En Route

“
Local shops and neighborhood cafes,
small designer boutiques, and art
galleries are popping up every day.
”
depression. Even Ankara, the seat of Turkish politics, has
descended into corruption, conservatism, and authoritarianism.
And yet, during political protests two summers ago,
I watched Turks on Twitter, Facebook, and graffitied walls
prove themselves resourceful, broad minded, and full of
inexhaustible humor. Istanbul is a city of infinite variety
that can absorb anything — from cultures to chaos. And
perversely, after the protests, which followed a decade-long
bull economy, irrepressible self-expression and creativity
have made it richer than ever.
Every field, from modern art to traditional craft and
fashion to progressive design and architecture, is at a boil.
The Istanbul Art Biennial has earned international kudos;
in December last year, the city hosted Turkey’s second
design biennial — the first felt like a cultural rite of passage.
Alcohol-free Islamic nightclubs have become as cool to the
“covered” as craft cocktails are to the coiffed, and coffee
is the newest habit in çay land. Servers at the Heirloom
hotel will make siphon coffee at your table, stopwatch in
hand. At the city’s first micro-roaster, KronotRop, you’ll
get Hario V-02 and Kyoto cold drip, too. But, of course,
Old Istanbul is there behind the diversifying: Cemil Üsta
serves Turkish coffee, and only Turkish coffee, at a few
low-slung tables at Mandabatmaz, which means “[so thick
even] a water buffalo wouldn’t sink [in it].”
Around the city, skills like this and other traditional
crafts are being preserved and celebrated — in the most
modern forms. Since 2011, at Hiç Contemporary Crafts in
Beyoglu, Emel Guntas has stocked silk scarves illustrated
by local label Rumisu and furniture, carpets, and ceramics
radiating with color from Turkey, the Middle East, and
Africa. In 2005 when he moved into the neighborhood,
there wasn’t a shop or cafe in sight; now he’s surrounded.
“Beside the texture of the 19th-century architecture, the
thing that makes the area interesting is its inhabitants —
the remaining Anatolian migrants, the bohemian rich,
the young artists, and tourists,” Emel says. “What makes
Istanbul interesting is the energy that comes from the
mixture of the first and third worlds and from the coexistence
of Eastern and Western lifestyles.”
Karaköy, Ottoman Istanbul’s commercial hub and
still an active port, is where those collisions began. Now
28 JUNE 2018
29
EN ROUTE