Usually I don’t spend time in very touristical areas of Istanbul, I stroll around the historical districts which tours dont take tourists much. Nowadays I walk in the back streets of Uskudar a lot because of the project I am working on. I’m designing a little library next to a building which was an ottoman primary school some hundreds of years ago.
So I dont see many tourists. Only one or two very curious and courageous ones who are able to get a map and stroll alone. Today while I was going down the hill, I saw one climbing the hill with an Istanbul map in the hand and a stupid fes on the head. I couldn’t stop laughing… It wasn’t the only one with fes I have seen so far.Why do tourists wear those weird fes?? Don’t they feel stupid with it? Don’t they look around themselves and notice that noone in Turkey would wear it?
Sometimes the ignorance of the tourists amazes me. They have no idea about Ottoman Empire, Turkish republic , turkish culture, Istanbul, other cities of Turkey…So why are they in Istanbul? They usually go to Italy because it’s a kind of fashion, it seems even Istanbul becomes something like that. I hate this empty tourism. Like the shopkeeper who sells miniatures has told me once : ” Tourists don’t come to my shop to buy miniatures. I have only very special foreigner customers who understand miniature art. Usual tourists who come here aren’t different than gypsies towards art”
Like french, italian, english in Istanbul, like hundreds of americans I see in Florence whole summer or thousands of russians in Antalya…like milions of tourists who destroy , pollute and rape Venice each year more just for commercial reasons far from art, architecture and understanding.
