Balkans, Anatolia, Caucasus, Levant and other Middle East, Iran, Afghanistan, South Asia, occasional forays into southern Italy, Spain or eastern Europe, minorities, the nation-state and nationalism — and whatever other quirks or obsessions lurk inside my head.
The reason that Byzantine Ambassador’s tweeting of Joannes Zonaras’ whine about being stuck on the Princes’ Islands — (“Adalar” or what Jews called, with wonderful syncretism, “Las Adas”) — “the end of the earth” — is funny…
— is that this(below)…
…is how far the Princes’ Islands are from Constantinople. In fact, it was generally considered that exile on the Islands was particularly painfulbecause one could still see the City from there.
But, as the Bard said: “There is no world outside Verona walls…”
(And enjoy Altaras himself, a cute, smart Jewish boy fluent in Ladino, which, from what I gather, is not such a common skill anymore among Turkey’s young Jews. Embarrassed-smile emoji…)
“Neither Camus’s provincial insecurity nor his pride in his own experience is far below the surface. It begins with a detailed list of the deficiencies of colonial Oran, the Algerian city he would go on to use as the setting for his novel The Plague: it has no history, no culture, no “interesting circle,” nothing to do. The streets are dusty, the buildings ugly, the movies bad, the window displays piled with tasteless and outdated merchandise. Some of the girls are pretty, but they wear too much makeup and none of them know how to flirt. There are too many funeral parlors.” — Algeria after Camus: The Missing History of Kamel Daoud’s The Meursault Investigation, Namara Smith
I asked Athanasiadis what’s going on in this photo, why such an architecturally beautiful neighborhood looked not only run-down but completely uninhabited, and it turns out the area is being scheduled for a mass urban renewal project.
Always a worrisome sound. Made me think of Tarlabaşı.
Why isn’t Istanbul/Constantinople here? Naples throughout…reminder of what an age-old first it was in the history of European urbanism. Click for large.
What is new is not the negative image of the West; “Christianophobia” in the East is as old as the Ottomans and it is the flip side of “Islamophobia” of the West. These prejudices are the historical legacies of centuries-long crusades and jihads. What is sad is that the parties see only what lies in front of their eyes; they do not look at a mirror. It is also heartbreaking that paranoia cannot be demonstrated to the obsessed. There is also a high probability that Erdoğan’s extreme anti-West rhetoric is not a tactical choice, but a sincere conviction.
The meaning attributed to the persistently used term “international law” is probably the most indicative sign of the big changes that have taken place in Turkey as of late: it is a self-proclaimed and nationally interpreted “justice” and “our right”. In other words, this is a blatant nationalist declaration of arbitrariness with which “international” law is openly defied on a “national” basis.
If this is the situation, i.e., if in Turkey there is a deep anti-Western conviction and a nationalist alliance, then an expectation of reinstalling Turkey of the past may prove to be a chimera. The changes that occurred in Turkey in the last few years are not some “manoeuvres on policies”; the core body of decision-making has been replaced. The old state has been toppled.
This is a new Turkey that needs to be re-discovered and re-evaluated. Limited ingredients necessitate new recipes.
I like that they dress the women up in a way that recognizes Constantinopolitan Greeks’ deep, deep bourgeoisness and αστισμό — perhaps the most precious thing we lost through that community’s destruction. But Polites didn’t talk with that weird accent and that thick Turkish “λ”. They spoke perfect, accentless Modern Greek.
Anyway, I guess it’s significant and positive that they remain an archetype Greeks are still conscious of.
Balkans, Anatolia, Caucasus, Levant and rest of ME, Iran, South Asia
Me, I'm Nicholas Bakos, a.k.a. "NikoBako." I'm Greek (Roman really, but when I say that in English some five people in the world today understand what I'm talking about, so I use "Greek" for shorthand). I'm from New York. I live all over the place these days. The rest should become obvious from the blog.
Jadde: from Bosnia to Bengal 