0:08

Hello everyone and welcome to the history

0:10

of Byzantium, episode 284, To the

0:12

City with Alexander

0:16

Christie Miller. Today

0:19

we have an interview with a British journalist

0:21

who was the Turkish correspondent for the Times

0:23

newspaper between 2010 and 2017. He's

0:28

written a book called To the City about

0:31

the people who live along the Theodosian walls

0:33

in Istanbul today. Normally

0:35

I don't touch on the modern world in this podcast,

0:38

but this book seemed ideal for those

0:40

of you who have visited Istanbul or

0:42

plan to and want to know more

0:44

about the people who live there now.

0:48

Alexander Christie Miller spoke to dozens of

0:50

people who live in the vicinity of the

0:52

walls and tells their stories. Most

0:55

of them have seen their lives transformed by

0:57

the changes which have taken place in Turkey

1:00

in the past 50 years. He

1:02

also recounts the story of the 1453 siege

1:05

of the city by Mehmet and

1:07

sees how that event is remembered and

1:09

used by today's political leaders. The

1:12

book is a wonderful read. It really

1:14

taught me far more about life in Turkey

1:16

than any amount of news articles

1:19

or Google searches can. I

1:21

would thoroughly recommend it to any of you

1:23

who want to know more, particularly to those

1:25

of you who've been to see the Byzantine

1:28

ruins and are curious about how they are

1:30

viewed by the locals, the state of preservation

1:32

and the intense feelings that the past can

1:34

provoke. Alexander

1:36

Christie Miller is from Wiltshire in the UK,

1:38

studied in Dublin and was then in Istanbul

1:41

for seven years. He was

1:43

the Times Turkish correspondent during that period

1:45

and his writing has also appeared in

1:47

Newsweek, The Atlantic, Disbeagle and The White

1:50

Review amongst other publications. To

1:53

the City is available now from William Collins

1:55

books and as many of you know, To

1:57

the City is a Greek phrase. Istin

2:00

Poli, which gave us

2:02

the modern word, Istanbul. Alexander

2:06

Christie Miller, welcome to the podcast. Thank

2:09

you for having me on. Not at all.

2:12

It's really good to speak to you. I so enjoyed the book.

2:16

So let's start at the beginning. You were sent to

2:18

be The Times newspaper's Turkish

2:21

correspondent back in 2010. How

2:25

much did you know about Turkey before you went?

2:27

And what was your first impression of the country?

2:31

Well, in fact, I wasn't sent to

2:33

be The Times correspondent. I decided to

2:35

go out there. I

2:39

was working as a researcher on

2:41

The Times foreign desk. And I

2:44

knew I wanted to get into foreign

2:46

correspondence. And I was working on a

2:48

local newspaper at the same time. And

2:51

I got into the car at work one day. And I

2:53

put on the radio. And you know, when you hear a

2:56

you turn on midway through a radio show

2:58

and you hear them talking about

3:00

something, but the vital information of where this place

3:02

is wasn't there. So I was listening to the

3:05

show. And they were describing the music and the

3:07

nightlife and food and everything in this particular neighborhood.

3:09

And then finally, at the end, they repeated that

3:11

it was Istanbul that I was talking about. And

3:13

I thought, hey, maybe I could go down. That

3:16

sort of thing set the idea in my mind. And

3:18

then when I talked to

3:21

The Times, they said their correspondent was leaving.

3:24

So they said I could pitch stories to them if

3:28

I went there. So I sort of slightly went

3:30

there on a slight hope that they might give

3:32

me work. But it

3:35

ended up going very well. And

3:40

to go back to your question, I knew

3:42

before I came to Turkey, I knew very

3:45

little about it. I did a lot of

3:47

sort of fever reading and talking to other

3:49

journalists and that sort of thing and analysts

3:51

before I went out there. But

3:55

it was a completely new move for me. And

3:59

so I went through a lot of things. Yeah, it was a

4:02

fascinating place to arrive to. It was 2010 was

4:04

this time in Turkey when it was

4:10

politically really though there was some tremendous changes

4:12

going on and there was a lot going

4:14

on internationally. You had

4:16

the Syrian uprising

4:18

began fairly shortly after I

4:20

arrived. Endless elections,

4:23

sort of an election almost every year.

4:25

So there

4:27

was a lot to write about and a lot to learn. Absolutely.

4:31

I think that's one of the reasons I enjoyed

4:33

the book so much because sometimes

4:35

when someone's very immersed in a place

4:38

or a topic they forget

4:40

what they don't know, you know, or what

4:42

they didn't know before they started. And

4:44

so you explain things very well as

4:47

from the perspective that most listeners will come to it, not

4:51

knowing that much. So can

4:55

you tell the listeners what your job

4:57

was like as a foreign correspondent? What

4:59

were you expected to do

5:01

with your days? How

5:04

much did they expect you to know what

5:06

people were thinking on the street? So

5:12

it was really it was it was very much

5:16

work was I think I think we should say

5:18

quite seasonal in the sense that if there was

5:20

a lot going on in the country at any

5:22

one time, you might be expected to write a

5:25

story every day. But then

5:28

there might there might be a couple

5:30

of months where there's

5:33

not a huge amount going on of

5:35

a level that would interest a newspaper's foreign

5:38

desk. And so then you spend

5:41

your time working out

5:43

things to write about and sending

5:46

them ideas, trying to

5:48

get them interested and then trying to convince them that

5:50

a certain topic is of level

5:52

of importance that would make an international

5:54

newspaper. And so,

5:56

you know, I was I

5:58

was I was their employees so

6:01

I was able to write for other

6:03

people too so I was writing for

6:05

a few other publications and

6:08

you know I think initially you know you

6:11

work out what's going on from you

6:16

know talking to analysts you

6:18

know following Turkish press

6:24

and you know talking to colleagues and that sort

6:26

of thing and then you know

6:28

as time went on and my language skills improved

6:30

then then I would you

6:32

know you know the time goes on you get more and more

6:35

sort of I say

6:37

with with with the sort of with the

6:39

general political situation but I mean one of

6:41

the things I talk about in the book

6:43

is that you know

6:46

Turkey is such a complicated country I mean I think

6:48

any country is complicated you know it's sort of a

6:50

fat hard thing to say in a way but um

6:52

but you know the better I got to

6:55

know the country the more uncomfortable I became

6:57

with the kind of tone of authority that

6:59

you're expected to take as a as

7:01

a foreign correspondent because

7:04

you know I often thought about the fact that

7:06

if I was writing about England I would be

7:08

quite hesitant to make the same kind of pronouncements

7:10

you know I was I was being called on

7:13

to make about Turkey and the same kind of

7:15

sweeping analysis of political things I would be terrified

7:17

to do that in England and I

7:19

kind of thought it's only really a certain level of

7:22

ignorance and distance that gives me the

7:24

confidence to do that of another country

7:26

and so when so writing

7:28

the book was really a kind of the way

7:30

to try and change that

7:33

relationship slightly and to try and

7:35

and and and write in a

7:37

more ambivalent way and to you

7:39

know meet meet ordinary

7:41

people who were interesting but

7:44

possibly not not the

7:46

kind of people who you would typically have

7:48

in having the news and um and and

7:52

sort of tell Turkey's story through their

7:54

stories really so yeah which

7:57

you do a wonderful job of I mean the book is for you. filled

8:00

with really fascinating glimpses

8:02

into people's lives. How

8:06

easy is it to get to know local

8:09

people because many of them tell you very personal

8:11

details and life stories and how

8:15

hard was that to gain people's trust

8:18

or are people quite willing to

8:20

talk to you? So

8:22

I spoke to a lot of people and

8:25

you know very many of

8:27

them you know didn't end up in the book. You

8:31

know, it's partly the people who I wrote

8:33

about with people who I built a good

8:35

rapport with and also on

8:37

a basic level like I chose

8:40

to write about people who I felt sure were being

8:43

honest with me, who I felt like

8:46

weren't trying to manipulate me, which

8:48

is very often when someone's speaking

8:50

to a journalist or a writer,

8:53

you know, they've got some political

8:55

agenda and they're trying to push

8:57

that or they want you to

8:59

believe something and you

9:02

know people are generally, you know,

9:04

most people are generally pretty open when you are

9:06

writing, you know,

9:11

when you want to ask them about their

9:13

lives and when you particularly one

9:16

thing which made the process

9:18

easier was the fact that I could go in

9:20

and say that I'm writing a book about the

9:22

city walls rather than

9:25

I'm writing a, you know, a

9:27

sort of sensitive political, you

9:29

know, sensitive political subject that there are a lot of

9:31

things I could have gone in with which would have

9:33

probably scared people off. You

9:35

know, there are it definitely varies

9:37

from between different sections

9:39

of society. So for

9:42

example, the sort of

9:45

very conservative Islamic sections

9:48

of society can sometimes be more

9:50

closed in these sort of small

9:52

communities. There are a couple of communities I went

9:54

to which were just very very closed and you

9:56

know, I went to expect someone

9:58

and you could see that there agenda was,

10:00

why is this guy here? He probably

10:02

had some ulterior motive. And I'm

10:04

just going to answer his questions and get rid of them as

10:07

quickly as possible. Interestingly, it

10:09

was also the same with the, you

10:11

know, the room community, the

10:13

Greek, the Greek, you know, I

10:15

recount in the book, I met the

10:18

priest from from the

10:21

monastery at Balochla, which

10:25

is, you know, by Silever Kapur. And,

10:28

and, you know, he was very much like, I

10:31

can't talk to you. And I think I think

10:33

among those communities, there's sometimes a reticence because they

10:35

sort of, they're quite vulnerable, and they

10:38

feel like talking to an

10:40

outsider could bring unwanted attention on

10:42

themselves. But

10:44

there was no shortage of people who are

10:47

happy to talk about their their life. Yeah.

10:50

Yeah, no, it's so interesting.

10:52

And you just get a really nice

10:55

cross section of people in different

10:57

circumstances with who've experienced

10:59

the great change that's gone

11:02

on in the city across the last, you know, 50 to

11:05

70 years. The

11:08

Byzantine land walls provide the kind of framing device for

11:10

the book, most of the people you talk to, that

11:14

you record in the book, lived

11:16

or worked in the vicinity of

11:18

the walls. Why

11:20

did you choose to focus on that

11:22

area for context? Istanbul

11:25

is now a mega city. Some

11:28

listeners may not be aware that the

11:30

majority of people don't live anywhere near the

11:33

walls or even on the same continent as

11:35

the walls. So it wasn't necessarily an obvious

11:37

choice as it might seem to us, as

11:40

people interested in Byzantine history. So when

11:43

did you first discover the walls and why did

11:45

they strike you as an interesting part of the

11:47

city? So

11:50

really, I first walked along

11:52

the walls, I think in 2012 or something, and then

11:54

I came back there to report on the story

11:58

a few years later. And,

12:02

you know, from when

12:04

I first saw them, you know, they

12:06

just struck me as this sort of

12:08

extraordinary piece of urban

12:10

geography that

12:12

encapsulate something which I

12:15

observed about Istanbul, which is it's

12:17

this place where you

12:19

have this extraordinary rich history,

12:23

which stretches back for millennia.

12:26

And you can still see it there in the streets.

12:30

It's often very neglected. And

12:33

all around you, there's also this

12:35

sort of massive

12:37

change going on. And this, you

12:39

know, it is this huge megacity,

12:42

which is just steaming ahead.

12:45

And I sort of

12:48

wonder, how is it that this

12:51

heritage is surviving? And it has

12:53

endured through all this time when,

12:55

you know, this city has

12:57

seen these massive changes, you know, not

12:59

only now, but also in the past.

13:05

It just seems very interesting to me that, you

13:07

know, that you have places somewhere like the walls

13:09

at all, when you think

13:11

that most other European cities or cities

13:13

around the world, you know, that

13:16

their city walls are gone

13:18

or either that

13:20

or they're very restored. So

13:26

it was really that that drew me to them. And

13:28

initially, I thought that I would write

13:30

an essay about them or something like that, right, not like

13:33

a sort of long article. And

13:35

then the more I thought about it and

13:37

the more I started interviewing, I was like,

13:39

you know, I could do a portrait of

13:41

Turkey through this, through this place, because you

13:43

have all these different kinds of communities living

13:45

there. And it just seemed like

13:47

such a rich sort of scene that I thought,

13:49

no, you know, this could be a book. And,

13:54

you know, the other the other way to answer

13:56

your question really is that there's a theme underlying

13:58

the book. of change

14:01

and, you know,

14:04

the sort of fear of change, the

14:07

destruction that change brings, the sort of

14:09

fear of catastrophic change. And

14:11

obviously that's something which is

14:14

genetically absolutely tied

14:16

in with the walls and their construction

14:18

and their history, because, you know,

14:20

they were built as this,

14:23

you know, as a way of obviously

14:27

saving the city from disaster at a time

14:29

when your city being captured and sacked meant,

14:31

you know, the end of the world, you

14:33

know, in a way. And

14:37

then, you know, the story of their capture

14:40

by Mehmet is another sort of episode of

14:42

that. And that's

14:44

something that I feel like resonates in

14:46

the present day in a sort of

14:48

thematic way now that we're also living through this

14:51

period of the immense and,

14:53

you know, potentially catastrophic change. So

14:55

I wanted to sort of tie

14:57

those two things together and the

15:00

walls, you know, were the perfect

15:02

device for that, really. Yeah,

15:06

absolutely. The book is

15:09

obviously dealing with people's everyday

15:11

lives. It's not

15:13

about Byzantine history specifically. So

15:17

what did

15:19

people talk about the walls at

15:22

all in your conversations? Obviously, some of

15:24

these people live in neighborhoods

15:27

near the wall, but they're not looking at the walls. Some

15:29

people really did live right up next to them. And

15:33

were they just another part of the

15:35

life, like another house, another road? Did

15:38

people refer to them as not

15:41

literally Byzantine, but, you know, oh, those

15:43

walls, those Roman walls, you know, did

15:46

the walls as a historical object come

15:48

up at all in conversation or not

15:50

really? No, they did. I

15:53

mean, most of the people I spoke

15:55

to had a sense that they were

15:57

lucky to live in this historic house.

16:00

area with this great history attached

16:02

to it. And that they lived

16:04

in a special place. And

16:10

it depends really on

16:12

which section of the walls you go to, because

16:15

there are many areas of it which are

16:18

very wild and lawless. Some

16:21

of your listeners will probably know that

16:23

the land walls of Istanbul are

16:26

about 200 feet from

16:29

the inside of the inner wall to the outside of

16:31

the moat. So almost calling it

16:34

a wall is misleading, because it's this huge

16:37

section in its environment. And

16:41

often, it's quite kind of lawless. And

16:45

no one is really looking after it.

16:47

So people would sometimes refer

16:50

to it as this place of crime and this

16:52

sort of problem next to them, because

16:56

it wasn't part of their neighborhood. It wasn't

16:58

controlled by anyone. It was a place where criminals

17:00

could go and wear all that sort of thing.

17:03

So you

17:06

sometimes heard it discussed as

17:09

a problematic thing. But then also, I talked to

17:11

people who

17:14

remembered as kids going and exploring around there

17:17

and how much fun they had, kids

17:20

going around in big groups and exploring in

17:22

the animast dungeon and that sort of thing.

17:26

And so clearly, it's

17:28

very kind of, several

17:30

of the people I spoke to, it

17:33

was clearly something that had kind of inspired

17:35

them and made a huge imprint on their

17:37

childhood. One

17:39

of the characters in the book had

17:44

trained as a restoration architect, really

17:46

as a result of having grown

17:49

up around there and seeing these

17:51

crumbling buildings around him. Another

17:54

character in the book, I don't know if

17:56

I mentioned it in the end, in the

17:59

actual text. that

18:01

he had, when he'd been at school,

18:03

he'd done his own project to imagine

18:05

the restoration of the walls in which

18:07

he'd wanted to create a walkway that

18:09

would go across the glass walkway so

18:11

that you could walk along the top

18:13

of them, the whole way along. And

18:18

so I think it's definitely, definitely

18:21

people feel a connection to them. I

18:24

mean, maybe we could talk more about

18:26

their meaning in broader Turkish

18:28

society. But,

18:32

you know, I think it's impossible for anyone

18:34

to live near them and not have a

18:37

sort of strong sense of place, you know?

18:39

Yeah, no, that's really interesting. And I mean,

18:42

there's no particular reason it should, but

18:44

does Byzantine history come up

18:46

in everyday conversation? Because

18:49

this is a question listeners

18:51

ask. Or

18:53

does it seem like Roman ruins

18:56

seem to us in England? Like, why

18:58

would that come up in conversation unless you're specifically

19:01

talking about the Romans? It's

19:04

funny, I mean, obviously

19:06

it's, you know,

19:09

short answer is, you know, it doesn't come up

19:12

hugely often in everyday

19:14

conversation. But actually, I'd never

19:16

thought about it before. But the comparison

19:18

between Britain,

19:21

you know, Roman history in Britain is quite a

19:23

good one. Because I think in Britain, we also

19:25

have a sense that Roman

19:27

ruins are somehow foreign. You know, the Romans

19:29

came here and then they left. And then

19:33

it's not quite, you know, it's

19:36

our heritage, but it's not, but it's somehow

19:38

also slightly foreign. And in Turkey,

19:41

it's the same. But

19:44

that foreignness is a far more charged

19:46

issue, because, you know, the Turkish republic

19:49

is 100 years old. And

19:52

when Turkey was

19:55

created, you know,

19:57

after the First World War, There

20:01

have been this assets by the victorious

20:03

allies. Off the mid autumn an empire

20:05

was defeated a level one in the

20:07

allies and try to impose this treaty

20:09

that would effectively have dismembered. Ah,

20:11

Anatolia and Tom you know hearts

20:14

would have gone to the Greeks

20:16

on been and I would be

20:18

at a part would have gone

20:20

to to different different countries and

20:22

I'm. Ah, and

20:24

I'm. I'm this really

20:26

helps create an attack His

20:28

psyche this beer as dismemberment

20:30

in the sphere as. Foreign.

20:33

Powers coming into taking and and away from

20:35

them. And he knew that it also

20:37

been preceded by the by the Balkan Wars

20:39

and really a sort of. Bad.

20:42

Nearly a century of we'll sandwich

20:45

the Ottoman Empire slated to not

20:47

really as a result of it's

20:49

Christian. Ah, constituents. Ah, I'm

20:51

deciding they wanted their own states and

20:53

you know need to sort of the

20:55

with unity of nationalism taking hold. On.

20:58

And on and say. As

21:01

a very deep fear among a

21:03

lot of people entirety that that

21:05

buys whoring attention to the non

21:07

Muslim heritage. I'm a not

21:09

in. It you know not in

21:11

in Istanbul in Anatolia. You. Know there's

21:13

an agenda rose they they worry

21:15

that that that you're basically these

21:17

people my common what's take stuff

21:20

back. On and dumb.

21:23

I. Think it's. Possibly

21:25

not quite as intense now as

21:27

it used to be. On

21:29

thoughts is I must still law

21:32

and dumb. And as a

21:34

citizen. United. Elvis. Very

21:36

lot of people who are fascinated by

21:38

and. Interested in the present time

21:40

history and also feel a sense of.

21:43

Continuity. Between. You.

21:45

Know themselves as residents of Istanbul

21:47

and costs residents and like this

21:49

can a multicultural idea. That

21:51

as also in the national side as says

21:54

a lot of Canada. And. Ah

21:56

yes of his finity our sights about

21:58

to the Byzantine Pass. to some degree.

22:01

Yeah. But that was one of

22:03

the things I found most interesting about the book,

22:05

because listeners

22:07

who come on the tours with me,

22:10

with the nicest of intentions, I think

22:13

sort of probe as to why

22:15

the Byzantine ruins aren't presented like

22:17

they might be in a Western

22:19

European city as sort of

22:22

beautifully preserved bits of the past. And

22:24

so I think they understand there's a

22:26

sense of tension with modern

22:29

Turkey and its relationship with the past. But you bring that

22:31

out in the book really well and in

22:33

a way that really helps me understand

22:35

things. Because I think

22:38

particularly as a British person, obviously

22:40

Western nationalism

22:43

is sort of what set the world on this

22:45

path, the sort of nation state. And

22:47

I think particularly in Britain, where the

22:49

geography makes it very clear where Britain

22:52

is and isn't. We just take nationalism

22:54

for granted. Whereas somewhere like Turkey, it's

22:56

a much newer idea. And

22:59

you sort of talk about the conflicts

23:02

with Greek people, with Armenian people,

23:05

even with Kurdish and

23:07

Alevi minorities and things, not

23:09

to get too much into the politics of it, but just that what

23:13

it means to be Turkish feels much more

23:15

fragile and much more contested.

23:17

Was that your sense

23:20

of it as an outsider? Yeah.

23:25

I mean, you could say fragile, or

23:27

you could say very strong. It's

23:31

like, in a way, maybe we're

23:33

saying the same thing. But yeah,

23:35

there's this nationalism in Turkey is

23:42

an incredibly, it really is the glue

23:44

that holds

23:46

the country together, nationalism and

23:48

Islam. And

23:50

partly as a result

23:54

of the fact that

23:56

it was consolidated as a nation state.

24:00

recently. And also, you know,

24:02

when you talk to Turkish people

24:04

and ask them about where they come from,

24:06

you know, very often if they go back,

24:08

you know, they, you know, a lot of

24:13

turkeys, you know, a lot

24:15

of a lot of Turks can trace

24:18

their roots back to the Balkans or back

24:20

to, you know, other places. And

24:25

it's, what was I saying?

24:30

Yeah, so the other interesting thing

24:32

about Turkey is that it's

24:36

a post-imperial country. So, you know, you

24:38

have, it has, Turks have this sense

24:40

of themselves as the heirs to

24:42

this great empire, you know, the Ottoman Empire

24:45

and, or, you know, a lot of

24:47

Turks feel that way. And

24:51

so, you know, that

24:54

creates kind of, you know, a sort

24:56

of certain, you

24:59

know, nationalist sentiment. But

25:01

it's also in some characteristics

25:04

of a post-colonial society as

25:06

well, in that, you

25:08

know, Ataturk, who founded the

25:10

country and who was this great hero

25:12

in that he kicked out the European

25:14

powers and he kicked out Greece. He,

25:18

you know, having won that, he then

25:20

set the country on this sort of

25:22

radicalized Western course. And,

25:26

and so, you know, a

25:28

lot of Turks who didn't like that have

25:30

kind of grown up with this slight resentment of

25:32

feeling that they've had a foreign culture imposed on

25:34

them. So

25:37

between those two things, that's sort

25:39

of post-colonial mentality and that post-imperial

25:41

mentality. It makes for a very

25:43

kind of strident form

25:45

of nationalism sometimes. And

25:48

yeah, you know, I think people live

25:50

with a sense of fruit

25:53

that particularly in

25:55

a country like Britain, I think we find hard

25:57

to, hard to appreciate because, you know, we haven't

26:00

based in the same way. Yeah,

26:02

absolutely. I

26:05

won't talk more about modern politics because I try

26:07

to avoid it. But that's one of the most

26:09

interesting parts of the book. And I think, as

26:11

I said before, it will really

26:14

appeal to people who aren't very

26:17

knowledgeable about modern Turkish politics because you

26:19

explain it very well. And so

26:23

I really enjoyed that. So on a lighter

26:25

note, when I was about to go to

26:27

Istanbul for the first time, I was looking

26:29

at the land walls on

26:32

Google Street View. And I'm sure

26:34

we've all had this experience where you're looking

26:36

at a street, say, in your own city,

26:38

and a bus is following your view down

26:40

the road because the cameras who

26:42

took it, so the bus keeps obscuring the shops

26:45

or the parking signs you're trying to see. So

26:47

I went to one end of the walls. And

26:49

every time I moved, more dogs appeared, alarmingly. Dozens

26:52

and dozens of dogs. And I thought, what's going

26:54

on here? And thankfully, your book

26:56

answered that question. So visitors

26:59

to Istanbul immediately noticed the street

27:01

dogs and cats. But

27:04

you got to know some of the street dogs very

27:06

well. And can you tell the listeners about that, and

27:08

also about the street dog

27:10

culture in Istanbul? Yeah,

27:14

so I very

27:16

much wanted to include, I like writing

27:18

about animals and the relationships between humans

27:20

and animals. And

27:23

for no particularly logical reason,

27:25

I decided to start. I was walking

27:27

on the walls, and I found this

27:30

animal shelter there. And I just thought,

27:32

OK, I'm going to volunteer here for

27:34

a bit. And

27:36

yeah, one

27:39

of the things that strikes you when

27:41

you live in Istanbul is that there

27:43

is this quite extraordinary culture

27:46

of street animals, where you have dogs

27:49

and cats who live on the street

27:52

and are ostensibly strays. But

27:55

they're looked after by the

27:57

community in general. And

27:59

I remember to do that. I mean, it's

28:01

important to say that this isn't universal throughout

28:03

the city. This tends to be in

28:06

certain neighborhoods in probably

28:09

more affluent areas or that there are large

28:12

parts of the city where, you know, the

28:14

stray dogs are miserable. Council

28:16

will gather them up and leave them on

28:18

the outskirts of the city. And that's the

28:20

thing. But it's very clear in

28:23

a lot of the city that there's this culture

28:25

where people look after these street animals. And one

28:27

thing that really struck me was I

28:29

was visiting a friend and there was a

28:31

street. There was a dog that had been

28:33

hit by a car or something. And a

28:35

lot of local people in the area just

28:37

clubbed together and paid for that fee to

28:39

go and have its legs fixed and,

28:42

you know, people feed them. People look after

28:44

them. Same with cats, you know, even having

28:46

more so cats. And and,

28:49

you know, when I looked into this,

28:51

I saw that this is something which

28:53

has gone on for centuries and that

28:55

some European visitors who were

28:57

visiting the Ottoman

28:59

Istanbul, you know, four

29:02

hundred years ago, were noting the same

29:04

thing and remarking on the same thing. And

29:08

and so, you know, I wanted

29:10

to write about that as

29:12

a way of talking

29:15

about, you know,

29:17

the placing the

29:20

story within the context of our

29:22

relationship with nature. And

29:24

what it means to you

29:29

know, we have a human world and we

29:31

have and we have a natural world. And

29:33

what struck me as so interesting about the

29:35

Ottoman attitude is that is

29:38

that at that time, Europeans really thought nothing

29:40

of animals. You know, they were like objects

29:42

you could use. Whereas

29:44

the Ottomans, you know, they didn't you

29:47

know, they didn't think they were people, but they

29:49

in some way they regarded them as legitimate denizens

29:51

of the city. And, you

29:53

know, there were there were organizations which

29:55

raised money to give meat to stray

29:58

dogs in Ottoman times. And

30:02

they cared for them in the same way that they

30:04

would care for these guilds and beggars who lived in

30:06

Ottoman Istanbul and lived on the streets and were the

30:08

sort of focus of charity. And

30:14

that tradition has changed, but it still

30:16

sort of in some form survives. And

30:20

it's very interesting the way it now

30:22

interacts with our more modern view of

30:24

animal welfare, where a

30:26

lot of people would say, look at

30:28

these dogs, they're kind of miserable, they're on

30:30

the streets, they're not very healthy, they look

30:32

mangy, they sometimes great people, they

30:35

shouldn't be here. And

30:38

to which a lot of times people would answer, well,

30:40

what are you going to do? You can just fade

30:42

them out of existence, like that's not fair. It

30:46

raises this very interesting and difficult

30:48

moral question about what you do,

30:50

how our relationships with animals. And

30:54

yeah, I actually own an Istanbul street

30:56

dog now, I bought one back to

30:58

England. Yeah,

31:05

that's brilliant. And you volunteered for a while

31:07

in a shelter right

31:10

by the walls. Yeah, exactly, right on

31:12

the walls. And it was a

31:14

wonderful place to be because it was really

31:16

like, you know, it

31:19

was very picturesque, I

31:21

mean, it stank, you know, and I describe in

31:24

the book, you know, all the dog

31:26

shit everywhere. And it was quite unpleasant

31:28

in some ways. But it was also,

31:31

it felt like quite a special thing

31:33

to do, because it just took me

31:35

completely out of my ordinary life in

31:37

Istanbul. And

31:39

yeah, it was very interesting.

31:42

Yeah, it's another lovely part

31:44

of the book. Well,

31:47

let's, let's wrap up.

31:49

And obviously, I encourage people to

31:52

go and buy the book and

31:54

discover more. But what

31:58

other things did you love? about

32:00

Turkey? What things did you

32:02

really enjoy? One

32:04

you could mention, which I particularly

32:06

enjoyed hearing, was the ornate and

32:08

specific expressions in social

32:10

interactions. Yeah,

32:14

so it's

32:16

interesting. At

32:20

one point in the book, actually, when I'm talking about

32:22

the dogs, I refer to

32:24

this incredibly. I would recommend

32:26

anyone to read the letters of

32:30

Ojia, I don't know, I'm probably mispronouncing

32:32

it, but he was a Flemish diplomat in

32:35

Istanbul during the time of Süderman

32:37

the Magnificent. So when the

32:40

Empire was absolutely out of sight, Ojia

32:43

Jistelander Busbach, I'm probably completely

32:45

mispronouncing that, and he wrote

32:47

four Turkish letters in Latin

32:50

of his time when he was on an

32:54

embassy, I think, from the Holy Roman Emperor in

32:57

Istanbul. And he was kind of kept there as a

32:59

hostage in sort of a friendly way for quite a

33:01

long time. And he writes these

33:03

incredibly funny, vivid letters about his time. And

33:05

one of the most memorable things to me

33:08

was when he writes about how

33:11

he's seen the robes that the Ottomans

33:14

wear, and that they wear these long

33:16

robes, and he's admiring how good

33:19

they look in them and how they make them

33:21

look taller. And then he sort

33:23

of compares it with his own clothes, which

33:25

he says are very kind of tight and

33:27

ill-fitting. And he says something like, disclose

33:30

his parts of the body, which would

33:32

be better not disclosed, something like that.

33:35

And it's very interesting because, obviously,

33:40

in later years when the Ottomans became a sick

33:42

man of Europe, Europeans would come and be able

33:44

to look down on the

33:46

world around them and on the Ottoman world. But

33:48

this was from a time when he was going

33:50

down, he sort of couldn't help but feel like

33:52

he was entering into a society which was

33:55

more successful, better functioning, that sort of thing. And

33:59

yeah, I compare that in

34:02

the book to my feeling of

34:06

going back to England and

34:08

in Turkish you have a

34:13

huge array of phrases for

34:17

different social situations. You

34:20

say, getch bishol son, if something's

34:24

gone wrong, you say bishun ish salsun, if

34:26

someone's died, you say there

34:29

are all kinds of different things. And English

34:31

doesn't have nearly as many of those. And

34:35

I found that when I moved back to

34:37

England I kind of missed them. I missed,

34:40

I sort of particularly, the one who

34:42

gets bishol son which literally means may it be in the

34:44

past or may it be done with.

34:47

And if someone's been sick or

34:49

something bad has happened to many things

34:52

happen to them, that's what you say. And

34:58

there wasn't really an English, you'd say, sorry,

35:01

get well soon. Somehow they

35:03

all seem slightly more awkward in comparison. And

35:07

I love that side of it.

35:09

It's a country where there's a

35:12

huge amount of social tension and there's a huge

35:14

amount of polarisation. But there's also, I found

35:17

a sense that these small

35:19

social, you

35:21

know, social niceties

35:23

kind of have an importance to them. And so yeah, that

35:29

was one thing that I liked, one of

35:31

many things. I love the food, I love,

35:34

it's a wonderful, wonderful

35:37

country. Well, to

35:40

the city, life and death along the

35:42

ancient walls of Istanbul is available now. And

35:45

I encourage everyone to go out and get it. Alexander

35:47

Christie Miller, thank you so much for coming on the

35:49

show. Thank you for having me. After

35:53

we wrapped up, Alexander said he

35:55

wanted to actually add something about

35:57

why it's so difficult for the

36:00

municipality to actually preserve

36:03

the entire section of the land walls. So

36:06

it always seemed interesting to me that

36:10

somewhere like the walls was in

36:12

a state of neglect, whereas

36:15

obviously you have these former

36:17

churches which are now mosques, which are all

36:20

in a state of, which you

36:22

cared for very intensely. And

36:24

I think that there's a big difference between the

36:28

religious buildings that the

36:31

Byzantine left behind, a kind

36:34

of appropriatable property. And they can be taken,

36:36

they can be repurposed, they can be used

36:39

and given another life. Whereas

36:42

the secular Byzantine buildings,

36:45

especially, I think especially if they're in

36:47

some way a symbol of or

36:50

a reminder of Byzantine power, are

36:53

more difficult to kind of,

36:56

you know, they're harder to

36:59

ideologically appropriate into the sort

37:01

of, you know, the new

37:03

sort of state, I

37:06

guess. And

37:10

it's interesting that, you know, one of

37:12

the buildings that's recently been restored, which

37:14

is the palace of the, I'm sorry,

37:16

I'm going to do a mispronunciation here,

37:18

the palace of the porphyrigenitus. And

37:22

that's stood derelict for a long time. And now

37:24

it's been restored. But inside

37:26

it, there are actually displays of Ottoman

37:29

ceramics and calligraphy. So

37:34

it's like there's very much like the use

37:37

of, there's a big issue

37:39

over the

37:41

restoration of the use of buildings and

37:43

particularly the current government.

37:48

Maybe we've been into this, but the current government

37:50

has this, we have this view in the West,

37:52

particularly that, you

37:54

know, you restore a monument as it was at

37:56

a certain point in time, and then you open

37:58

it for people to live. look at. And

38:01

that's kind of that's what its function is.

38:04

But there's more of a mentality in

38:07

particular among the current government in Turkey that

38:09

these buildings should have a purpose and they

38:11

should have a function that they it's

38:14

legitimate for them to take it to completely

38:16

remake them and to use them for some

38:19

new purpose. And so very often that's what

38:21

you see. And, and yeah, I don't

38:24

know. Anyway,

38:29

no, that's really interesting, though. I mean, that is that's

38:31

sort of what I was getting at that listeners bring

38:35

with them the assumption of how thing

38:37

how historical items should be displayed. And

38:40

actually, other cultures

38:42

can have a different attitude and a

38:44

different perspective. Exactly. And the other

38:47

important point specifically in the case of the walls is

38:49

that, you know, that they're huge,

38:51

they go, they stretch four miles,

38:55

um, re restoring them

38:57

is a massive job. And

39:00

also, they're not, you know, they're not the

39:02

haggis of fear, then they're, they're never

39:05

going to, they're not quite as easily

39:07

monetizable as some of the other, you

39:10

know, big attractions in Istanbul. So

39:12

they would be tremendously expensive

39:14

to restore. They're

39:17

probably not going to make that much money

39:20

as tourist attractions. And then

39:22

also, you know, the

39:24

work of restoring them requires a

39:27

sort of a continuous political

39:31

will on the part of the

39:33

city's authorities, which, you

39:36

know, has never really been that, you know,

39:38

partly, you know, that there have been restoration

39:40

times, and there have

39:42

been bits done here and there. But then

39:44

the municipality, which is, you know, the municipal

39:47

administration, which is doing the work, loses

39:49

power, and then the next one comes along

39:52

and has different priorities. You

39:54

know, you have overlapping jurisdictions in terms of

39:56

who's in charge of different bits. So

39:59

there's a number of quite practical considerations

40:02

which kind of conspire to

40:06

make it unlikely that they're going to be fully

40:08

restored. Yeah,

40:10

absolutely. To

40:13

the City is also available on Audible, so if

40:16

you'd like to listen to the book, you

40:18

can find it there, and if you'd like to listen

40:20

for free, then sign

40:22

up at audibletrial.com/Byzantium where

40:24

you'll get one month's

40:26

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40:28

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40:30

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40:32

can get sucked into listening to book after

40:35

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40:37

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40:58

you.