ISTANBUL

People have been living in the territory of Istanbul since ancient times. The city itself was founded around 660 BCE as a colony of the ancient Greek city of Megara and was called Byzantium. A thousand years later, in 324 CE, the Roman emperor Constantine founded the city, naming it New Rome (Nova Roma). In May 330 CE, he made it the capital of the Roman Empire. The name New Rome did not stick, and everyone began to call the city Constantinople in honor of its founder. The inhabitants of the country itself, just like many of their neighbors, until the end of its existence (another 1,100 years), called it the Roman Empire. However, we know it as Byzantium, a term coined by European scholars in the sixteenth century, who went back to the old name of the city. They thought this term was introduced to differentiate between two very different periods in the history of the empire. The term ‘Roman’ was used to describe the empire from the first to the fifth centuries with the capital in Rome. ‘Byzantine’ was used for its eastern part with the capital in Constantinople. For some historians, this begins with the era of Constantine, and for others, it only starts from the seventh century—clearly, it all depends on your point of view!

As befits any self-respecting city aspiring to be Rome, Istanbul also stands on seven hills. However, the modern city, with its sprawling nature, could perhaps have spread across seventy hills as well! Located in a unique, strategic location, the city has naturally been besieged by enemies often, and it is no wonder that a whole series of legends has emerged about the city's defense by heavenly forces. The most famous is the legend of the Intercession of the Virgin, which became the basis for a very popular Orthodox holiday in Russia. During a terrible siege, the emperor and all the people gathered in the church of Saint Sofia to pray. During the liturgy, the holy fool Andrew suddenly saw the Virgin surrounded by saints, who spread her cloak over the city. Soon after this, the enemies lifted the siege and left the city.

It is probably worth adding that both celestial signs, both literal and figurative, foretold the fall of the city and its subsequent capture by the Turks-Ottomans. This included a lunar eclipse on 22 May 1453, just a week before the fall of the city, and an incredibly dense fog with a strange light coming out of it, as well as a fallen icon during the religious procession.

After the Ottoman conquest in 1453, the city officially retained its old name in the Arabized form, Kostantiniyye. However, both officially and unofficially in the Ottoman Empire, alternative names were also used for the capital, such as Dersaadet (Arabic for ‘The Gate of Happiness’) or Asitane, much like the name of the capital of Kazakhstan. In everyday parlance, though, the name Istanbul (Stambul) became more widespread. It is usually written that it comes from the Greek expression εἰς τὴν Πόλιν (meaning ‘to the city’ and pronounced as ‘istinbólin’), but it may simply be a clever transformation of the word Constantinople.

Although the founder of the Turkish Republic, Mustafa Kemal, made Ankara the capital of the new republic in 1923 and later abolished the caliphate, he often visited the old capital and passed away in Dolmabahçe, the former Ottoman sultan's palace. The city officially stopped bearing the name of the Roman emperor only in 1930 when it was finally renamed Istanbul. However, the Greeks still occasionally refer to it as Constantinople, which sometimes leads to minor diplomatic misunderstandings.

The city remained the capital of the Ottoman Empire until its end in 1922. It's important to remember that it was not only the capital of the state and the sultan's residence but also the formal capital of the caliphate, which they claimed after defeating the Mamluks and the remnants of the Abbasid Caliphate when they captured Cairo in 1517. However, the title of the caliph was rarely used by the Ottoman sultans until the end of the eighteenth century.

Constantinople has always been a massive city. During its peak during the reign of Justinian, its population reached around half a million people and for some time, it may have been the largest city in the world. Its population then fluctuated quite a lot, sometimes increasing and sometimes decreasing. The last peak during the Byzantine period was reached around the year 1000 (again, of around half a million), after which it began to decline. By the time of the Crusader conquest in 1204, the city's population was approximately 200,000 people, and by the time of the Turkish conquest, a mere 50,000 remained.

The transformation of the city into the capital of the dynamic Ottoman Empire caused an explosive growth in population, exceeding the previous maximum in less than a century, with a population of approximately 600,000–700,000. Istanbul remained the largest city in Europe until approximately the middle of the eighteenth century, after which it was surpassed by London. A new population growth began, as it did almost everywhere in the world, from the middle of the nineteenth century. By the beginning of the twentieth century, Istanbul had already reached a population of 1 million. Due to various wars and the transfer of the country's capital to Ankara, the population fell to 750,000 by the 1930s.

However, a very rapid growth soon began, associated with mass migration from provincial and rural Turkey. In 1950, a million people lived in the city again, and by 1980, three million called the city home. Just ten years later, that number had doubled to six million! Currently, the Istanbul metropolitan area has a population of 16 million people, making it the second-largest in Europe (after Moscow) and the second-largest in the Middle East (after Cairo).

The ethnic makeup of the capital of the Ottoman Empire has historically been quite diverse. Accurate data is available mainly for the early twentieth century. According to the 1897 population census, of a total population of 1,059,000 in Istanbul, Turks made up 56 per cent (597,000), Greeks accounted for 22 per cent (236,000), Armenians comprised 15 per cent (162,000), and Jews represented 4 per cent (47,000).

Unfortunately, the tragedies of the first half of the twentieth century brought an end to Istanbul's ethnic diversity. Owing to conflicts, deportations, migrations, the dissolution of the empire, and the formation of new states, the ethnic and religious composition of the city's population underwent significant changes, and the proportion of non-Muslim populations gradually decreased.

Istanbul is built on both sides of the Bosporus Strait that separates Europe and Asia. The European part of the city is also divided into two parts by the Golden Horn Bay. To the south, the city is washed by the waters of the Sea of Marmara. To the north, the development reaches approximately the middle of the 30-kilometer strait but not as far as the Black Sea. The cradle of Istanbul is a mountainous cape that separates the Bosporus and the Golden Horn Bay in the south, and the Acropolis of Greek Byzantium was once located there.

Constantine planned his city on a peninsula with a cape on the tip. The main street he designed, known as the Mese (Greek for ‘middle’), still serves as the main artery of the Old City. Along this street, a triumphal column crafted from Egyptian porphyry, erected by the city's founder, still stands. Over the years, the Column of Constantine has suffered damage from fires and earthquakes, which led to its structure being reinforced with iron rings. Because of this, the column itself and the square around it are called encinctured, or çemberlitaş in Turkish, although in many European languages, it is also referred to as the Burnt Column due to fire damage.

During the Ottoman period, the Mese became the main tourist artery of modern Istanbul, having been named Divan Yolu (Turkish for the ‘Road to the Divan’). It was also used as the main ceremonial road for the sultan and other high-ranking officials, just as it was in Byzantine times. The Imperial Divan (Dîvân-ı Hümâyun) was located approximately where the palace of the Byzantine emperors stood and served as the equivalent of a modern-day cabinet of ministers.

The Roman Empire's final golden age coincided with the reign of Justinian, who left an undeniable mark on Istanbul as its greatest builder. His architectural projects were so vast and impressive that the famous historian of his time Procopius of Caesarea dedicated an entire treatise called Buildings to them. It was Justinian who was responsible for the construction of the Hagia Sophia cathedral, an architectural masterpiece for all time and peoples. He also built the exquisite Saints Sergius and Bacchus Church, an architectural experiment based on which many new, bold techniques were developed and transferred to the newly built Hagia Sophia. He also built the huge church of St. Irene after it was destroyed, which is now somewhat forgotten in its quiet enclosure in the front courtyard of the Topkapi Palace. It was also Justinian who constructed the amazing Basilica Cistern, the largest and most well-preserved of the several hundred surviving Byzantine water storage reservoirs beneath the city.

The center of the Byzantine capital was located next to the old acropolis. It consisted of the imperial palace, the hippodrome and the structure that would become the Hagia Sophia Church. The constantly growing and changing palace complex faced the Bosporus on one side and the hippodrome on the other. The hippodrome was the center of public life in the capital, especially in the early centuries after the city's founding. To the north of the palace and the hippodrome, by the order of Emperor Justinian, the Hagia Sophia was later constructed. For a long time, it was the largest church in the Christian world.

Like Byzantine palaces and other structures, this Orthodox cathedral served as a Catholic church for a time after the Fourth Crusade in 1204 and as a mosque after the Ottoman conquest in 1453. It wasn't until 1934 that it was converted into a museum, under the personal directive of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, who was given the honorary surname ‘Atatürk’ (in Turkish, this means ‘Father of the Turks’) by the Turkish Republic's parliament the same year. Before this transformation, the plaster covering the mosaics depicting Christian saints and emperors was removed.

The changes didn't stop there—in July 2020, with the Covid-19 pandemic in full swing, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, the President of Turkey, declared Hagia Sophia a mosque. This came after the Turkish Council of State overturned the 1934 decision to convert it into a museum, arguing that after the conquest of the city, the cathedral became the private property of Sultan Mehmed II and was thus illegally turned into a museum.

As expected, President Erdoğan attended the first Friday prayer in the cathedral after its conversion into a mosque. However, unlike in the times of Mehmed II, who wanted to attend the Friday prayers in Hagia Sophia only three days after the conquest of Constantinople, forcing the Ottoman architects to quickly remove the statues and cover mosaics with plaster, the frescoes and mosaics were covered with fabric, not plastered over.

To the northwest of the city, Constantine built the Church of the Apostles, which was conceived as an imperial tomb. The emperor planned to be laid to rest in the center of the huge church surrounded by the relics of all twelve apostles from all corners of the Christian world around him. Unfortunately for the emperor, this plan, of equating himself with Christ, was not realized. However, the Church of the Apostles remained the second-most important church in the city until the Crusaders’ invasion; emperors were buried here until the middle of the eleventh century. It's no surprise that immediately after the conquest of the city, Sultan Mehmed the Conqueror, who had officially claimed the imperial title of Basileus and referred to himself as the ‘Roman Caesar’ (in Ottoman Turkish, Kayser-i Rûm), ordered the dilapidated church to be demolished and a mosque, modestly named in his honor, to be built in its place. This is also where he would later be buried.

Roughly behind this church ran the first city wall built by Constantine. It covered a very substantial area, beyond which few tourists venture even now. However, just a century later, between 408 and 431, Emperor Theodosius II built new walls that covered twice as much territory. Owing to these massive walls, Constantinople gained a reputation as the ‘most fortified city in Europe’. However, half a century before the conquest of the city, the Ottoman Turks were already controlling extensive territories in the Balkans and would relocate their capital to Europe, specifically to Adrianople (Edirne), which was approximately 200 kilometers from Constantinople. The walls have been perfectly preserved to this day and served as the western border of the city only 200 years ago. In the Byzantine era, the city's territory was never completely built up. Moreover, unlike almost all other cities in the world, Istanbul experienced a period of ‘drying up' that lasted for at least 300 years. The decline that began in the twelfth century was sharply intensified after the crusader occupation. The inhabitants gradually left the city, and their number eventually decreased by a factor of ten.

On the eve of the Turkish conquest, wild forests grew inside the walls in the western part of the city, hedgehogs roamed, and the few remaining Byzantine nobles hunted pheasants and partridges. The only living part of the city was the new suburb on the northern shore of the Golden Horn. Pera (or Galata) became a Genoese trading colony in 1273. Soon, a wall was built around it, and the Galata Tower, which still stands today, was part of that wall. The most famous pedestrian Istiklal Street in Istanbul, beloved by tourists, now extends in the direction of this tower. Historically, this street passed through the Christian quarters of old Istanbul and was simply called the Grand Street of Pera (in Ottoman Turkish ‘Cadde-i Kebir’; in Greek, ‘Μεγάλη Οδός του Πέραν’). However, in 1927, on the fourth anniversary of the proclamation of the Turkish Republic, it was renamed to the familiar ‘İstiklâl’ (meaning ‘independence’ in Turkish). This renaming was seen as an act of defiance against the European intervening powers whose consulates were located on this street at that time.

Interestingly, the Galata Tower features not only in an architectural context but also in a more unique, albeit perhaps slightly frivolous, narrative of the city. This story is told to us by Evliya Çelebi, the most famous Ottoman traveler and the author of the ten-volume Book of Travels (Seyahatnâme). It is dedicated to the first Ottoman aviator of the seventeenth century, Hezârfen Ahmed Çelebi, a polymath and scientist. ‘Hezârfen’ (meaning ‘a thousand skills’ or ‘a thousand disciplines’ in Persian) was a nickname given to very few individuals and was meant to denote universal scholars or polymaths. It was quite different from the nickname ‘Hezapare’ (meaning ‘a thousand pieces’ in Persian), which had a less flattering connotation. For example, the Grand Vizier Hezârpâre Ahmed Pasha became known by this nickname after his body was dismembered into many pieces following his execution.

According to Evliya Çelebi, Ahmed Çelebi became passionate about flying, or rather gliding, and he flew over the Okmeydanı Square, a place for archers built during the time of Mehmed II, nine times using wings made of eagle feathers. One day, he jumped from the roof of the Galata Tower and, catching a favorable wind, glided to Üsküdar on the Asian side of Istanbul. Sultan Murad IV, who happened to witness this flight across the Bosporus, gave the aviator a handful of gold as a reward but still ordered him to be exiled to Algeria as people with such abilities were considered quite dangerous.

In 1996, a feature presentation about the life of Hezârfen Ahmed Çelebi and his flight from the Galata Tower was released with the evocative title Istanbul Beneath My Wings (İstanbul Kanatlarımın Altında). However, nothing about that movie was smooth sailing. Okan Bayülgen, the actor who played Ahmed Çelebi's brother, was shot in the leg by an eighteen-year-old ‘film critic’ named Murat, the same as the sultan. One of the reasons for his unhappiness was how Sultan Murad IV was portrayed in the film, but the sultan's personal life is a completely different story.

After Constantinople was conquered by the Ottoman Turks, it quickly transformed from the center of a small and declining state into the capital of the most powerful and largest empire in Europe. The Ottomans consciously and actively began to repopulate the declining city, including with Christians and Jews. Worthy of his new imperial status, Mehmed II would have two palaces built in Istanbul. The Old Palace (Eski Saray in Turkish) was constructed on the site of an old Byzantine church. It would later become the location of the sultan's harem and a sanctuary for the mothers and concubines of former sultans, and even a place of confinement for princes accused of treason. The New Palace (Yeni Saray) was situated at the location of the ancient Byzantine acropolis.

The Old Palace gradually decayed and vanished entirely; today, the old campus of the Istanbul University, as well as the Beyazıt and Süleymaniye mosques, stand in its place. On the other hand, the renowned Grand Bazaar (Kapalıçarşı), which Mehmed II began constructing almost simultaneously with the Old Palace, not only survived but also functions splendidly to this day. As for the New Palace, where the harem eventually moved from the Old Palace, it stopped being called by this name with the appearance of new palaces, just as New Rome did in its time. The New Palace’s current name is Topkapi (Topkapı Sarayı, meaning ‘the Palace with Cannons Gate’), and it is based on the name of one of the gates.

Starting with Mehmed II, every respectable Ottoman sultan marked their status by building a grand mosque in the heart of the old Byzantine city. Today, this area falls under the administrative district with a straightforward name: Fatih, which means ‘conqueror’ in Turkish. The Süleymaniye Mosque complex, built by the great architect Sinan by the order of Suleiman the Magnificent, contained not only the mosque itself but the mausoleums of Suleiman and Hürrem Sultan (Roxelana), as well as a hospital, school, bathhouse, caravanserai, and free dining hall for the poor. These mosques served as centers of religious and community life for the neighboring quarters.

The chief builder of Ottoman Istanbul was the great engineer and architect Sinan. A former Janissary of either Greek or Armenian origin, he managed to become the chief Ottoman architect and engineer thanks to his field experience and love for mathematics. Over the course of his nearly century-long life, he designed nearly 400 buildings, including the Süleymaniye Mosque. He drew inspiration from the techniques of Hagia Sophia, and his students went on to design the Blue Mosque and the Taj Mahal.

Of course, mosques were not only built by the greatest sultans. In the seventeenth century, right next to the Hippodrome and not far from Hagia Sophia, the relatively unremarkable Sultan Ahmed I built what would cement his place in history, now the most famous mosque in the city, the Blue Mosque (Sultanahmet Camii). Construction on the last great mosque, Yeni Cami (New Mosque), started in 1597, not on the orders of Sultan Mehmed III but his mother, Safiye Sultan. Consequently, it was named the ‘Mosque of the Sultan's Mother’ (Valide Sultan Camii). Alongside it, the famous Egyptian Spice Bazaar (Mısır Çarşısı) was also built. Safiye Sultan was a prominent figure during the ‘Sultanate of Women’, the period when women exerted significant influence on the political life of the Ottoman Empire. She is also known for her extensive correspondence with Queen Elizabeth I of England. This is not the only mosque dedicated to women. Following the example of the Old and New palaces, there is also the ‘New Mother's Mosque’ (Yeni Valide Camii), built in the eighteenth century on the Asian side of Istanbul.

Unlike the subjects of the Roman Empire, the Turks-Ottomans did not have a great passion for chariot races, and this undoubtedly contributed to the inevitable decline of the Hippodrome of Constantinople. The structure was already in a state of disrepair after the Crusaders’s conquest in 1204, but the idea of the Hippodrome as the central arena of the imperial capital remained intact. Moreover, this place continued to be called the Hippodrome, or more precisely, ‘Atmeydanı’, meaning ‘Horse Square’. It remained the center of entertainment in the new Ottoman capital, much like Times Square in New York. Additionally, the area itself and the adjacent neighborhoods were considered very prestigious, and only the most influential people in the empire could afford to live in proximity to the square. For example, Ibrahim Pasha, the grand vizier of Suleiman the Magnificent, had his palace with a prominent balcony adjoining the square.

Of course, the former Byzantine Hippodrome had populist functions reminiscent of the Roman tradition of the ‘bread and circuses’. It served as the main venue for sultan's weddings, circumcision ceremonies for Ottoman princes, coronation ceremonies, or military victories. These events were always accompanied by the distribution of food, money, and gifts on such a grand scale. In fact, in 1582, during the circumcision ceremony of Prince Mehmed, the son of Sultan Murad III, 500 cooks prepared and distributed food at the Hippodrome every day for fifty-two days.

Perhaps the most remarkable spectacle in ‘Horse Square’ occurred in 1656, and its name is somewhat reminiscent of the titles of sitcom episodes. ‘The Plane Tree Incident’ (Çınar Vakası), or in a more literary and poetic way, ‘the Vakvakiye Incident’ (Vaka-i Vakvakiye), was a military uprising that broke out in Istanbul during Mehmet IV’s reign. In the medieval Arabic imagination, Vakvaki was a mythical island ‘east of China’ where only women lived, and this society reproduced through the magical Vakvaki tree, which gradually produced people, or parts of their bodies, instead of fruits. In some traditions, this tree is also associated with hell.

In short, this incident culminated in anarchy, economic crisis, and a power struggle between the Janissaries (the elite Ottoman infantry) and the influential leaders of the eunuchs in the harem, who had temporarily seized power in the empire. The Janissaries, with the support of the sipahis (heavy Ottoman cavalry), rebelled in 1656, resulting in the Janissaries presenting a list of thirty officials responsible for the political crisis to the young Sultan Mehmed IV. Ultimately, the Janissaries executed those thirty individuals, even though the young sultan tried to prevent it. Their heads and bodies were tied to the branches of a massive plane tree in the Hippodrome square, and thus that gruesome spectacle earned its name: the ‘Vaka-i Vakvakiye’.

In the nineteenth century, the Ottoman obsession with Byzantine heritage began to wane. Ottoman rulers officially started using titles such as sultan or padishah, even in Greek, and in international diplomacy, they preferred emperor (İmparator). The main zone of the elite, prestigious construction had shifted from the old Byzantine center to the region of the Bosporus closer to the city. The old, eastern, almost medieval Topkapi Palace had long ceased to satisfy the aesthetic preferences of the new generation of sultans. The Bosporus gradually began to be adorned with the palaces, villas, and pavilions of the Ottoman aristocracy made in the baroque and rococo styles. The pioneer of restructuring imperial complexes in the Western European style was Sultan Abdulmejid I. He was the first sultan to speak French fluently, introducing French law and administration into the empire. He also managed to enlist the support of Britain and France in the Crimean War against Russia.

Garabet and Nigoğayos Balyan, the father and son from the illustrious Armenian Balyan architectural dynasty, who were the principal creators of monumental architecture for the Ottoman court over five generations, began the construction of a mosque in Ortaköy named the Büyük Mecidiye Camii (the Grand Imperial Mosque of Sultan Abdülmecid) in honor of Abdülmecid I. This mosque is noteworthy by its eclectic blend of baroque, rococo, and Ottoman imperial architecture.

Despite his passion for the West, Abdülmecid I continued the long-lasting tradition of the Ottoman sultans of dedicating a mosque to his mother, Bezmiâlem Sultan, entrusting the design to Garabet Balyan. This beautiful baroque-style mosque, better known as the Dolmabahçe Mosque, would later become part of the complex of the magnificent and extravagant Dolmabahçe Palace (Dolmabahçe Sarayı), the brainchild of the architectural genius of the Balyan family. This marked the end of the four-century-long service of the Topkapı Palace as the primary residence of the Ottoman rulers.

As we have understood, here in Istanbul, this capital of the world, located at the crossroads of eras, continents, and seas, amidst religions and cultures, between the lands of the blind and the quarters of the enlightened, you can always stumble upon treasures, both obvious and hidden, ancient and modern. This includes the famous Byzantine mosaics of the Chora Monastery, which have adorned the Kariye Mosque (Kariye Camii) for over five centuries as well as the mosaics of the Church of the Mother of God Pammakaristos, which miraculously coexist in both the Fethiye Mosque (Fethiye Camii) and its associated museum. It all depends on which side of the building you enter from.

Next to the Kariye Mosque are two remarkable objects. One is the sole remaining wing of the Blachernae Palace, known by its Turkish name Tekfur Sarayı. The second is the huge, light-filled Mihrimah Sultan Mosque (Mihrimah Sultan Camii), built by Sinan and named after the influential daughter of Suleiman the Magnificent and Hürrem. Her husband, the Grand Vizier Rüstem Pasha, who planned the execution of Şehzade Mustafa, also had a taste for architecture and commissioned his own mosque to be built by Sinan not far from the Golden Horn waterfront. The small Rüstem Pasha Mosque (Rüstem Paşa Camii) is rightfully considered the most luxurious in the entire city due to its stunning decorations of exquisite Iznik ceramic tiles. This mosque may have greatly impressed Rüstem Pasha’s successor Sokollu Mehmed Pasha, the greatest of the grand viziers of the Ottoman Empire. He was an ethnic Serb from Herzegovina who was born Sokolović. Married to Ismihan Sultan, the granddaughter of Suleiman the Magnificent, Sokollu also adorned his mosque generously with tiles but couldn't outshine Rüstem Pasha's mosque.

Let's move to the other side of the Golden Horn and to another era—the imperial Istanbul of the sweet decline. Armenian architects from the Balyan family invented a luxurious style in which they built, among other things, the charming small Ihlamur Palace (Ihlamur Kasrı) overlooking the Bosphorus from one of the hills around the city. Close to Ihlamur is the extensive Yildiz Palace complex (Yıldız Sarayı), which was the fourth palace of the Ottoman sultans. Raimondo d’Aronco, an Italian architect, was already working on it. He served as the chief palace architect for sixteen years during the reign of Sultan Abdul Hamid II.

Interestingly, Abdul Hamid II was known not only for his palaces made in the European style but also for his love of European theater. However, he couldn't stand tragic endings in theatrical performances. Thus, he would have them modified so there was always a ‘happy ending’ in the theater at his palace—even Violetta from La Traviata would recover. However, his reign was not as rosy as his theater adaptations. The empire was embroiled in wars and began to gradually disintegrate. The Balkan provinces rebelled, and revolution was brewing in the empire. His rule also witnessed the Russian-Turkish War of 1877–78, which we remember from Boris Akunin's The Turkish Gambit. Istanbul might have fallen if it were not for the intervention of European powers. The culmination of Ottoman humiliation was the Treaty of San Stefano, signed in the suburb of Istanbul with the same name, now the district of Yeşilköy. This treaty granted many European provinces in the Ottoman Empire their independence. To commemorate how close Russian troops had come to the city during the negotiations in San Stefano, a Russian Orthodox church-mausoleum was built during the time of Nicholas II to mark the twentieth anniversary of the treaty.

But in November 1914, when the Russian Empire declared war on the Ottoman Empire, formally marking its entry into World War I, this church was solemnly demolished in the presence of a huge crowd. Its history might have ended there if it weren't for a young Ottoman officer and a passionate cinephile named Fuat Uzkınay, who inadvertently became the pioneer of Turkish cinema by capturing this event on film. Thus, the Destruction of the Monument in San Stefano (Ayastefanos'taki Rus Abidesinin Yıkılışı) became the first documentary film in Turkish history, paving the way for future filmmakers like Yılmaz Güney and Nuri Bilge Ceylan. In the same year, Fuat Uzkınay began shooting his first feature-length film with a more mundane title, The Marriage of Himmet-Aga (Himmet Ağa'nın İzdivacı). However, the filming of the movie was interrupted for several years because the film's actors were mobilized into the army for the First World War.

Istanbul continues to change in the twenty-first century. Many abandoned neighborhoods have already undergone gentrification, and the city seems to be becoming more open to the outside world. However, some things remain unchanged, such as the carefree attitude of the plump Istanbul cats and the desire to build grander and more beautiful temples than any in existence. A vivid example of this is the ubiquitous silhouette of the largest mosque in the country built in 2019 on the Çamlıca Hill.