There were some streetcar trips we took in Istanbul where I’m certain that all 14 million residents were crammed together into our car. It is a crowded city. At one point, we were emerged from the covered Spice Bazaar in the historic Eminonu quarter of Istanbul to find this scene.
People were calmly making
their way through that crush. Bryan, Booker, Seamus and I waited for a
few minutes and made the brilliant decision to look for a different exit.
After flowing through rivers of people everywhere we went in the first six days
of our Istanbul stay, it was a welcome change to arrive at the quiet neighborhood of
Fener.
Fener is situated inside
the Byzantine city walls, and became a thriving hub for Istanbul’s Greek
population after the fall of the Byzantine Empire in 1453. The Greek Patriarchate,
which is the Greek Orthodox Church’s equivalent of the Vatican was located in
the neighborhood.
Georgetown group in front of The Patriarchal Church of Saint George
For four hundred years, the Greek Christian community flourished in Fener maintaining a complicated but working relationship with the ruling Muslim Ottomans. Wealthy Greek merchants built grand houses during the 17th century. The Greco Turkish war marked the end of that era, and during the “population exchange” of 1923, huge numbers of Greeks were moved out of Turkey into Greece. According to Claire, who led our Georgetown group through the neighborhood, fewer than 100 Greek holdouts remain.
Church of Saint Mary of the Mongols
It’s now a relatively poor
area attracting immigrants from rural areas of Turkey. Aside from the
well-preserved Greek Orthodox churches that still attract many devout visitors
from Greece, we mostly saw small bric-a-brac shops, laundry lines strung across
the alleys, and men with bread and fruit carts wandering quiet streets.
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