Istanbul_ The Collected Traveler_ An Inspired Companion Guide - Barrie Kerper [73]
“YOU CAN MAKE SOMETHING OF YOURSELF HERE”
Former residents of Istanbul who return to the city are amazed at how quickly it has changed. After living in Germany or elsewhere, they are now rediscovering their own country.
Defne Koryürek, thirty-eight, and her husband spent five years in New York, where they ran a small restaurant. When she returned nine years ago Koryürek found surprising similarities between the Big Apple and Istanbul. “Both cities are dynamic and full of energy.” she says. “You can make something of yourself here. It’s up to you whether you want to be part of the whole, and whether you are willing to learn.”
Koryürek has tried many things. She studied history and cinematography, and worked as a TV producer until she discovered her love of cooking. When she returned to Istanbul, she brought back recipes for pancakes, quiches, and eggs Benedict from New York. She now runs Dükkan, an exclusive butcher’s shop specializing in dry-aged beef. Juicy, dark cuts of beef dry in a climate-controlled glass cabinet. A label on each cut identifies how many days it’s been drying.
As Koryürek fills sausage skins with meat, the door of the shop opens and a hotel chef walks in. He bends over the meat counter and selects the best pieces. Dükkan has become a supplier to Istanbul’s five-star restaurants, including the Hilton, the Four Seasons, the Çirağan Palace Kempinski, and Les Ottomans, a luxury hotel on the banks of the Bosporus that is bringing the flair of the Ottoman era back to life.
“In this city, you never know what the future will bring, and you have no guarantee of anything,” says Koryürek. “Business is going great, but then suddenly the customers stop coming and you have no idea why.” Unlike businessmen in the West, says Koryürek, one cannot plan for the long term in Istanbul. “Our customers think in the short term. They’re always hungry for the new.”
Koryürek and her partner, Emre Mermer, thirty-eight, an economist and the son of a cattle farmer, don’t even have an official permit for their exclusive shop, which lies in the middle of Küçük Armutlu, a poor gecekondu settlement adjacent to the highway. They chose the spot because the rent was affordable. When they tried to register the company, officials at the city planning office told them the buildings weren’t registered—and so it was impossible to register a business there. Nevertheless, the authorities tolerate Dükkan, and business is booming. That’s just the way it goes in Istanbul.
Istanbul is proof that chaos can be productive, but it has also brought the city to the brink of disaster. The daily traffic crisis was declared a national problem long ago. Tens of thousands of houses could collapse when the next earthquake, which has already been predicted, strikes the city.
Hüseyin Kaptan has been hired to save Istanbul. An architecture professor, Kaptan had already retired and moved to the country when the city’s mayor begged him to help. The last master plan for the city is already twenty-six years old, and development spun out of control long ago. Now Kaptan’s task is to come up with an urban vision for the next thirty years.
Plans, blueprints, and sketches are stacked on a large table in the middle of his office. The problems are so gargantuan and construction is continuing at such a rapid pace, says Kaptan, that he feels as if he were “in a tsunami.” At seventy-one, he had hoped to quietly live out his days as a farmer.
The city wants Kaptan to put a stop to its growth. “We could open the doors tomorrow for a million new jobs, but we couldn’t cope with it,” he says. If development continues at the current pace, says Kaptan, Istanbul’s population could easily swell to between twenty and twenty-five million in the next twenty years. Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan recently called for a limit not just on the number of cars in Istanbul, but also on the number of new residents.