On a more mundane level, my friends and I went to dinner at a kebap
house, the first one in Istanbul.  And, as we enjoyed the meal, they
mentioned that there was a downside to kebap restaurants, and that was
that they were delicious, inexpensive, and hearty....  but that they
were crowding out the Ottoman cuisine, with all of its widely varied
flavors and laborious techniques.  They then added that the
traditional food of Istanbul was the refinement of many years of
hybridization, reflecting the general uneasiness of change, modernity,
and cosmopolitanism.  It was a regionally specific version of the
debates about fast food culture (convenience, taste, expense), but one
that I could very easily relate to, but never would have even noticed
had I not been staying with Turkish friends.

Davin

On Wed, Sep 21, 2011 at 2:43 PM, Ana Valdés <agora...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I was there a week only but all ppl I met (Turks everyone) told me they felt
> the "turkization" and the erasing of the Byzantine past, very well related
> in the book "From the Holy Mountain", by William Dalrymple.
> He did a trip between the monasteries in Syria, Palestina and Turkey and saw
> the intentionality of the erasing of all traces of former cultures.
> Did you enter the Hagia Sofia? Crumbling away with zero maintenance...
> Ana
>
> On Wed, Sep 21, 2011 at 8:48 AM, Michel Bauwens <mic...@p2pfoundation.net>
> wrote:
>>
>> hi Ana, just wondering why you feel 'all the remnants of the past are
>> crumbling away' ? On the contrary, I feel the successive layers of history
>> are very much alive, and also the mixity of the population and the
>> neighborhoods
>> , with so many recent first-generation immigrants from the rural Anatolian
>> countryside, represent quite a mixture of temporalities, etc ... very unlike
>> western europe, where only the buildings remain ... extented families and
>> village cooperative solidarity also remain realities, as far as I could
>> ascertain from speaking with Turkish friends (I gave a lecture to an
>> all-turkish audience yesterday)
>>
>> Michel
>>
>>
>> On Wed, Sep 21, 2011 at 6:36 AM, Ana Valdés <agora...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>> I am bit curious about how did the people who travelled to Istanbul for
>>> the first time experienced the city itself, Turkey and all the
>>> contradictions and the multiple layers of meaning residing in this old city
>>> where all the remnants of it's past are crumbling away. As you know many
>>> Turks want to be a part of Europe and join the EC, but many others want keep
>>> the country's isolation.
>>> Ana
>>>
>>> --
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>>> — Leonardo da Vinci
>>>
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>>
>>
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>
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>
> "When once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth with your
> eyes turned skyward, for there you have been and there you will always long
> to return.
> — Leonardo da Vinci
>
> _______________________________________________
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> http://www.subtle.net/empyre
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