy.

The very thing that makes it attractive to visitors, the weak currency, is a daily hardship for the people who actually live there.

I've seen this in Buenos Aires, in Beirut, in Jakarta.

The tourist and the resident are inhabiting the same city but living completely different financial realities.

Estambul tiene muchos turistas.

Istanbul has many tourists.

Muchos millones cada año.

Many millions every year.

And yet it absorbs them without feeling overrun, at least compared to, say, Venice or Dubrovnik, where the tourists have essentially displaced the locals.

Istanbul is too big, too alive, too stubbornly itself to be consumed by tourism.

It has 15 million people.

The tourists are a fraction of that.

Oye, Fletcher.

Hey, Fletcher.

Antes dijiste 'la ciudad me atrapa'.

Earlier you said 'the city catches you.' Do you know the word 'atrapar'?

¿Conoces la palabra 'atrapar'?

I used it in English when I was paraphrasing you.

You said 'la ciudad te atrapa.' I figured it was related to 'trap.' Like a trap that catches you.

Sí, exacto.

Yes, exactly.

'Atrapar' es 'to catch' o 'to trap'.

'Atrapar' means 'to catch' or 'to trap.' The city catches you, the city captures you.

La ciudad te atrapa, la ciudad te captura.

So 'atrapar' works for, what, catching a ball as well?

Or is it more specifically this idea of being caught or held?

Los dos.

Both.

'El portero atrapa el balón.' Y también: 'la música me atrapa', 'el libro me atrapa'.

'The goalkeeper catches the ball.' And also: 'the music catches me,' 'the book catches me.'

So it's the same word we'd use in English.

'That book caught me.' 'That city caught me.' 'I was caught off guard.' We use 'catch' for all of it too.

There's something satisfying about a Spanish verb that maps so directly.

Sí.

Yes.

Y Estambul te atrapa.

And Istanbul catches you.

A mí también me atrapa.

It catches me too.

Es una ciudad así.

It is that kind of city.

Fifteen centuries of history, a strait between two continents, tea in tulip glasses, bread that makes everything else feel like a compromise.

I'd say that qualifies.