Istanbul Guide

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a huge demonstration in Taksim Meydanı (Taksim Sq). Security forces intervened and approximately 40 protesters were killed. Under the presidency of economist Turgut Özal, the 1980s saw a free market-led economic and tourism boom in Turkey and its major city. Özal’s government also presided over a great increase in urbanisation, with trainloads of people from eastern Anatolia making their way to İstanbul in search of jobs in the booming industrial sector. The city’s infrastructure couldn’t cope back then and is still catching up, despite nearly four decades of large-scale municipal works being undertaken. The municipal elections of March 1994 were a shock to the political establishment, with the upstart religious-right Refah Partisi (Welfare Party) winning elections across the country. Its victory was seen in part as a protest vote against the corruption, ineffective policies and tedious political wrangles of the traditional parties. In İstanbul Refah was led by Recep Tayyip Erdoğan (b 1954), a proudly Islamist candi date. He vowed to modernise infrastructure and restore the city to its former glory. In the national elections of December 1996, Refah polled more votes than any other party (23%), and eventually formed a government vow ing moderation and honesty. Emboldened by political power, Prime Minister Necmettin Erbakan and other Refah politicians tested the boundaries of Turkey’s traditional secularism, alarming the powerful National Security Council, the most visible symbol of the centrist mili tary establishment’s role as the caretaker of secularism and democracy. In 1997 the council announced that Refah had flouted the consti tutional ban on religion in politics and warned that the government should resign or face a military coup. Bowing to the inevitable, Erbakan did as the council wished. In İstanbul, Mayor Erdoğan was ousted by the secularist forces in the national government in late 1998. National elections in April 1999 brought in a coalition government led by Bülent Ecevit’s left-wing Democratic Left Party. After years under the conservative right of the Refah Partisi, the election result heralded a shift towards European-style social democracy. Unfortunately for the new government, there was a spectacular collapse of the Turkish economy in 2001, leading to its electoral defeat in 2002. The victorious party was the moderate Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi (Justice and Development Party; AKP), led by phoenix-like Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. In İstanbul, candidates from the AKP were elected into power in most municipalities, including the powerful Fatih Municipality, which includes Eminönü. Elections in 2007 and 2011 had the same result, as did the municipal election in 2014. The result of the 2014 election was a disappointment

The author of many books about İstanbul, American-born academic John Freely arrived in the city in 1960 and spent decades explor ing its historic neighbourhoods. His 1972 book Strolling Through İstanbul , which was written with Hilary Sumner Boyd, is still in print and is essential reading for İstanbul-bound

History The Recent Past

history and architecture buffs.

1925 The Republican government bans Dervish orders; many of the city’s historic tekkes (Dervish lodges) are demolished.

1934 Women are given the vote; by 1935 4.6% of the national parliament’s representatives are female.

1942 A wealth tax is introduced on affluent citizens. Ethnic minorities are taxed at a higher rate than Muslims; many are bankrupted and forced to leave the city.

2006 İstanbul successfully bids to become a European Capital of Culture for 2010, and launches a program of heritage restoration and cultural development that continues for the next decade.