The Great Smyrniote Adventure

This concludes my series of four long posts about my adventures last year in Smyrna, or Izmir, the most beautiful city in Turkey. Here is a brief track-back for those of you who missed...

1-) Greek Houses in Alsancak
2-) A Greek House Burns Down in Kemeralti
3-) Synagogues of Havra Street
4-) The Mysteries of the Agora
5-) The House of Sabbatai Sevi

At the House of Sabatai Sevi

Here we are with the last post of my Great Smyrniote adventure. In my last day in Izmir, I had a chance to visit one of the most paradoxical structures in the entire city. This withered structure, right behind the building in the center with three windows, is nothing less than the house of Sabbatai Sevi.

The area containing the house was normally protected with a wire fence, but I found a way to sneak in through a good-sized hole in the fence.

It's hard to believe that this building is more than four hundred years old!

I found two dark hole-like entrances at the ground level, but I couldn't crawl into any of them.


A narrow stairwell leads up to the rooms above.

This chamber, colored in a various layers of faded green, blue and white paint, was one of the largest enclosed rooms of the house. Until recently this building was inhabited by Gypsy or Kurdish squatters from the nearby Kadifekale neighborhood. In the last few years, the squatters have been evicted and the house was reclaimed as a part of the Smyrniote Agora restoration program.

What's even stranger is that people have been reported to visit this site and light candles in it. One anecdote I've heard of recounts people from America coming all the way to this house and praying in it. Weird. I guess in a way, the Sabbatean heritage lives on.


Right next to the "blue room" lies a half-collapsed terrace with yet another staircase leading up to the upper floor.

On the upper floor is the famous "chamber of the eyes," which houses these bizarre, face-like arrangement of windows, doors and alcoves.

Is this a case of genuine, anthropomorphic architecture? Or just simple 17th century lack-of-planning?

More details from the "chamber of the eyes".


My expedition of Sabbatai Sevi's house came to an end when I walked up to the roof of the building and saw a nice vista of the Agora unfolding below. It was this roof that Sabbatai Sevi supposedly ascended to the skies, levitating during his intense meditations.

I find these tales incredulous of course, but I still have a deep fascination for the life and history of Sabbatai Sevi, and the remaining Sabbateans in Turkey and beyond. This is not the least because Sabbatai Sevi's teachings literally expressed something like proto-secularism in an era riven with religious madness.

This vista concluded my trip to Sabbatai's house. I ran back to the fence, crawled back out from the hole and ended my day with a deep sense of satisfaction and wonder.

A special bunch of thanks go to my friend Okan Çetin, who guided and accompanied me on the trip to the Agora and the house of Sabbatai Sevi.

The Agora of Smyrna

The Great Smyrniote Adventure, which has been the subject of my past three posts, shows no signs of stopping. This week, let's go on a trip to the Agora of Smyrna, which has been the city's center in the Classical Era. With the modern expansion of the city into the seaside and beyond, the Agora has been surrounded by a rather nasty neighborhood of Kurdish immigrants called Kadifekale.

Despite its fall from grace, the Agora is still in use as an open air museum, and preserves layers upon layers of Izmir's (or Smyrna's) history from the Antiquity, to the Ottomans, the Graeco-Turkish war of 1921-22 and beyond.

Some of the ancient arcades where hellenistic merchants used to do business have been lovingly restored to their "original" status.

More interesting than the Classical ruins, however, is the collection of Muslim graves from the Ottoman centuries, when the Agora used to be a graveyard. Unfortunately, they are not kept in a tidy state.

Here, a curiously beheaded bust with a bow tie stands among piles of stone turbans. I think this bust is a very recent sculpture, possibly depicting a prominent Greek figure from the early twentieth or late nineteenth centuries. It might even be a bust of Venizelos from the brief period of Greek occupation. That would certainly explain why it was beheaded and cast aside later on.

Elsewhere, the older Ottoman graves are decorated with beautiful and usually mystifying patterns. These people may have been too scared to paint human figures, but they were certainly no strangers to art and beauty.

I couldn't decide whether this was an antique pattern or a later, Ottoman copy of one.

This was one of the most atypical Ottoman graves I saw in the agora. It has a curiously neoclassical, even baroque pattern and an obelisk-like column instead of the usual headstone. I wish I could read the inscriptions.

The weirdness goes on. Later on, I came across a Muslim grave with an unmistakable star of David on its side. Was this a sign of the Sabbateans, the Muslim-mimicking community of mystical Jews, whose trail had led me to this particular trip to Smyrna? Maybe.

Or maybe not? The six-pointed star, it turned out, was also a very popular pattern in Muslim art and architecture between the sixteenth and the eighteenth centuries. Here, we can see an engraving in the nearby Kemeraltı district that has mosques, the names God and six-pointed stars side by side. So, these images might be anachronistic only to our modern eyes.

Co-incidentally, I did not take this photo, but instead borrowed it from tatilgezisi.com, a Turkish tourism site.

As I left the Agora through the ancient gates still flanked by disfigured statues of lions, my mind was on only one thing...

... were those graves those of "normal" Mohammedans? Or were they genuine graves of the Sabbateans? What was the significance of that weird "obelisk grave?" Here, by the way, is one of the ancient lion statues, its face disfigured by the scars of time.

I had lunch in a cheap nearby restaurant. On its doorstep I noticed a simillar, albeit more hysterical modern "agoran lion" made out of cast concrete.

Little did I know then, that after lunch I would wander into a shocking revelation about the Sabbateans in Smynra. But that, dear readers, is the subject of next week's post. Until then, keep watching... this blog!

The Synagogues of İzmir

My adventures in Smyrna continue this week with this selection of pictures from the Havra street, near the historic, but currently dilapidated Kemeraltı district.

Once a populous Jewish neighborhood, this small bundle of streets still has more than a dozen synagogues dotting every corner. This is the Sinyora Giveret Synagogue.

Izmir still has a large population of Jewish citizens, but they have long since moved away into more prosperous neighborhoods. Their temples, all dating from the 1500s or the 1600s, are still in active use. This is the Algaze, or Algazi Synagogue.

There's literally a synagogue behind every street corner. This is the Hevra Synagogue.

Another view of the Hevra Synagogue, showing its centuries-old walls.

The Ets Hayim, with surreal checkered tiles surrounding its door. It's a pity I couldn't get into any of them.

This imposing edifice was one of the oldest in the neighborhood. Informally known as the "Portuguese Synagogue," it was built in the early 1500s by Sephardi immigrants escaping oppression in Portugal.

The taste of history: Old, weird and cool at the same time.

A short way from the street of synagogues lies this house, purportedly that of a wealthy Jewish merchant that left no heirs. What an amazing, beautiful building. If I ever get to be rich enough, I'd like to buy, renovate and live in such a structure.

The rubble in front of this house is residue from archaeological digs in the Agora, the ancient heart of Smyrna. In my next post, I will reveal more mystery and historical oddities from that place. Until then... hold on tight!

History in a Stack of Old Newspapers

With the Turkish Republic now celebrating her 85th year, a neat co-incidence landed a pile of 53-year old newspapers into my possession. Here is a selection from their funny, nostalgic and occasionally horrifying contents.

All dating from the time between 1954 and 1955, these newspapers shed a light to the recent history of my country, and illuminate some interesting parallels between the media of then and now.

I found a number of titles, including Vatan, Yeni Sabah, Milliyet, Dünya and the ever-present Hürriyet. Remember, all of these photos are large-sized and you can zoom-in on them by clicking on the pictures.



The typography, graphics, design and the language of certain ads in the papers were a boon to contemporary graphic designers, who are attracted to such artifacts with an exaggerated passion for the ironic and the kitsch.

Here's another...

And another... Kayo is supposed to be a foot ointment, while Opon is a headache remedy.

Here is a sexist ad in comic-strip format, for a brand of razors called Poker-Play. "If she is avoiding you, it's your fault! Buy a Poker-Play now and get a nice, clean shave. Oh, how nice..."

Some of the news are also hilarious. Here, we are informed that the "Society for Those Who Want to Go to the Moon" has been disbanded due to the lack of interest and public ridicule. How surprised must those disinterested, mocking masses have been when, sixteen years later, mankind did walk on the Moon.

The plight of the Society for Those Who Want to Go to the Moon also neatly illustrates why it was the United States, and not a country full of incompetent, arrogant oafs like Turkey who achieved that momentous feat.

What about this one? A kid supposedly put his boss to sleep using a form of magical earth from someone's grave, and was duly caught by the police. This article is written in such a form that the sleep-inducing properties of graveyard soil is mentioned like an established fact. Science education must not have been very advanced, by then.

This one is rather cute; a baby bear in Siberia was damaging phone lines by climbing to the top of the poles and plucking the phone-line cables "...harmoniously, as if he was playing a guitar."

This one is bizarre: A woman, identified only as "Ayşe from Konya," has supposedly kept a snake alive in her stomach for over a year! Well it's either her stomach or uterus, for the newspaper uses a very vague language when referring to the snake's location as "Karın;" a word that can be used for both organs.

I think something like this is faintly possible if the snake was indeed in her vagina, but for the stomach - no way. Perhaps the paper's editors didn't know the difference between a snake and a tapeworm. Judging from their previous errors, I wouldn't put it past them.

While some of the news are funny or just plain weird, others are simply depressing. Consider this article: Two villages from the around Samsun, on the black sea coast, had a little "war" involving more than two thousand people rushing the opposing village and burning it down to the ground and klling all of their livestock. Fortunately, "only" one person was killed.

What the f*ck?!? Modern Turkey can still get pretty ugly, but this is a huge event even by today's standards. I wonder what other horrors must have taken place?

Another sad Turkish classic: After a moderately large earthquake in Smyrna, or Izmir, religious shit-heads have run amok, harassing women in modern clothes and urging them to wear the characteristic Mohammedan rags lest the "wrath of God" strike their city again.

The exact same shit happened in my lifetime after the big 1999 earthquake that killed my grandmother.

This small snippet, on the other hand, is possibly the scariest piece I've ever read in the entire stack of newspapers. All copies of an encyclopedia on the history of the Ottoman Empire and Turkey from 1703 to 1924 were forcefully collected and burned in a Nazi-esque bonfire organized by a cheerful Turkish Students' Union. The reason? The book had not mentioned Mustafa Kemal Atatürk. What's even scarier is that a "group of youths" were at ready for the spectacle.

Imagine what such a generation would do when they were adults. Actually, don't - for here in Turkey, we are seeing them, grown up and in action right now. The recent spate of internet bans, including that of Youtube for hosting a video that insulted Atatürk, represents the exact same diseased mentality. From burning books to banning the internet in fifty three years - what a shame.

Make no mistake about it, I'm not against Atatürk, or his principles. Heck, I adore the guy for actually achieving his wildest dreams and forging, in blood and fire, the world that my generation grew up in. However, censorship and bigotry are still censorship and bigotry, whether they are done in the name of Atatürk or not.

It gets worse. All of these newspapers all date from around 1955, during which the horrifying "Istanbul Kristallnacht," the pogrom against the Greeks of the City, took place. What's shocking is that almost all newspapers engage in purposeful propaganda against the Istanbul Greeks until the events, and then immediately bigan wailing and crying about the "unfortunate tragedy." Here is a page from the infamous Hurriyet, pointing out to a (completely fabricated) link between the Greek Patriarchiate in Fener and the Greek terrorist bands in Cyprus, who were gering up for an ethnic cleansing of the island's Turkish populace.

What happened after all of those provocations will live forever in the history of this country.