a city is a city is a city

It’s been over a week since we are back and Istanbul itself seems an almost distant phase, probably protracted by the myriad hours of PowerPoint existentialism and the elasticity of London’s gloomy weather, which manages to make gray, dull days as long as weeks. We moved from late döners to even later pizzas, with a diet of transformation and development-speak semantics in between. Gladly, this all translated into a solid, very BUDD-like coda, where we managed to make of the presentation a coherent (meta)-(narrative) out of it all…again.

Thus, dear Istanbul: thanks for the memories. And the memories resurface randomly, which has been a nice method of breaking the chronological boredom of printed flow charts. In the past days I remember events with complete disregard of their direct relation to each other, which is exactly what remembering should be about: an exhilarating mess.

One night, as we were walking Istiklal looking for the worst restaurant in Istanbul, we discussed the challenge of gentrification…an honest dialogue about the complexities of that seemingly inevitable force that was taking over the city. Of course, never did we start the conversation by saying: “OK guys, its time we discuss about The Challenge of Gentrification” or anything similar. It was just a collection of ideas, observations and opinions: what did the Starbucks logo meant, what did access to Wi-Fi implied, what did we honestly expected to experience in such environment. As we talked about this, I remembered how, on the first day, when being given a map of the area, we were suggested to visit Istiklal frequently, as it was the nice road with nice bars and restaurants we could feel safe to be in. Well, but of course. It had a Starbucks, there was Internet in most places and we could be the same we are in London, doing the same things, thinking the same things. The glory of demonized generic space in a nutshell. But at the same time you realize it is never that black or white, that there is so much more behind transformation processes than just assigning words to a SWOT chart. And then, just like that, we accomplished our mission, found the worst restaurant, and switched topic. Street conversations are like serialized novels that are cut short at heightened moments, and grand statements are left waiting for more pedestrian interests like, say, food.

Somehow, however, many of those thoughts, together with a series of others that popped out randomly through other casual conversations, were pretty much what shaped what I now understand as my collected memory of the trip. The difficulty of grasping gentrification and its meaning, the constant contradiction in terms and language, the underlying tension of resistance manifesting in so many ways. Out of all, I found useful to look at it in terms of the struggle of Time. Istanbul seems to have a split personality: speeding up to develop into an international powerhouse of some sort (service hub, event city, specialized centre) while reclaiming the value of its historical memory. Time is at the spine, simultaneously trying to ground itself in the stagnation of the picturesque, and trying to jump as fast as possible, embracing anything that fits into definitions of modernity through capital. From Mimar Sinan to Zaha Hadid in a split second, where the profile of minarets will be interceded with tall rectangular boxes and curved glazing volumes. The race is on, and while the city happens at different speeds, at different parallel times, the cluster of processes seem to hope on the good will of destiny to arrive at the end point unscathed. That seems unlikely, but being able to grasp an instant of such a moment, experiencing the full force of transformation in your face with no time to process it or digesting it until after weeks is a profound experience.

In Gertrude Stein’s words, a rose is a rose is a rose. Likely, Istanbul is a city is a city is a city. Repeated over and over, the same word acquires new meanings, becomes more than one unit, and over time it no longer means what it did at the beginning. And yet, Istanbul tries hard to remember.