Aegean Pearls: My Life in Izmir

I attended my first Turkish folk concert this week, a performance by the T epecik Filarmoni Orkestrasi , a group of musicians who play Romany music, among other styles. It was an experience unlike anything I have ever heard, and my mind is honestly still relishing it. Here's a look at some video my friend shot of the concert, held at the Sanathane Theater in Basmane, a historic area with winding, cobble-stone streets close to the center of town. Romany music is, of course, tied to the Balkan gypsy culture, and it is very eastern in orientation and sound. The 10-piece band, led by a percussionist on the doubek drum included 3 violinists, a tambourine, a base drum, a zither, clarinet, trumpet, and a keyboardist playing bass notes.  But to their Romany songs, TFO added some Turkish folk and even some riffs on western standards. They have a really cool arrangement of Mozart's symphony #25 that they meld with Romany style to create a musical experience unlike any other. There was a...

Between the Kordon, the harbor side park that separates Izmir from the harbor, and the neighborhood of Alsancak, lies this amazing starue. Horsemen race along the shore, an artistic mix of balance and exuberance. Arms raised, they gesture toward Izmir's city center, about a kilometer away. Some hold instruments in their hands--they may be riding crops, when I look at them, they look like pens or paint brushes. The sculpture is called Tree of the Republic , and its sculptor, Ferit Özşen, captured a key moment in the founding of the Turkish Republic--and that moment happened exactly 100 years ago. Ten days ago, I wrote about the 100th anniversary of the Battle of Alıören , the moment when Greece was forced back from the gates of Ankara into headlong retreat towards the Aegean Coast. The Greco-Turk War (1919-1922) had begun with the Greek occupation of Smyrna, a city that, at the time, had twice as many Greek residents as Athens.  The ten days that followed tha...

This week my local town of Gaziemir--and the key points of Izmir--decked themselves in red & white. There were photos of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the "Father of the Turks (that's what Atatürk means) everywhere. Something big is going down, as you can see by these banners in the fairgrounds across from my apartment. The banner on the left is a portrait of Atatürk. The one of the right is the Turkish flag. You can see hundreds of small Turkish flags in the background. As it turns out, today is the 100th anniversary of the Battle of Alıören, the turning point of the Turco-Greek War that had begun in 1919 with the occupation of Smyrna, as Izmir was then known. In Western histories, World War I ended with Armistice Day, November 11, 1918. Less-known in the United States, where I grew up, are the results of the Paris Peace Conference or the Versailles Treaty, which achieved little more than guaranteeing another world war, and setting countries like Greek and Turkey on ...

One striking place in Izmir is the harborside that separates Alsancak from the bay--an 80-meter-wide, green, grassy park, perfect for strolling. It is called the Kordon  by Izmirians, and it stretches one kilometer along the waterfront. Simple math shows that it is 80,000 meters squared. On a typical evening, the park fills will people strolling. A few fishermen stand at the water. There is a bike path and a tramway. Every few hundred meters there is a playground--or a statue of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk. People are hawking sunflower seeds or Gevrek , a special type of bagel, covered with roasted sesame seeds. Once, I saw a man carrying two thermos bottles and paper cups, selling Chai . But as I learned, reading Giles Milton's Paradise Lost , no matter how much the harborside seems like a place of leisure and tranquility, it is the sight of one of humanity's greatest tragedies: a fire that consumed the city in September of 1922 and put an end to the complex balance of Greeks, Turks...