Wednesday, May 1, 2019

ORHAN PAMUK’S ISTANBUL -- 17

NEW YORK TIMES WORDS/STEVE WRIGHT IMAGES
Half a mile down the Golden Horn a new bridge has just opened, a sleek white span that partly blocks views of some of Istanbul’s grandest mosques. 

Like Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s aborted plan to raze Gezi Park in Taksim Square and put up a shopping mall in the style of an Ottoman military barracks.

The bridge project has divided the city largely along socioeconomic lines: The city’s liberal elite has strongly backed the preservation of its Ottoman-era core, while the mostly poorer Islamists have tended to welcome this sweeping away of the past.


-Joshua Hammer

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