So last week I was in Istanbul with my Sociology class learning about politics and social capital in Turkey. What an odd place. On one hand Istanbul is completely modern, totally gentrified and cosmopolitan with all the fancy stores, western looking people, and everything from Louis Vuitton to Burger King. On the other hand there are many women in headscarves, mosques on every corner, and women can't make eye contact with men on the street because that is taken as a sexual invitation.
Luckily I did not have any scary experiences with men but some of the girls in my program were getting hit on wherever they went.
The programs organized by my class were incredibly cool. I got to go to one of the local private universities and talk with Turkish students about the Kurdish minority in Turkey and how they thought the government should deal with the conflict. I went to the Human Rights Association in Istanbul and talked with a man who told us how they work to reveal human rights violations in Turkey and help people who want more rights. Some of his story was really sad because in one year 25 members of their organization were killed because in Turkey, if you speak against the government you can be labeled as a terrorist. He said that even though people do have rights, no one has constitutionally guaranteed rights, which means that the government can change their mind about what is and isn't allowed whenever they want.
Probably the most amazing experience I had was to talk to the head of the Kurdish national party (the Peace and Democracy Party the BDP). She was a woman who was elected from jail through write in votes. At that time the BDP was not governmentally recognized as a party (and it is easy to exclude parties from parliament in Turkey because they have a 10% parliamentary threshold to even have a member in government) but this woman was elected with over 10% of the votes and she wasn't even on the ballot AND she was in jail for being a terrorist. Absolutely amazing. She said that the parties main goals were to secure women's rights and minority rights in the new constitution. What an amazing person.
Okay onto the fun stuff, below are pictures from some of the places I went.
This is an old palace (I don't remember who's palace it was) and we saw it on a cruise we took on the Bosphorus.
This is a beautiful mosque that we saw from the cruise. I really wasn't kidding about there being mosques around every corner, in just this photo you can see three.
This is the Istanbul modern art museum. It's an old warehouse, right on the water (a mosque behind it). This is as seen from the cruise.
This is a governmental building. The Turkish flag is beautiful.
This photo is a big deal because its me in Asia. Istanbul spans across Europe and Asia and so on the cruise we went to Asia and here I am! My first time in Asia!
One thing I've seen from my travels is that there are Egyptian obelisks EVERYWHERE. This is from an Egyptian king who wanted his symbol here in Constantinople (before it was Constantinople though).
Here I am in front of the Blue Mosque. What a spectacular place. See photos below. At first We thought we might have to cover our hair, but in the end we did not.
The inside of the mosque is beautiful. There are endless paintings, mosaics, and designs. You could honestly look at it for hours.
The reason it is called the Blue Mosque is because the whole mosque used to have a blue background like you can see in this photo.
This is the palace of the kings of Constantinople. Many, many kings lived here. There are so many rooms with crown jewels, sultan clothing, weapons, everything imaginable.
This is how big the complex is.
These are of the entrance to the harem quarters. None of the sultans had wives, they just had harems who were taken care of by eunuchs. There was a mother of the harem who was supposed to be the favorite concubine at the moment. Disgusting I know, but all apart of history.
The whole palace had the most spectacular mosaics I've ever seen. This was the entrance to the princes suite. This is a representation of the Sultan family tree.
I'll let these photos speak for themselves. They are the domes and stained glass windows of the prince's suite.
This is the outside of the Princes suite. Equally beautiful you can see.
The thing about Istanbul is that there were cats everywhere. I probably saw 1000 cats in my 5 days there. This guy was just chilling in the flowers at the palace. I didn't touch any cats but many of the students in my program did. They loved them.
This is the Hagia Sophia from the outside. It was the largest dome church in the world until recently. It might be number 2 or 3 now.
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These are these little gold tiles that used to cover the whole Hagia Sophia. The Greeks? maybe covered them with this yellow plaster, which basically ruined the beauty of these tiles.
These stand for God, Muhammad, and something else.
This is just another mosque we saw. It was built by an incredibly famous (described as a genius by our tour guide) architect. I guess he was the Michelangelo of the Muslim world.
This is the Kariye (Cora) Church. It was started around the 13th century and finished in the 15th. It was completely painted and done in mosaics on the inside. See below!
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