Galata
Exceptionally few people know about Geert Mak’s latest essay on the Galata Bridge, and more generally on Istanbul. Or few Turks should I add. The complexity of Istanbul’s history invites to read “The Bridge”, a wise reminder orchestred by one of the best contemporary journalist, Dutchman Geert Mak. Following the steps of chroniclers, writers and novelists such as Nazim Hikmet, Oktay Akbal, Rifat Ilgaz, Yasar Kemal, and Resat Ekrem who themselves had written about the Bridge at some point, Geert Mak gives a historical dimension of the Eurasian city’s oldest linking point over the Golden Horn. Known through centuries as Nova Roma, Constantinople or Istanbul, the metropolis cultivates distinct points of views geographically, aesthetically and metaphorically. In this context, Geert Mak reminds us that, to some, the Osman Turks’ takeover in the mid-15th century meant “the day the world ended” while others called the fall of Byzantium, the Conquest of Istanbul. Back then, and still today, ea...