2 days ago
9
When I first visited Istanbul nearly 20 years ago, I spoke with an academic who had lived through Turkey’s military coups and political upheavals – some that had unfolded overnight. He was wise and wary, and though I didn’t fully grasp the weight of his words then, they have stayed with me. “If we’re not careful,” he warned in 2006, “we’ll end up under an authoritarian regime.”
For two decades, his premonition lingered, occasionally breaking through the surface. But last week, the erosion of democratic principles became undeniable. Istanbul’s mayor, Ekrem İmamoğlu, was arrested on charges of corruption after a court ruling.
Fear about the future has returned to a city that is usually loud and relentless. It is in the streets, in people’s faces, in the air. Tens of thousands gathered outside the city hall next to Saraçhane Park, marched through the streets, and protested outside the Çağlayan courthouse. Hundreds of thousands have mobilised nationwide, and the unrest – especially in Istanbul – shows no signs of fading. An elderly woman interviewed at a protest at Saraçhane Park looked into the camera and said: “I thought the youth was asleep. Turns out, they are wide awake.” A young man added: “We won’t turn a blind eye.”
Since moving to Istanbul in 2021, I have been an observer – half tourist, half resident – in a city that may be both the hardest of any to grasp and yet the most alive. If one thing is certain, it is that Istanbul thrives on paradox. It is the only city in the world straddling two continents, constantly navigating the friction between east and west, tradition and modernity, faith and scepticism. Histories collide here every day. You don’t even need to cross the Bosphorus to witness it; a simple walk through Beyoğlu is enough.
From Galataport – a sleek waterfront designed for cruise passengers and Instagram feeds – you walk through strictly religious Tophane, where alcohol remains taboo, butchers shout orders and Palestinian flags hang from balconies. Then, suddenly, you’re in Galata with its Italian architecture, or bustling Tomtom, where customers from wine bars spill on to the streets and church bells mix with the call to prayer. On İstiklal Caddesi, contradictions clash head on – beauty clinics advertising sculpted noses and hair transplants next to women in headscarves and others in crop tops.
Children rummage through trash outside grand consulates. Elderly men walk arm in arm, deep in conversation. By night, queer clubs pulse with music just steps from the fish market. The city itself seems to insist: I won’t surrender. I am always everything at once. Or as the historian Ekrem Işın once wrote: “When we look at Istanbul, we always step into plurality. For Istanbul has never had just one civilisation, but civilisations; not just one history, but many histories; not just one way of life, but countless ways of living.”
Daily life here means yielding to it all – the beauty, the struggle, the absurd. Over the past four years, I have seen my share, and I believe this resilience – this refusal to be flattened into a single story or ideology – is one of the city’s greatest strengths. (Even the language resists absolutes. Turkish, untouched by gender, is fluid and elusive.)
But resilience isn’t immunity. I have watched as economic problems spiralled and inflation soared. Just four years ago, 10 Turkish lira bought €1; now, €1 buys 41 lira. Small coins are nearly worthless. The minimum wage was recently set at 22,104 lira a month, yet in Beyoğlu, renting an apartment for less than 30,000 lira is almost impossible. Many landlords demand payment in dollars. On dark days, my Turkish friends Google “the Great Depression” for solace; on lighter days, they laugh at the casino-like atmosphere. I have observed it all, fascinated and guilty, my euro income shielding me from struggles that aren’t mine to claim.
I was here when the earthquake in south-eastern Turkey struck. It had an immediate effect on life in Istanbul. Everyone I speak to now knows they should have enough supplies for three days, that rope ladders made of lightweight plastic exist, and that the safest place during a quake is the room with the fewest pieces of furniture.
I watched the 2023 presidential election and the aftermath – some fell silent, others screamed with joy. I saw many friends apply for visas to leave Turkey and be turned down. Istanbul is magnetic, metaphorically and geographically, but the barriers between it and Europe often feel unbridgeable (even with three bridges in sight). Applying for a Schengen visa if you are Turkish has become a humiliating ritual – endless paperwork, arbitrary rejections. “It’s like begging for a holiday, and you’re the one paying for it,” a friend said bitterly.
A passport is now not only a privilege but an investment. The current price: 11,281 lira for 10 years. Many abandon travel plans altogether – it’s not worth feeling like a “third-class citizen”. My German passport is a key that opens doors my friends can only dream of. Their reality reminds me of my East German grandmother, who spent most of her life trapped behind a wall.
But I have also seen hope. Hope returned with the municipal elections in 2024. İmamoğlu was reelected. The CHP party won districts it never had before – even Üsküdar, where Erdoğan lives, was taken by a woman. People exhaled. They started talking again. They even dared to speak about the Gezi Park protests – processing that trauma, believing that those years, those brutal weeks, wouldn’t return. Life went on. Ideas spread. A kind of renewal, a kind of uplift. There was space to think, to create, to imagine possibilities. Yes, the lira kept losing value, and life in Istanbul became unbearably expensive. But the fear had dimmed – until the mayor was suddenly arrested. History, once again, took a sharp, brutal turn.
What is happening now is shocking, cruel. And yet it is also what this city knows intimately: nothing is safe. Life can change in a moment. Spontaneity – the very thing that captivated me from day one – isn’t just a cultural quirk; it is survival. When I first arrived, my German habit of planning weeks in advance puzzled my Istanbul friends. “Who knows how we’ll feel next week?” they’d joke. Now I understand. Plans don’t make sense. You never know if you will be able to keep them.
After İmamoğlu’s arrest last week, people adapted immediately, cancelling whatever they were doing that evening and taking to the streets. They defied the demonstration ban, banged on pots and pans in Beyoğlu, threw open their windows and called for resistance. They didn’t let despair win. They didn’t fall silent.
Maybe it is no coincidence that I notice more and more young women in Istanbul cutting their hair into bobs – like in the 1920s. That, too, was a time of upheaval, of shifting worlds, of economic collapse and ideological extremes. But we know how that decade ended, what was lost. The course isn’t set yet. And to change it, one needs a free neck – to stretch, to see what is and what could be. No time to fuss with hair.
-
Carolin Würfel is a writer, screenwriter and journalist. She is the author of Three Women Dreamed of Socialism
