Talk:Istanbul

Population

Here I am listing why I am going to change the used 13 million population from proper to urban. First the provided source from the Statistical Institute itself shows 13.120.596 as population of the city along with other suburb cities (İl/ilçe merkezleri): [1] and as metropolitan (Büyükşehir): [2], which is not population proper. I tried to found the proper population of the city, but in the Statistical institute I found only urban. Pensionero (talk) (UTC)

Istanbul should be renamed as "Constantinople"

Istanbul → Constantinople – This is what the media seems, researchers and historians have been calling the biggest city of Turkey, I suggest move per WP:COMMONNAME and per above. Strovolos01 (talk) 16:18, 23 May 2011 (UTC)

Istanbul until the earliest of 20th century was called Costantinople in English, Constantinople in French, and Konstantinopel in German. All researchers know Istanbul as Constantinople, the city of Great Constantine. It is absolutely ridiculous having Constantinople (such a popular and beatiful name) as Istanbul (the recent islamic name).

What a biased comment is the one above! And also a funny one probably written by a Christian having an apostolic subconscious :) For sure Istanbul will appear in an Islamic name here, simply because it belongs to a Muslim-majority nation for more than 600 years. Istanbul has nothing to do with Christianity anymore. Please drink in this bitter fact :) You yourself said that all historians call it Constantinople referring to old times. That's history. And in all recent texts, in whatever language, it's referred to as Istanbul. Welcome to earth :)

• Speedily closed. Not a snowball's chance in hell of succeeding. Fut.Perf. ☼ 13:20, 23 May 2011 (UTC)

First of all, Istanbul is not and Islamic name. It is the Turkish name, which is derived from Greek. Secondly, Istanbul still has a lot to do with Christianity: at the very least, it is the seat of the Orthodox Patriarchate. Additionally there are Armenian and Syriac Orthodox Patriarchs located there. There are still many sites in the city which are revered by Christians. That being said, the name is Istanbul not Constantinople. Ordtoy (talk) 14:48, 11 August 2011 (UTC)

Yes, it is an Islamic name. It comes from "Islam-bol" which literally means "full of Islam", originating from the endeavour of Sultan Mehmet to make Istanbul the global centre of Islam. Sure it is a very strong inspiration from its Greek name, which is natural. But if you read the history of the etymology careful, you'll see a lot more than a mere adoption of the Greek name in Turkish phonetics. I guess we agree on that the current name should appear as Istanbul anyway. On the other hand, the Turkish state has full sovereignty rights on the Patriarchiates of two sub-sub-sub sects of Christianity that you mentioned. In legal terms they do not have any kind of international (ecumenic) status, in practice they have a quite infinitesimal influence cross-borders. Their domestic influence is even less. There are less than 10000 Christians living in Istanbul which has 14 million inhabitants. Yea, maybe I have gone too far to say it has NOTHING to do with Christianity. I should have said, it has SO LITTLE to do with Christianity, maybe even less than Vatican has to do with Islam (there are muslims living there for real), that we can safely ignore that fact when naming the city by a single word. Otherwise, Istanbul definitely has some strong historical relations to Christianity, which do not correspond to any practical meaning to today's Christians, except a few patriotic Greeks and a few other anti-Islamist extremists.

You should read Ibn Battuta. He visisted the city long before it was conquered by the Turks and heard people using the name "Istanbul". "Islam bol" was a play on words. Evliya Çelebi knew this 500 years ago and I'm surprised that people actually think it's true! Also 10,000 Christians in Istanbul is much too low. There are roughly 70,000 Armenians (with Turkish citizenship). Add to that the Greeks and Syriac Orthodox and you hae 100,000. You can add thousands of non-citizen Christians if you really want to count.

Please read what I wrote a bit more carefully. I explicitly mentioned above that the name Istanbul is highly influenced by the Greek "est-in-poli" (or something like that). About Ibn Battuta, I read his writings about the Asia Minor. OF COURSE, they called the city est-in-poli BEFORE the conquest :) All I talk above is about AFTER the conquest. And yes, it's a play on words, as I said above, but that's not a direct adoption of est-in-poli in Turkish phonetics. In the first years of the conquest it is referred to as "a-sitan", meaning the land of beauty in Arabic. Yes, that's also playing with words, but I guess this does not hinder it be Islamic-originated :) To me, the late-Ottoman name Istanbul evolved under the influence of all these three names used by different chambers (est-in-poli, Islambol, and a-Sitan). None of these names are even close to Constantinople anyway, which is the main theme in this discussion. Right? About the number of Christians in Istanbul, again read my text more carefully. You give the number in entire Turkey. I talk about only Istanbul. These two numbers do not have to be in the exact correlation that you have in your mind. Armenians in Turkey might not be grouped in Istanbul, which was hardly their main site of residence in the history. Plus, there are more than 40000 refugee Armenians illegally working in Istanbul without citizenship, which again shouldn't be taken into account if we talk about Istanbul's LEGAL status related to Christianity. Then you follow a sloppy line of thought by saying "if we add Syriac and Greeks... I feel that it should be more", without taking into account that during the population exchange years and the aftermath, almost ALL Greeks left the country. There are less than a few thousand Greeks living in Turkey now, though there are around 70000 who live in Greece although they hold Turkish citizenship. Check out any census records. About Syriac Christians, they never existed in Istanbul in masses, so that their rights were not even spoken out in the Lausanne Treaty, unlike ALL other Christian minorities. Moreover, I have hard time to understand how you seek for a meaningful conclusion to this discussion by trying to increase the number of Christian population by very tiny amounts. Let's assume there are 100000 Christians living in Istanbul. That's still an infinitesimal amount to render Istanbul a base of Christianity so that its name should be reconsidered. I think you are so much into details that the essence of the discussion is diverging to nonsense paths.

Ordtoy (talk) 02:07, 13 August 2011 (UTC)

Population as of 2010

In the article on the Turkish Wikipedia, two figures represent the population in the city: 13,255,685 for "Merkez" (meaning central city proper) and 13,120,596 for "Metropol" (meaning metropolitan area). Seems to be really strange that the population inhabiting the metropolitan area is less than in the city, but it is well referenced and I suggest to use this data for the English article, instead of the obsolete figure of 2000.--Kiril Simeonovski (talk) 15:34, 13 August 2011 (UTC)

Toponymy

"Europeans often used Stamboul alongside Constantinople to refer to the whole of the city, but Turks used the former name only to describe the historic peninsula between the Golden Horn and the Sea of Marmara."

This sentence is wrong. All the nineteenth century European books which I read (quite a few, among them De Amicis and Gautier, which are the Classics about the City) follows the Turkish usage. These authors call "Stamboul" the walled city and Constantinople the city as a whole. Which author does not follow this usage? Cheers, Alex2006 (talk) 07:40, 26 August 2011 (UTC)

Indeed, at Names of Istanbul we also have a reference for this distinction being made by English sources. What I would really like to know is whether we have reliable material for such a distinction in Ottoman Turkish. Also, if Turkish did make such a distinction, is this actually referring to the form Stambul (without the "I-"), as the sentence seems to say, and what would have been the name for the whole metropolis then? (Kostantiniyye?) Fut.Perf. ☼ 08:16, 26 August 2011 (UTC)

For the record, the current version has been in place since this edit by Tariqabjotu in April 2010. Previously we had a version that seemed to be basically a summary of what the Names of Istanbul article says. Maybe it was just a misunderstanding while paraphrasing and reworking the old version? Fut.Perf. ☼ 08:26, 26 August 2011 (UTC)

Historically, Istanbul was the city on the peninsula. There were many surrounding villages/settlements which are now entirely part of the metropolis but which were considered separately during Ottoman times: Galata, Pera, Üsküdar and so on. Istanbul could also sometimes be used for the city proper and the surrounding areas, especially as these grew together into a single city. In any case, all of these were part of the province (eyalet, vilayet) of Istanbul. Ordtoy (talk) 14:58, 26 August 2011 (UTC)

Alles klar :-) I changed the sentence accordingly, and put two (but could have been also twenty) "european" references. Cheers, Alex2006 (talk) 08:37, 31 August 2011 (UTC)

Hallo Fut.Perf., I still owe you an answer. I checked my sources (until now Mantran and Necipoglu, but I can find others), according to Mantran, the Ottomans used two names for the metropolis: Istanbul and Kostantiniyye. Stamboul was - as written above - the Turkish name for the walled city (the byzantine Costantinopolis). Necipoglu just mentions the former two as related to the whole city. I must admit that this is pretty confusing :-) Alex2006 (talk) 16:31, 2 September 2011 (UTC)

removal of paragraph on Greeks

This edit by Fut.Perf. [3], removes a well sourced and considered paragraph on the transference and removal of Greeks from Istanbul. The Demographics section has a lot of detail, so I don't see why any detail on Greek demographics ought to be removed, other than PR/face-saving or Denial-of-History motivations. Manocihr (talk) 11:20, 1 September 2011 (UTC)

I would insert it in the religion paragraph after "...between 1914 and 1927.". Consider however that some of the info that you added is already in there article, and that in what you wrote there are a couple of errors / omissions. The Rum of Istanbul residing in the city before 30 October 1918 (the etablis) were exempted by the exchange of population because of their economic importance. Moreover, many Rum emigrated also because of the tax on capital gain in 1942 and after the Cyprus crises in 1974. Cheers, Alex2006 (talk) 11:39, 1 September 2011 (UTC)

Ok, sounds fine, go ahead, I won't be stopping you. Manocihr (talk) 11:41, 1 September 2011 (UTC)

No? How surprising. Issue was discussed at length today on Al Jazeera English's Inside Story - Is Turkey appeasing the EU? http://english.aljazeera.net/programmes/insidestory/2011/09/20119183535328713.html Manocihr (talk) 11:59, 1 September 2011 (UTC)

Hallo Manocihr, yes :-), but etiquette wants that we wait sometime to allow others to participate to the debatte. Some patience, please... Cheers, Alex2006 (talk) 13:10, 1 September 2011 (UTC)

Oh etiquette? Didn't seem to have any influence on you reverting my edits at will, calling me a vandal, and a waste of your time... Some integrity, please... Manocihr (talk) 18:04, 1 September 2011 (UTC)

I don't see a problem with Manocihr's addition about the dwindling of the Greek population from 100,000 to 2,000 today. I think this is not an insignificant point. There is somewhat of an issue in that there is some overlap with the Religion section though. My take on this would be to to have the Religion section focus solely on strictly religious aspects (e.g. Ecumenical Patriarchate) rather than having turn into a section on ethnic demographics in general. Athenean (talk) 19:57, 1 September 2011 (UTC)

I agree, this info must be present only in one section. About Manocihr: if you would have started from the discussion page, you would have not been reverted. :-) Cheers, Alex2006 (talk) 04:57, 2 September 2011 (UTC)

And if you started from the discussion page, you wouldn't have been reverted and had to be warned by an admin about your misconduct. :-) But since I'm a new user and you're not, that clearly says a lot more about you than it does me. You also might want to think about improving your English language skills before making such edits as the one you just did. "Cheers," Manocihr (talk) 07:27, 2 September 2011 (UTC)

I know Manocihr, my English is far from being perfect. :-( But this is not a problem in Wikipedia: there will always be someone with better language skills willing to correct you  :-) Prosit :-) Alex2006 (talk) 07:48, 2 September 2011 (UTC)

Hallo, I corrected the paragraph according to what I wrote above. Please check. Moreover, was is lacking here is info about other minorities, above all the Armenians, who still live in a sizable number (I think about 50'000) in the city. Thanks, Alex2006 (talk) 14:11, 2 September 2011 (UTC)

Population, official vs. unofficial

I am a foreigner currently living in Istanbul. Every Turk I meet insist that there are many more people living here than the official 13mio (the metropolitan area). The most common number I hear is 20mio.

So what is "the official number" and what is the unofficial number? Is this just "street logic" that the average inhabitant can kind of feel that "there has to be more around 20". Or are there government officials who suggest 20 mio? Or newspapers? Or researches? And if so, who are they. When I ask these people how they know I get answers like: "It is obvious" and "Everybody knows".

In 2005 I spent time in Izmir, and the official number for Izmir was around 2.5mio. But everybody I met said that there was much more (again citing "common knowledge") with many people saying 5 mio.

I will try and compare the official figures to street knowledge for every city/town/village I visit here from now on :)

So is there any truth to these greater numbers? And if so, then why does the censuses not show?

88.234.100.33 (talk) 19:15, 23 October 2011 (UTC)

Myself, I would never listen to "the man on the street" when it comes to population numbers. It's a somewhat common phenomenon over the world to exaggerate such numbers, and I guess it sometimes is about ignorance or misunderstandings but I think it often is some kind of paranoia against authorities. To my experience, the normal exaggeration is to add about two thirds or up to the double to the official numbers, so the 20 million figure for Istanbul follows this pattern. I have rarely encountered the other way around so to speak - like "they say that our city has 5 million but everybody knows we are only 3". A problem I have seen many times with population figures from Turkey is that some people confuse the city with a higher level of administrative unit with the same name (as a province, or a district). My advice is basically to trust the official numbers. The effort by the authorities, with their methods and tools, beats "street logic" any day of the week - even a bad day.--Pjred (talk) 22:16, 23 October 2011 (UTC)

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April 24, 1915 - Armenian Genocide

Where is this VERY SIGNIFICANT DATE in this article? If this article does not mention the Armenian genocide it is then simply a biased article. April 24, 1915 is a symbolic date in Istanbul which marks the "official" beginning the Armenian Genocide which continued to 1923, and therefore the reason for the decline of the Christian population of Istanbul in the early 20th century which later also affected the Greeks. This is part of the heritage of Istanbul, and it cannot be ignored. I am expecting to see the inclusion of this history in this article soon.99.7.123.116 (talk) 23:56, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

The official beginning of the armenian relocation process (armenian genocide) started in berlin germany . Wilhelm II as the emperor of germany at that time .german government planed armenian relocation (armenian genocide) . do you see any significant (armenian relocation) date on berlin article ? please do a real research i am sure you will find very surprising facts that so much people don't want you to know. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 78.173.238.250 (talk) 10:55, 15 November 2011 (UTC)

I have now added a paragraph on the subject. As it links to the main articles, The Armenian Genocide and Deportation of Armenian notables in 1915, I think this is sufficient information, without going into too much detail about the consequences of these actions here. -- Marek.69 ^talk 17:00, 15 November 2011 (UTC)

Varlık Vergisi

I'm changing the phrase capital gain tax, a reference to the varlık vergisi in the population section, to wealth tax. I am doing this because capital gains tax is an actual tax that exists in many modern countries, paid on interest and the appreciation in value of capital investments. The article that is linked from here suggest two translations wealth tax, and capital tax. I think wealth is both a better translation (varlıklı means wealthy) and also a simpler word. Additionally the wealth tax was not paid on any gains but on "existing" wealth (existing is in quotes because the wealth of many minorities was unfairly inflated) --Kaanatakan (talk) 22:34, 19 November 2011 (UTC).