Shall I compare thee to an artichoke? - 16 terrible Istanbul quotes

It seems the ship of fools has docked in Istanbul, and every visiting Tom, Dick and Harry has something to say about its geography, skyline, male brothels and killers who kill. Sometimes hackneyed or hallucinating, other times undersexed or intellectually challenged, the chroniclers of Istanbul range from professional authors to anonymous bloggers to Presidents of the United States. We’ve made a collection of observations that compare the city to everything from vegetables and prostitutes, to parts of the female anatomy. Here’s what we have to say about what they have to say… (By Vanessa Able and Attila Pelit)


East-meets-West, and intricately-woven tapestry clichés

Let’s start by getting over this once and for all: we know from primary school geography class that Istanbul is the only city in the world to straddle two continents, and that it lies along the Bosporus strait and encompasses the ‘natural harbour’ of the Golden Horn. Yes, it’s where east meets west, yes it’s a fabulous melting pot of contradiction, yes the bridges are a handy metaphor, yes it’s much like an intricately woven carpet, no there is absolutely no excuse for world-class writers, travel guides or anonymous bloggers to thrash out these clichés for the umpteenth time.

1. “The finest view of Istanbul is not from the shores of Europe, or from the shores of Asia, but from a bridge that unites them, and lets you see both.”
Orhan Pamuk, Turkish novelist (Mr. Pamuk, you're a Nobel laureate, so we know you can do better than that. This is the sort of quote a tour guide could come up with.)

2. “Ah! Where the Golden Horn meets the mighty Bosporus, where the seagulls flitter and dance above, there I sat longing for bygone days of grandeur and…”
Anonymous blog (One extra black mark to any post-Victorian writer who begins a sentence with ‘Ah!’)

3. “Istanbul is like an intricately woven carpet, a subtle blend of eastern and western cultures.”
From the home page of the “Let’s Go Turkey” website (Probably written by a likable yet underpaid web consultant who was told he had to write something on Istanbul by Friday. Clearly he did the bare minimum and pulled the lamest description he could find straight out of that part of his brain where things like pizza delivery numbers and names of characters on Prison Break are stored.)

Who’s been at the wacky baccy?

Turkey was one of the main suppliers of opium to the UK by the end of the 1800s, and it seems that many visitors of that era and since then have associated Istanbul with an intoxication of the senses, both metaphorically and actually. The following quotes can attest to the hazards of narcotics and their effect on human reason: kids, don’t do drugs! And here’s why:

4. “Istanbul is like an artichoke: when you are finished, there is more there than when you started.”
From ‘Sailing the Turquoise Coast’ by Richard Martin (Charting the probable etymology of this idea: “Hmm, let’s see, Istanbul is like a-a-a… carrot! No, that’s stupid. Istanbul is like a-a-a… potato! No, that won’t do. Oh come on, think… Istanbul is like a-a-a… like an onion! Yes! No, no, not quite… it’s more like a… hang on, I’ll think better after another drag on this blunt…”)

5. “Istanbul, oh, beautiful Istanbul! Oh, the faithful, mischievous, cross and beautiful friend of my sorrows, anxieties, madness and excitement, of my dreams and disappointments! Oh, the indispensable, never-ending affair! Oh, the who knows what number kind of love to be returned to its arms!”
Anonymous blog (This Ode to Oh is even funnier if you read it out loud in the voice of Ferris Buehler’s teacher.)

Same blog (I wish we could publish the entire article): “The tense relation in marriage having become dominated by friendship in time, got accustomed to through its sophisticated taste, and of the impossible-without-him-but-so-difficult-with-him-God! Situation... In spite of his Western education and Mediterranean manners, he is actually an Easterner... The best friend of my adulthood, my close friend, Istanbul.” (Ingredients: A sprig of Joyce’s Ulysses, a pinch of Sartre’s Being and Nothingness, a cup of Proust’s In Search of Lost Time, and a liberal dose of WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT?)

Again, same blog (we can’t help it): “Istanbul and New York are similar. Actually, they are not similar at all.” (Yeah, I changed my mind, they’re actually different. But actually, no, they’re sort of the same. I don’t know, whatever, let’s just call it a paradox and move on.)

6. “The climate is delightful in the extremist degree. I am now sitting, this present fourth of January, with the windows open, enjoying the warm shine of the sun, while you are freezing over a sad sea-coal fire...”
Lady Mary Wortley-Montagu, 1763 (Either there’s been some quite drastic climate change in recent centuries, or the lady had partaken of too many smelling salts: early January in Istanbul with windows wide open? Delightful? Where’s she from, Antarctica?)

7. “Istanbul is like a city of ‘eyes’. The blue eye that appears to be designed for tourists and wards off evil; the star-shaped eye gazing from the crescent of the Turkish flag; the blue eyes of skinny cats slyly walking all around the city like protective spirits; and above all, the deep-looking, long-lashed, beautiful, large and black eyes of most Turkish men and women who are not shy to look in a manner that many a reserved Englander would not do...”
Alberto Manguel, Argentinian writer (Sufferer of surveillance paranoia.)

8. “There is a loud breaking of the waves / As the European culture slaps up against the Middle Eastern culture / As Christianity smashes against Islam / As the horse meets the camel.”
‘Hobotraveler’ (As hippie meets recreational drugs, and then smashes against some pen and paper.)


Get thee to a psychoanalyst!

If the skyline of Istanbul does not inspire a psychedelic episode in the visitor, then it could instigate terror of another variety; the sublimated psycho-sexual kind. Where Joe Bloggs sees an inoffensive dome, our depraved authors see giant mammaries; in the place of an attractive minaret or tower, Freud’s deranged patient sees a threatening phallus. The following writers might have done better to stay at home and spend their holidays working through their childhood traumas from the confines of a comfy couch.

9. “Take the skyline of Istanbul - enormous breasts, pathetic little willies... I was so scared I had to crouch in the bottom of the boat when I saw it.”
Angela Carter, English writer and novelist (Whose husband apparently has a lot to live up to.)

10. “We walked through the street of male brothels. I saw bardashes buying sugared almonds, doubtless with bugger-money – the anus thus about to provision the stomach, instead of the usual other way round.”
Gustav Flaubert, French author, 1850 (Flaubert unfortunately left no listing for this particular part of town.)

11. “Istanbul is like a woman who has been conquered often but still retains her charms.”
“Gateways To Turkey” website (What’s their motto? “Gateways To Turkey – A Website By Men, For Men”?)

12. “Istanbul is like a beautiful girl, she needs gentle and beautiful details, not exaggerated accessories, since she is already extremely beautiful without help of the accessories.”
Quote from an on-line forum (…not that accessories would actually make her look worse or anything, but she just doesn’t need them, well, not exaggerated ones anyway, I mean it would just make her look clustered, although earrings could be nice, but not those big loopy ones, maybe just a nice subtle pair of stud earrings, something to bring out her features, but not gold or anything, that’s too flashy… anyway, that's my pithy simile of Istanbul in a nutshell.)

13. “Istanbul is like a gorgeous prostitute that has been raped over and over and over again. But no matter how much they abuse her, no matter how much they fondle her, no matter how much they trash her, she will always be beautiful.”
Another anonymous blog (Okay Travis Bickle! It’s hard to ascertain what’s more disturbing – that whoever wrote this doesn’t mind putting it up on a website for all to see, that he once walked freely in the streets of this city, or that he added an extra ‘over’ to “over and over.” Either way, yuck!)


Who’s using the family brain cell?

So there’s the clichéd, the drugged, the disturbed, and finally there’s the plain daft: these might well be a case of, “If you’ve nothing clever to say, then don’t say anything at all.”

14. “Istanbul is like an Arabian Nights version of San Francisco, skylines out of a fairy tale, prayer calls from mosque towers, water everywhere…”
Richard K. Morgan, English writer (Guess who hasn’t read their compulsory freshman-year Edward Said? By the way, those ‘mosque tower’ thingamajigs are called ‘minarets', but that’s just a detail. And how many of them are there in San Francisco, exactly?)

15. Here's one by Istanbul Mayor Kadir Topbaş, from the official website of the Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality: “Istanbul is like a black hole, it attracts everything to it...” (…and then crushes it under the weight of a gravitational force so powerful that even time ceases to exist, no light escapes, and all is darkness… much like one of our regular power outages.)

16. “More Muslims have died at the hands of killers than - I say more Muslims - a lot of Muslims have died - I don't know the exact count - at Istanbul. Look at these different places around the world where there's been tremendous death and destruction because killers kill.”
George W. Bush, President of the United States of America (Any comment here is like shooting dead fish floating in a barrel, but we couldn’t resist this one. After much expert interpretation and deconstruction, we think what the president was actually trying to say was, “These heinous attacks in Istanbul are further proof that the main victims of such cowardly deeds are innocent Muslims who are targeted by these murderers.” We do, however, like the creative use of the locative ‘at’ usually reserved for references to battlegrounds: at Waterloo, at Ypres, at Gallipoli, at Istanbul.)