Beyond Tourism: The Faces of Istanbul

Photo by Pedro Szekely

No city captures the attention quite like Istanbul, a place so good they named it thrice. The city that stretched back to the days of the Greeks, the city that guarded Christianity'’’s most precious relics during the dark ages, and the city that transformed the Ottomans from a minuscule desert kingdom to a mighty Empire. According to one of her most treasured writers, the only thing she doesn’t like is clichés.

For four years, I called Istanbul my home, spending the majority of my time in areas that tourists fear to tread. From the European side to the Asian quarter, from the Black Sea to the Aegean Sea, from countless hours spent commuting. No article or book can capture all the angles of Istanbul, but I do hope that the coming paragraphs will ground you into the realities of living in what Napoleon Bonaparte once dubbed the ‘Capital of the world’.

Visiting as a Tourist vs. Living as a Local

Living in Istanbul is not vacationing in Istanbul. What you, as a tourist, get to experience is a rosy dream that is meticulously designed to give you the best possible experience. This is not to say that the city is fake or lacking connections to its more concrete facts of life, far from it. Istanbul is still beautiful, rich, and a melting pot of cultures and history. The place where East and West mix into an awe-inspiring portrait of shared history. But when you decide to make it your home, the rules of the game change.

No longer would you look at the masses navigating the streets of the city with awe.

No longer would you find the overcrowded public transportation a novelty or a curiosity.

No longer would the exchange rate be infinitely in your favor.

The language barrier would cease to be just some cute Turks mispronouncing Arabic or talking in a "gurum burum" fashion.

Once you decide to live there, the masses are breathing down your neck, the overcrowded public transportation system is, well, an overcrowded public transportation system that you're stuck with every single day and you are probably one of the 95% getting paid in a plummeting Turkish Lira.

And those cute Turks? It is only cute when you’re a tourist and not when you are failing to communicate with them on essentials.

The Vastness of Istanbul

Istanbul is the biggest city in Europe with a population larger than London, Paris, and Rome combined. It is half the size of Lebanon, with 20 million people calling it home. When visiting Istanbul you will probably visit the tourist hotspots, cultural attractions, or hubs of business. But the rest of Istanbul is different. Taksim, İstiklal, Mecidiyeköy, Beşiktaş and Kadıköy might be your top destinations but if you're planning to live in those areas you better have a sizable income! For most folks, these areas do not offer the best choice for living in Istanbul.

This vastness is coupled with the harsh realities of daily commutes. As a Lebanese who has been denied the gift of a public transport system, being in Istanbul was my first experience with such a vital apparatus in any modern city. The Metrobüs, trams, Ferries and Dolmuş (a shared taxi service) make up the backbone of the transportation in Istanbul. The advertising agency responsible for advertisement within the public transportation system claimed that it reaches over 3 million consumers everyday just by the virtue of having a captive audience on the various buses, trains, and boats. Commuting for a visiting tourist is nice and novel, but to live in Istanbul means a solid 2 hours every day being spent on commuting from and to work, if you're lucky. For a full year I had over 4 hours of daily commute.

Relocating within the city to cut down on commuting becomes the norm, but for those who work in the hot-spots mentioned earlier, relocating is definitely not an option. Furthermore, this issue takes on a whole new level of logistic mastery if you have a family, where you need to balance work-life with caring responsibilities along with the demanding nature of raising kids. Time becomes your most valuable and least flexible commodity.

The Dreaded Language Barrier

Moving into large cities requires endurance and courage to face several challenges. A top barrier for anyone thinking of moving to Turkey is the language. Modern Turkish language is well…modern. It is a byproduct of the then-newly established Turkish Republic, with the language embracing a Latin alphabet but with roots hailing back to Arabic, Persian and Turkic linguistics.

The languages’ hallmarks are agglutination and vowel harmony. So what does that mean to your average non-Turkish speaker? Simply, a lot of long words made out of additions to the stem word/verb that should vowel harmonize based on the last vowel in the stem word/verb! If that sentence gave you a headache, then be ready for the harsh realities of learning a new language as a grown-up.

Before the Syrian civil war and the influx of many Arabs to the country, Turkish was essential to survive in Istanbul. But now with many small conclaves of Syrians, Iraqis, Yemenis and other Arabic nationalities permeating the landscape, you can, at least in theory, put learning Turkish on the backburner. For an optimal prolonged stay, however, it is a golden ticket. I heard stories of people that loved Turkish soap operas immediately embracing the language or having an easy time learning it.

Personally, I never developed an acumen for it. And from my friendship group, only a handful were able to reach a satisfactory level. But fret not. Arabic and English are now well integrated into most government offices and businesses. Surviving in Istanbul for long periods of time will definitely upgrade your living conditions and open up job and social opportunities if you put in the effort to integrate.

A Cultural Mosaic

After covering the general challenges of living in Istanbul, the vastness coupled with the public transportation system, and the language, the next challenge is choosing where, and around whom, to live. The city is massive and divided into several municipalities with each one being controlled by a political party, which in turn would affect the cultural feel of the area. Beşiktaş for example is a liberal hotbed, while Eyüp by comparison is quite conservative.

Another aspect that defines the general vibe of the area is its economic output and connectivity to the public transportation system. So depending on your job, income, and lifestyle you might find living in specific areas difficult.

As for the Turks themselves, well, it is basically a lottery. In the past few years, the issue of refugees was used extensively in political scheming, with certain parties claiming the influx of foreigners was changing the demographics of some areas. Fear mongering was on the rise, coupled with the Turks themselves being split politically over the war in Syria and the ongoing existential crisis the country is going through, usually featuring the Kemalists pitted against the Islamists. You suddenly find yourself teleported to a reality of modern Turkey that rarely ever materializes when you visit as a tourist. But regardless, you can always count on common decency and courtesy as your allies. People are genuinely good-hearted and racism is the exception not the norm.

Resilience and Struggles

During my time in Istanbul, the golden economic age that came with the AKP's rise was coming to an end. The Gezi park protests in early 2013 were the beginning of a snowballing series of issues and destabilization that would be the hallmark of Turkey for the years ahead. The Lira plummeted, political and security unrest spread, and the country suffered a wave of terrorist attacks.

Throughout it all, Istanbul remained eternal in its own fashion. The history was there, the culture was there, and the people, regardless of their political and social backgrounds, all felt Turkish. All had a nationalistic pride that few Arab countries could hope to match. The good-heartedness of the Turkish people, with their amazing food and hospitality but of course their stubbornness and single-mindedness, still lives on. I hope that I did not paint a dark picture of Turkey's Istanbul. I know that for most relocating to Turkey now is becoming a survival driven imperative.

Another of Istanbul’s great writers, Orhan Pamuk, wrote that the remains of past civilisations in the city ‘inflict heartache on all who live among them’. For anyone that comes from a failing Arab country, for any westerner desiring to experience something new, Istanbul will always have something to administer such a pleasant wound.

There is this momentum that comes with having 20 million souls sharing the same space. Opportunities from every conceivable corner of the human imagination find their way into Istanbul. It is a cosmopolitan hub that few other cities can rival. Living abroad and away from your comfort zone can be challenging and sometimes harsh, but it is in those moments of hardship and struggle that most of us are transformed into a better version of ourselves. There is no age limit on learning and there is no bad or inadequate human, we are all in the process of living, growing and exploring.

Have faith, and try something new, the gift of life is finite indeed.