Istanbul Guide

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İstanbul on Page & Screen

Replete with colours, characters, sounds and stories, İstanbul has been inspiring writ ers and artists for as long as it has been seducing first-time visitors (and that’s a very long time indeed). Those keen to indulge in some inspirational predeparture research should consider reading a book set in the city, or watching a film that has been shot here – there are many to choose from, both local and foreign.

İstanbul in Print Turkey has a rich but relatively young literary tradition. Its brightest stars tend to be based in İstanbul and are greatly revered throughout the country. Fortunately, many of their works are now available in Eng lish translation. It’s not only Turks who are inspired to write about the city. There are a huge number of novels, travel memoirs and histories by foreign writers. Literary Heritage Under the sultans, literature was really a form of religious devotion. Ottoman poets, borrowing from the great Arabic and Persian tradi tions, wrote sensual love poems of attraction, longing, fulfilment and ecstasy in the search for union with God. By the late 19th century the influence of Western literature began to be felt. This was the time of the Tanzimat political and social reforms initiated by Sultan Abdül Mecit, and in İstanbul a literary movement was established that became known as ‘Tanzimat Literature’. This movement was responsible for the first serious attacks on the ponderous cadences of Ottoman courtly prose and poetry, but it wasn’t until the foundation of the Republic that the death knell for this form of literature finally rang. Atatürk decreed that the Turkish language should be purified of Arabic and Persian borrowings, and that in the future the nation’s literature should be created using the new Latin based Turkish alphabet. Major figures in the new literary movement (dubbed ‘National Literature’) included poet Yahya Kemal Beyatli (1884–1958) and novelist Halide Edib Adıvar (1884–1964). Though not part of the National Literature movement, İrfan Orga (1908–70) is probably the most famous Turkish literary figure of the 20th century. His 1950 masterpiece Portrait of a Turkish Family is his memoir of growing up in İstanbul at the start of the century and is among the best writing about the city ever published. Politician, essayist and novelist Ahmet Hamdi Tanipar (1901–62) wrote A Mind at Peace in 1949. Set in the city at the beginning of WWII, it is beloved by many Turks. Another of his novels, The Time Regulation Institute, was released in an English-language edition for the first time in 2014.

Lord Byron spent two months in Constantinople in 1810 and wrote about the city in his satiric poem Don Juan .