Somewhere between Vox & Hunter S. Thompson
Viewing entries tagged
feat-turk-1
At a glance, much of Algiers is almost a mirror image of its former colonizer, France, which sits just across the Mediterranean. Visually, it is defined by Parisian-style buildings, almost all of which are colored white. However, in spite of its surreal visual similarities with France, it only takes about 10 seconds of walking the streets of Algiers to realize that it is a world all its own.
I’m going to tell you this up front: I LOVE this city.
Turkish Millennials. This is a demographic that I really admire. They are living through a turbulent time in history. On October 10th of this year 2 bombs exploded in Turkey’s capital, Ankara, killing 102 and injuring another 400. Even though Turkey sits just on the precipice of the West, so close yet so far from getting the same kind of international attention that Paris does for these sorts of tragedies, this event was nothing more than a blip on the radar of western media. Alas, we watch this sort of bloodshed happen in the Muslim world and complacently think “well… I guess that’s just how it is over there.” I’m guilty of thinking like this as much as any of us. But you know who doesn’t think this way? Young people in Turkey.
Istanbul, formerly Constantinople, formerly Byzantium, is arguably one of the most historically important cities in the world. As such, it is a city with some serious history, to say the least. Over the course of the last 2 millennia, Istanbul served as the capital city for the Byzantine, Latin, Roman, and Ottoman Empires. Indeed, the city has always been of extreme strategic importance for the politics of the region. It has been a major hub of the ancient Silk Road, Eurasian rail networks, and sea trade between the Mediterranean and Black Seas.
It should come as no surprise then that Istanbul is also one of the largest cities in the world. Istanbul’s metro area houses about 14 million people, making it one of the world’s most populous cities. Istanbul proper ranks 5th in the world and 1st in Europe, although the jury is still out on weather or not Istanbul really is part of Europe at all.
