İstanbul

V

Recreation

With increasing modernization, recreation is becoming a more important aspect of daily life in İstanbul. The city has a number of public parks, including Yıldız Park and the Gulhane Park at Topkapı, which houses the İstanbul Zoo. A park developed on the site of the Byzantine Hippodrome displays the remains of the ancient horse-racing venue.

Soccer is a favorite sport among İstanbul residents, with basketball increasing in popularity. A small number of private clubs provides facilities for rowing and swimming in the Bosporus. Swimming in the Bosporus can be dangerous because of the swift current coming from the Black Sea, and many beach resorts no longer allow swimming due to pollution. The Prince’s Islands in the Sea of Marmara are a favorite vacation spot for İstanbul residents.

VI

Economy

İstanbul is a commercial center for a large agricultural region in which sheep are raised and olives, wheat, tobacco, milk and dairy products, and fruit are produced. Recent antipollution legislation has forced increasing numbers of İstanbul’s manufacturing industries to move to surrounding provinces, especially Kocaeli. However, İstanbul is still the center of Turkey’s textile, metal products, paper, printing, and food industries. It is also the country’s leading center for banking, computer services, media, tourism, and trade; nearly half of the country’s exports and about 40 percent of its imports come through İstanbul.

İstanbul is an important rail center, with several international rail lines terminating on the European side and the Anatolian rail system beginning on the Asian side. İstanbul’s public and private bus systems transport about 1.5 million passengers a day; thousands more people use the city’s dolmuş (public shared taxis). A subway system is under construction, the first section of which is scheduled for completion in mid-1998. Construction of two bridges across the Bosporous—the Bosporus Bridge (1973) and the Bridge of Sultan Muhammad II (1988)—produced a significant decline in ferry traffic between the European and Asian parts of the city. Air traffic at Atatürk International Airport, located west of the city proper, has increased significantly in recent years as tourism and trade have increased.

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VII

Government

The Greater İstanbul Municipality is governed by a mayor who also acts as governor of İstanbul Province. The mayor is popularly elected to a five-year term. Reporting to the mayor are the chief district officers of the municipality’s 12 districts, who are appointed by the Turkish Minister of the Interior. The municipal government distributes funds to each of the districts for transportation, water, roads, and other services.

VIII

Contemporary Issues

Many of İstanbul’s problems stem from its steady population growth and unequal income distribution. There is a serious shortage of classroom space in the city’s schools. The suburbs suffer from the uncontrolled proliferation of shantytowns, constructed on government land and often occupied by new residents of the city; the shantytowns are permitted to stand due to a loophole in Turkish law. Air pollution is a serious problem, and the increasing volume of shipping on the Bosporus has caused significant water pollution.

IX

History

According to legend, İstanbul was founded in 667 bc by a Greek colonizer, Byzas the Megarian, from whom the city’s original name, Byzantium, is derived. Because of Byzantium’s strategic and economic importance, Athenians, Persians, Spartans, Macedonians, and Romans fought over the city for centuries. In 324 ad Roman emperor Constantine the Great defeated rival emperor Licinius at Chrysopolis (now Üsküdar) and became the sole Roman emperor. Constantine made Byzantium his capital in 330, expanding the city until it rested on seven hills, like Rome. The city was soon called Constantinople, meaning “city of Constantine.”

Constantinople became the capital of the Byzantine Empire—the eastern part of the Roman Empire, which survived the fall of Rome in the 5th century—and subsequently developed into the center of the Greek Orthodox Christian world. Beginning in the 4th century, Constantinople hosted eight councils of the Christian church see Constantinople, Councils of.

Constantinople reached its peak during the reign of Byzantine emperor Justinian I (527-565), who is responsible for some of the city’s greatest architectural monuments, including Hagia Sophia. Following a plague in 542, the city entered a period of decline. Between the 7th and 11th centuries Persians, Avars, Arabs, Bulgarians, and Rus (East Slavs) attacked Constantinople. In 1204, during the Fourth Crusade, the city was seized by the Latin (Roman Catholic) Crusaders, who held it until 1261 when Byzantine rulers recaptured the city see Crusades.

The Fourth Crusade and its aftermath, which included a long series of family struggles for the title of emperor, sapped the Byzantine Empire of its resources and wreaked havoc on its capital city. In 1453 Constantinople fell to the Ottomans, who made it the capital of the Ottoman Empire and called it İstanbul. Under Ottoman rule, the city flourished as a political, commercial, and cultural center, reaching its height under Sultan Süleyman I (1520-1566). Soon after, however, İstanbul entered a period of slow and steady decline. The Ottoman Empire grew weaker as the sultans became less effective leaders. İstanbul was the site of several riots and rebellions, most notably the 1826 revolt of the Janissaries, the elite Ottoman military corps, which ended in the dissolution of the corps. After this point, İstanbul saw reforms along Western lines, as European ideas of administration and development were brought into the city by increasing numbers of foreign visitors.

During World War I (1914-1918) Allied forces defeated the Ottoman Empire. At the end of the war, İstanbul came under Allied occupation. Following the Turkish War of Independence (1919-1922), the nationalist army of Mustafa Kemal (later known as Mustafa Kemal Atatürk) expelled Allied troops from the city. In 1923 Mustafa Kemal made Turkey a republic and moved the capital from İstanbul to Ankara, which was the center of the nationalist movement. The city’s name was officially changed to İstanbul in 1930. İstanbul remains Turkey’s economic center, despite no longer being the capital. Its population has grown steadily, and in recent years, demands for improved road systems have led to some demolition of historic portions of the city.

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