Will the real Istanbul please stand up?
Today I ventured into the city again; this time I was in Edirnekapi and Fener on the European side.
As it was a Sunday and the weather was good, there were many families out there with their children on the playgrounds as well as in the parks. It is really nice to see the families having fun together and some of the kids are really cute.
The neighborhoods which I was in weren't anywhere as glamorous as the Taksim or Nisantasi and seem to be more working-class. One very interesting phenomenon that I've noticed is that more than half of the women wear headscarves in these neighborhoods.
Contrast with the glitzy Taksim where headscarves are more often the exception, it made me wonder which is the real Istanbul. Very different lifestyles exist in the city; how do they co-exist together? There are too much differences between different strata of the society in terms of values; I think that a violent clash is a plausibility.
As I read from one of the exchange feedback forms, private university cannot represent Istanbul and Istanbul cannot represent the whole of Turkey. However I still think that there is great hope for the country. It has a really young population and it buzzes with the kind of energy which is only generated by the presence of so many young people.
Well this is just my two cents' worth; there are many things which I don't know yet and I really hope that I can get to know this country better.
As it was a Sunday and the weather was good, there were many families out there with their children on the playgrounds as well as in the parks. It is really nice to see the families having fun together and some of the kids are really cute.
The neighborhoods which I was in weren't anywhere as glamorous as the Taksim or Nisantasi and seem to be more working-class. One very interesting phenomenon that I've noticed is that more than half of the women wear headscarves in these neighborhoods.
Contrast with the glitzy Taksim where headscarves are more often the exception, it made me wonder which is the real Istanbul. Very different lifestyles exist in the city; how do they co-exist together? There are too much differences between different strata of the society in terms of values; I think that a violent clash is a plausibility.
As I read from one of the exchange feedback forms, private university cannot represent Istanbul and Istanbul cannot represent the whole of Turkey. However I still think that there is great hope for the country. It has a really young population and it buzzes with the kind of energy which is only generated by the presence of so many young people.
Well this is just my two cents' worth; there are many things which I don't know yet and I really hope that I can get to know this country better.
posted by shyh jie at 5:49 AM
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