61–70 of 121 posts
A bit tangential, but while choosing a logo idea for Rust Istanbul community, I went with something that resembles blue tile tulip motif. As another commenter noted there are so many objects/animals/historical artifacts to choose from... https://rustistanbul.org/ If you are a Rust developer and planning to visit Istanbul let us know! (We know good kebap/baklava places ;) )
It's unfortunate that the political situation continues to be bad.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It was an actual scare quote free mosque from 1453 to 1934, so if anything the secular museum phase was out of character.
It's not a coincidence that the conversion to a museum coincided with Ataturk's sweeping reforms in making a secular state. The reversion is a mark of a return to fundamentalism and a decline into theocracy.
I was in Istanbul recently, and what surprised me was the absolute depth of the cities attractions. I stayed in the Kadıköy and Sultanahmet districts, and it was so incredible to walk through a society which had been Monkey Patched through millennia. The runtime behavior of the objects, streets, buildings and the city had been adapted time and time again. Roman temples becoming Churches becoming Mosques becoming Muse…
See the Hagia Sophia, which appears to have been left to dilapidate since it was turned into a mosque all those centuries ago. A conversion process which appears to have amounted to plastering over the stunning mosaics, and drilling some Arabic script plaques into the walls. Some of which were exposed while it was a museum, but have been cordoned off again now that it’s been re-mosqued
I only noticed this when, on a recent trip, I travelled around the city with a well educated Turkish millennial, and amateur historian, who pointed out these abuses of historical sites over and over again. Topkapi and Dolmabace palaces are largely empty stone buildings with the trees in the yards being the most fascinating things.
The palimpsest of history in the city is quite stunning though. And some stunning beauty in unexpected places. For example, the ceilings in the University of Istanbul are incredible.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It was the premier eastern orthodox christian church for a 1000 years before that and taken by conquest. Of course some people are still salty about that. It would be like the Jews turning Mecca into a synagogue or st peters basilica being turned into a mosque
As a non-religious person, I find the indignation about the idea of turning one flavor of house of worship to the god of Abraham into another flavor of house of worship to the god of Abraham to be pretty amusing. And when it happens, it seems so spiteful! Last year I saw the Mosque-Cathedral of Cordoba, and I was struck that the Catholics seemed to be stuffing figurative art _everywhere_, and I guessed it was partly…
It didn't happen by some committee decision, but mostly by killing everybody involved with the old version. That's an important detail.
Unfortunately some of them are a radiation hazard, because the blue color is made out of radiocactive cobalt.
A blue tile also plays an important role in the short film Zima Blue, which I cannot recommend highly enough - because of the story and its aesthetics.
The Hagia Sophia "mosque" was a Christian orthodox church that dates from Roman times and was a secular museum from the 1930s until 2020. That decision to reclassify as a mosque is widely condemned by historians and others.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Turkey is not a muslim turkic nation at all, Turkey is an ethnically diverse nation where almost all the population claims to be muslims but they all practice at different levels and the devote muslims are a small minority of the population. The country itself is the legacy of the Ottoman empire which was partly in Europe for centuries, thus was influenced by western values for hundreds of years already. Then Atatürk…
> Turkey is not a muslim turkic nation at all It's a predominantly islamic turkish speaking nation. You say 'almost all the population claims to be muslim' and say it's not a muslim nation? > The country itself is the legacy of the Ottoman empire which was partly in Europe for centuries No. The ottoman empire was a legacy of the turkish nation. It's why the ottoman empire is also called the turkish empire. The nation…
Also funny you say "western values" only started existing post-ww2 when Turkish national anthem very explicitly contains digs against it.
The Hagia Sophia "mosque" was a Christian orthodox church that dates from Roman times and was a secular museum from the 1930s until 2020. That decision to reclassify as a mosque is widely condemned by historians and others.
A tidbit info: Today's Hagia Sophia is version three of the original church. The original was made of wood and burned down. The second version was of stone and collapsed in an earthquake. The third version took 20+ years to build. Another tidbit: Hagia Sophia can be translated to english as Saint Sofia. It is pronounced in Turkish as Aya Sofia. Aya is from an arabic word that means "sign" like sign of god (similar to…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Turkey is not a muslim turkic nation at all, Turkey is an ethnically diverse nation where almost all the population claims to be muslims but they all practice at different levels and the devote muslims are a small minority of the population. The country itself is the legacy of the Ottoman empire which was partly in Europe for centuries, thus was influenced by western values for hundreds of years already. Then Atatürk…
> Turkey is not a muslim turkic nation at all It's a predominantly islamic turkish speaking nation. You say 'almost all the population claims to be muslim' and say it's not a muslim nation? > The country itself is the legacy of the Ottoman empire which was partly in Europe for centuries No. The ottoman empire was a legacy of the turkish nation. It's why the ottoman empire is also called the turkish empire. The nation…
Turkey is one of the few countries in the world that has these pitiable individuals who despise their history and live in their own artificial "reality".
And the only answer they have is even more stupid arguments that directly connect to current day politics.