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On May 29 1453, Mehmet II conquered Constantinople. Its ancient walls, barely breached in eight centuries, were overwhelmed by the sultan’s army. The city was proclaimed the new capital of the Ottoman Empire and over a thousand years of Byzantine rule came to an end.
Those walls were constructed by Theodosius II to protect the “New Rome”. Running from the Golden Horn to the Sea of Marmara, they marked the boundary of Old Istanbul. Over the years they have endured earthquakes, sieges and the sprawl of the city, yet their gates and fortifications remain.
To the City is a journey along the walls and through the communities living beside them. While learning about the local residents, Alexander Christie-Miller also describes the key episodes from Turkey’s recent history, in particular the rise to power of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and his Justice and Development party (AKP). He also narrates the conquest of Constantinople by Mehmet (sometimes known as Mehmed), an event the AKP has placed at “the centre of Turkey’s popular historical consciousness”.
Istanbul is home to one-fifth of Turkey’s population and responsible for almost a third of its gross domestic product. It attracts people from every region of the country, as well as a range of religious and ethnic groups. That range is shown in the characters Christie-Miller encounters: a semi-professional breakdancer who descended into heroin addiction; a taxi driver whose fiancée threw herself from one of the walls’ towers; the wife of a Gülenist teacher who was killed in the clampdown following the attempted coup in 2016; and a Kurdish man whose family fled the violence in the south-east of the country, only to end up working in Istanbul’s immense new airport.
The author is a sensitive and patient presence, piecing together these stories over many pages. Spending time at a teahouse, an animal shelter and a former Dervish hall that is now an academic institution, he brings to life the rich variety of these neighbourhoods.
While Christie-Miller’s focus remains on the streets surrounding the walls, his characters offer broader insights into Turkey’s social and political make-up. He is also sensitive to the poetry of his surroundings, captured in moments of lyrical precision: “Behind them I saw the remains of the Byzantine sea wall hanging like a scrap of old parchment strung out to dry in the sun.”
Christie-Miller began living in Istanbul in 2010. At first, he shared the positive view of Turkey held by many western commentators: a booming economy, a popular leader and a key ally in the “war on terror”. However, while working as a journalist he witnessed the Gezi Park protests of 2013, the attempted coup of 2016, and Istanbul being transformed by reckless development. Despite marrying into a Turkish family, he returned to Britain in 2017, and the story of his growing disillusionment forms the background to the journey.
Several of the book’s subjects have been displaced by these developments, with traditional houses and allotments levelled to make way for tower blocks, while crumbling gates are rebuilt in a Disneyfied fashion. Though careful to avoid nostalgia, Christie-Miller regrets this “preference for ersatz history over the real thing”, as well as the deliberate destruction of historic neighbourhoods and their diverse communities. The thoughtless spoiling of the natural environment is another theme, and it’s no coincidence that the book begins and ends among animals.
At times, To the City reads like a lament. When writing about the cronyism of Erdoğan’s leadership, or the woeful response to the 2023 earthquake in the south of the country, the author comes closer to anger. Yet the book’s historical perspective reminds the reader just how much Istanbul has endured: overcoming economic decline, autocratic rule, architectural destruction and the loss of talent numerous times before.
The Constantinople that Mehmet conquered was a shrivelled husk, but he transformed it back into a cosmopolitan capital. Great cities have many lives, and few cities have survived as much as this one.
To the City: Life and Death Along the Ancient Walls of Istanbul by Alexander Christie-Miller William Collins £25, 416 pages
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