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Planners want to cap Istanbul’s population at sixteen million. To do so, they plan to divert migration into the nearby region along the Sea of Marmara. They also plan to upgrade Istanbul’s Asian districts, currently home to hundreds of thousands of people who commute to jobs in office buildings on the European side. Kaptan’s idea is to transform Istanbul’s economy from low-wage manufacturing to high-value service industries. Thirty-two percent of the city’s work force now works in industrial production. If Kaptan and his team have their way, that number will be cut in half in the next two decades. To achieve that goal, entire districts are slated for demolition.

A part of Turkey’s textile industry is located in Zeytinburnu, which with its three hundred thousand inhabitants is practically a small city itself. Workers cut, sew, iron, and pack garments in more than fifteen thousand workshops in Zeytinburnu’s basements and courtyards. The area’s former leather tanneries, with their polluting waste water, have already been moved to Istanbul’s eastern outskirts. Drawings of the new Zeytinburnu are spread out on Kaptan’s desk: light-filled apartment buildings reminiscent of modernist Bauhaus designs, complete with shopping centers, playgrounds, and parks.

Many mistakes were made in the past decades. Buildings were not designed to be earthquake-proof. The old section of Istanbul—the historic peninsula where the Hagia Sophia, the Blue Mosque, and the Grand Bazaar are located—was neglected and is now sorely in need of repair and renovation. Politicians have placed too much emphasis on the automobile as the primary means of transportation, and Istanbul has only a very small and underdeveloped subway system. They also allowed the metropolis to sprawl into the city’s water catchment area and forests to the north and east—a development Kaptan calls “criminal.”

STUCK BETWEEN REMEMBERING AND AMNESIA

Now, in the search for a better quality of life and living conditions, something downtown Istanbul can no longer offer, many of the city’s affluent residents are being lured out toward the Black Sea, where luxury gated communities are springing up like independent planets.

Göktürk, located about twenty-five kilometers (sixteen miles) as the crow flies from downtown Istanbul, has turned in the space of a decade from a village into a satellite city for between six thousand and eight thousand Istanbulites. Here life is green and pleasant and the bustle of Istanbul seems far away. For several thousand dollars, residents can join the exclusive Kemer Golf and Country Club, complete with golf courses, a manmade lake, stables, a music school, tennis courts, gyms, and even an outdoor survival camp.

This is something that more and more Istanbulites can afford, and not just the established upper class. The recent economic boom has produced a new middle class who are intent on showing off their newfound affluence. To serve this new market, international fashion and luxury goods retailers, including Vakko, Harvey Nichols, Ferragamo, Fendi, and Louis Vuitton, are coming to Istanbul.

Istanbul’s traditional shopping street, İstiklâl Caddesi, is lined with colorful little banners that read: “Istanbul, European Capital of Culture 2010.” According to the European jury, the city’s application for the one-year honorary title was especially “progressive and innovative.” Istanbul hopes to make 2010 a magical year for the city, complete with dazzling events for tourists, European creative artists, street theater, floating platforms on the Bosporus, and a trip back in time through seven thousand years of history. Dilapidated historical monuments are now being restored, including those from the city’s Christian and pre-Christian eras.

“We see the title as an opportunity to recapture the lost, old Istanbul,” says Nuri Çolakoğlu, the chairman of the 2010 initiative. “We want to show how deep the cultural roots we share with Europe are.”

Author Elif Shafak called Istanbul the “stepchild of the modern, secular Turkish republic.” With its multicultural heritage,