Turkey: Istanbul

We spent 4 nights and 3 full days in Istanbul (plus two half days that were travel days).  Our guide was Cheri who has lived and worked in Turkey for over 15 years.  She is also the twin sister of a friend of ours from our home church.

I will readily admit that of all the places we planned on going during this trip, Istanbul was at the bottom of the list.   I didn't have high hopes as my experience in Muslim countries / Muslim areas in the past has been abysmal.

I was very pleasantly surprised.  While Turkey boasts the highest number of mosques per capita in the world, my sense is that it is mostly for show.

Cheri confirmed that in a number of her comments.  She gave us a great history of the country from its founding as the Republic of Turkey in 1923 by a man by the name of Ataturk.  The Ottoman Empire began in 1299 and ended officially with the founding of the Republic in 1923.  That's quite a lengthy run for an empire!  As I was walking through the palace of the Ottoman Rulers (see below), it occurred to me that the empire ended only 6 years before my dad was born and less than 50 years before I was born.

Ataturk was a secularist and while he retained Islam as the religion of the country he did so in a way where it is more a part of the culture rather than a domineering religion.  There are parts of Istanbul that literally look like something out of Vienna or Paris or any number of places in Europe.  There are parts that are VERY cosmopolitan.  It is like a conservative version of Europe where people dress conservatively, drink moderately, but smoke like crazy.  The cigarette companies must love this place.

Due to the number of mosques the prayer calls go on seemingly all day long but in our time there I never saw anyone stop and actually pray.  Cheri says that about 30% of the population goes to services but also says those that do go mostly go to be seen versus going because they are strong believers....kind of like when Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire many people converted not because the believed but because it was expedient to them / helped their position etc.

The country is 99.8% Muslim.  Of the .2% that are other religions only about 4,500 people out of 75,000,000 are evangelical Christians.  There once was a thriving Greek and Armenian Christian minority but the Armenians were driven out in a genocide in the early 1900s (350,000 killed and the rest forced marched out of the country...Hitler used this as justification for the Holocaust saying something like "The world won't care or remember what we are doing to the Jews....look at how quickly they forgot about the Armenians.")

The Greeks were forced to leave in an exchange that was a part of the Lausanne Treaty which help found the Republic in 1923.  There basically was a population exchange between Greece and Turkey.  All the Greeks in Turkey had to leave...leave their homes, their places of business etc....and all the Turks who were in Greece had to do the same.

1.1 million Greeks left Turkey for Greece while 380,000 Muslims left Greece for Turkey.  At the time, the entire population of Turkey was around 13 million people.   So it was like kicking out 8.5% of the entire population!  That would be the equivalent of kicking out 28 million people out of the USA right now.

Our first full day in Istanbul we saw many of the major tourist sites starting with the Hagia Sophia aka Church of Holy Wisdom.  Constructed in 537, it was one of the first major churches in Christianity with a massive dome and served as a Christian place of worship until 1453.  To the victors go the spoils and once under the Ottoman Empire it was converted into a mosque and served in that capacity until 1931 when it was secularized under Ataturk and turned into a museum.  It is amazing that it is still standing as it is in a major earthquake zone.

Dome...

This may be the only structure in the world were both Christian and Islamic symbols are in the same structure.  The Christian mosaics were largely plastered over when it was a mosque but have since been uncovered since it is now a museum of sorts....but all the Islamic signs etc are still there as well.

Jesus mosaic (over doorway of picture above)

Don't think you'll see many Crosses in mosques anywhere else in the world....

This mosaic was plastered over and this is what is left after repairs.  What the full picture looked like in the past is in the lower right corner.  Jesus is in the middle and I think the person on the right is John the Baptist.

The 12 sheep represent the 12 Apostles.  There an another segment like it used to adorn the church... 

This is where Emporers were crowned until the Ottomans took over.  The throne was in the center and the 12 smaller circles were representative of the 12 Apostles.

Old baptismal font...again, not going to see this in too many other mosques....

And to AJ the Hagia Sophia was just a big playground...

Topkapi Palace:  A short walk brought us to the palace grounds where the Ottoman Rulers lived.

Inside the 'Harem' quarters where the sultan's harem lived and where he had his chambers as well...Muhammad didn't believe in any kind of art that included icons / people so most of the art here is geometric shapes.  This place is famous of the tiles on the walls throughout the complex....

Look at that baby bump!

Exterior view of the sultan's bed chamber (part with the stripes).  It overlooked the Bosphorus Straights leading up to the Black Sea...

Inside the bedroom of the Sultan (he had two huge beds like this).  Not all the women in the harem shared the sultan's bed, but those who did enjoyed higher status than those who didn't so you can imagine the cat fights that went on in this place!

Palace grounds....there were many different buildings inside the palace grounds including the treasury that holds the crown jewels as well as museums with artifacts important to islam in particular (like strands of hair from Muhammed's beard but also things that the girls thought were pretty lame knock offs like Moses' staff, Joseph's tunic, Abraham's drinking cup, John the Baptists arm.  It was a bizarre museum because you really got the sense that someone said "Hey, let's take this stick and say it was Moses' and that may get more people to come to the museum!"  Same thing with Muhammed's hair...I mean, the true believers were literally worshiping these things but I'm sitting there thinking "For all you know that is the plumber Achmed's beard!"

Nice view of the Bosphorus Straight...

I was told I couldn't take pictures in this area of the Crown Jewels, so I took a picture of S with the HUGE diamond in the background.  It was massive (it's the shiny thing just to the left of the lady with the white hat)

Love these girls...

Huge tree...

Huge tree eating S....

My ladies at the palace....

Cheri had seen the palace so many times so she took AJ to the park and got him ice cream while we toured around the palace.  AJ <3's Cheri...

Turkish Santa...

Fun, sweet candy made outside the palace...

Egyptian Oblisk dating back to 1500BC that was brought to Constantinople / Istanbul after Egypt became a part of the Byzantine Empire.

Base made to hold the Egyptian obelisk.  Notice the depiction of the oblelisk being put in place before being hoisted erect.

The next day we headed to the famous spice markets of Istanbul....

AJ got a little yellow car from here that was a great deal and he has played with it joyfully ever since...

The Basilica Cistern dating from the 6th century was quite impressive.  I didn't think it would be that big of a deal so just V and me went through but later in the day the rest of the family went through it as it really was quite impressive....

This was filled with water during Roman times....

They had an infatuation with Medusa as this column shows.

She deserves LOTS of these....

Lady and the Boy....

We walked by this vendor selling earrings and got an INCREDIBLE deal not only for the girls but for H's business.  Best deal we have gotten so far by far.  This guy just really liked our family and practically gave these things away....

AJ was a big hit in Istanbul.  My only regret is I didn't get a picture of people pinching his cheeks.  That happened as did young women coming up and just kissing him....

Our final full day we took a boat ride on the Bosphorus...

We toured / climbed all over this castle later in the day....

One thing I will say about Turks is that they love kids.  There were a HUGE number of parks like this that we saw all over the city.

The girls thought it was hilarious that this Babushka (grandmother) was doing the exercise circuit in her muslim outfit...

A Christian church that wasn't a museum!

This roadway was built in front of beautiful homes that probably were once owned by Greeks who had to leave.  Many of the homes that used to front the Bosphorus in this area have fallen into disrepair as their values plummeted due to the new, crummy view.

At the fortress....we had a BLAST here...

Proof that Turkey has no personal injury lawyers.  There were huge, dangerous drop offs here, stairs with no railings etc....basically a whole heck of a lot of fun for adventurous people.....but super dangerous for clumsy people!

The little dot in the amphitheater is AJ running around....

After a long day of hiking castles, a well deserved ice cream was had...

Cheri mentioned how Turks are a little weird about dogs.  They don't put down older dogs they just release them so there are all these dogs roaming the streets.  A lady bought meat and water and fed this dog.  It was wonderful seeing her do something like that out of the kindness of her heart for this dog.

Near Taksim Square in the old European Area (or Infidel quarter as Cheri called it).  This is a major square where a lot of protests etc happen so I was pretty surprised to see a large church there with no corresponding mosque....

As we walked down the street back toward the place we stayed I found it interesting that two of the places we have been on this trip, Guatemala and Kenya, were highlighted on posters in Starbucks....

Looks like Europe, doesn't it?

Ice cream like stuff, but what was funny was the way the proprietor made a show of handing out the ice cream.  The customer keeps trying to grab the ice cream but can't seem to come away with it.  I got a video of S going through this a few minutes later...

Walking down out street...

One final point of interest.  Cheri spent a morning with us talking about Islam.  Since she has lived here so long she read the Koran so that she could understand better her friends and people she works with.  She said it is a terrifying book depicting a wrathful 'Allah'  There is one Islamic prayer that goes through all 99 names for God in the Koran...but not one of the names means love.

I also found it interesting that despite the number of wives / mistresses Mohammed had not one of them bore him a son!  He had no male heir when he died!  Wonder what the odds of that are given the number of women he had relations with.

She told us about a highly respected archaeologist that has the Muslim world buzzing right now because it is his assertion that the Mecca of the Koran is not the Mecca in Saudi Arabia but instead is Petra, Jordan.  No archaeological finds around Mecca connect it in any way to the Koran.  The descriptions in the Koran for Mecca however pretty much perfectly describe Petra.  How ironic indeed if all the mosques in the world are pointed in the wrong direction!  In addition, if Petra is really Mecca then the miraculous vision Mohammed had of Jerusalem can be explained fairly easily as Petra isn't very far from Jerusalem at all.

The most important things she said is that no one can honestly read the Bible and read the Koran and think that the two books were written by the same God.  It just cannot be the case given how the Bible specifically names Jesus Christ as the Resurrected Son of God and the Koran repeatedly and very strongly denies the divinity of Jesus.

When we were in Jerusalem we were able to go onto the Temple Mount.  I raised my camera to take a picture of the 3rd holiest site in the Muslim world, the Dome of the Rock.  There was something in me that said "Do not take pictures of this place."  I didn't know at that time that there are many Arabic writings specifically denying Christ on and in this building.  A few minutes later one of the people on our tour whispered to me "There is a demonic image to the right of the door we were just looking at."

I just couldn't believe that would be true so I circled back to that side of the building and took this set of pictures....

I didn't post these pictures when I wrote about Jerusalem because I wanted to research it more.  I thought about how cathedrals used to have pretty scary looking gargoyles on them to keep evil spirits away but then read about how church leaders spoke out against these scary things being on churches so the practice stopped.

Maybe that is what is going on here?  But it was remarkable how little info I could find on the internet about these images.  There is a ghoulish looking figure on the other side of the door as well that I didn't take a picture of but found during my research....

Satanic images on the 3rd holiest site in Islam....  I imagine some would say that these are just coincidental markings on marble, but frankly I hope some leader somewhere in the Muslim world stands up and gets these images off that building.   If not, one has to wonder.  After I took the pictures above I really just felt an overwhelming sadness and prayed for Muslims around the world.

On a less depressing note, here are other favorite photos from Istanbul...

 Movie night!

We left Istanbul for the west coast of Turkey in a place called Kusadasi near the ancient city of Ephesus which is mentioned many times in the Bible.  We have had a relaxing 5 days in this area for some much needed rest.  We have joined up with a tour run by the same company we went through Israel with so tomorrow (May 31) we pick up the pace starting with Ephesus and then we hop on a cruise ship a couple of days from now heading to Greece.

Til then, God bless!