The Malta Independent on Sunday
A collection of Turkish postcards at the Malta Postal Museum
Ihave been promising myself a visit to this new Museum since it opened in June last year. Well, I finally got an opportunity to go when I received an invitation from the Turkish ambassador to The Mystery of the Bosphorus, an exhibition of his collection of vintage postcards from 1895 to 1907.
This town house which houses the Museum, near the Greek Catholic Church which was bombed during the war and rebuilt once belonged to Caterina Vitale (1566-1619) the first female pharmacist and chemist in Malta and the first female pharmacist of the Knights Hospitaller. I have always found her to be a fascinating personality and a woman ahead of her time.
*** The Curator of this new Museum is Lara Bugeja who greeted guests with her infectious smile.
After a quick look round I discovered that the collection consists of documents and artifacts related to the postal history of Malta from the 16th century to the present day, along with every Maltese postage stamp issued from 1860 (the Halfpenny Yellow) to 2010.
The museum includes a gift shop, a section dedicated to children, and two galleries for temporary exhibitions.
*** The Turkish postcards event was very well attended.
Mrs Bugeja introduced His Excellency the Ambassador to Turkey Mr Reha Keskintepe.
He gave the audience some background of his collection of postcards of Istanbul which were framed in batches and which have already been displayed in ten countries worldwide.
In a short but very interesting lecture His Excellency said that the Bosphorus has been the heart and soul of Istanbul since time immemorial. There was an interesting documentary of Istanbul and the Bosphorus in the background. I am so sorry that I have never visited this intriguing country. One of my daughters spent some months there on some university exchange or another and she was always emailing me saying ‘you simply have to come ma, you will love it.’I have always loved Amadeo Preziosi’s and David Roberts’ paintings of Turkey but at the time I couldn’t go. At this stage I won’t even put it on my bucket list. *** His Excellency told us that the postcards in the exhibition date back to the last two decades of the Ottoman period (1895-1914) when Istanbul was Constantinople in the West. “In fact some of these postcards are the very first specimens depicting Istanbul at that time… it did not take me a century to collect the postcards but a little over 20 years. A collector’s job is never finished so I am still hunting vintage postcards of Istanbul, wherever I go. I am sure there are postcards out there in Malta, but I have yet to find them.” He quoted the Ottoman poet Sümbülzade Vehbi, ‘Istanbul is another world, which brings together the rest of the world.” ‘I gather he meant that, as great cities are known to be, Istanbul was proud of its multicultural roots and heritage. A standing testimony to this fact is the Hagia Dofia Museum, which successively served as a Church and as a Mosque.’
*** The Ottoman capital was and is today divided by a Waterway, the Bosphorus, with shores on both sides of the waterway named the Anatolian Shores and the European Shores.’ Pointing to an old and rare map he told the audience that ‘this is the location where Europe and Asia divide geographically, but come together in every way one can imagine.’ He pointed out that from a million population when the postcards were printed now there are 15 million in Istanbul and the Bosphorus.
He thanked Mrs Bugeja for setting up the exhibition so professionally and introduced Ms Aylin Arican McCarthy a fellow Istanbulite who had attended and graduated from the School of Administration at the Bosphurus University in 1976 at the same time as him.
*** The very well qualified speaker spoke about the city of Istanbul and its 15 million people. ‘Its heritage is seriously challenged by over population, over-expansion, over-building. Yet miraculously, the traces of its past are still prominently there.’
I felt like waving my hand and say that tiny Malta is suffering from the same diseases.
She then spoke about the places of worship: mosques, churches of all kinds and synagogues.The public buildings among which the palaces. Topping the list is Topkapi. Then the aqueducts and fountains. Ms Arican McCarthy pointed out how large public buildings are made of stone. However the majority of the buildings in the city were built of wood. ‘This made Istanbul prone to great fires in which whole neighbourhoods of wooden houses – be they mansions or modest homes – disappeared in flames’.
She pointed out the Yalis, a string of graceful wooden residences which lined the two shores of the Strait of Bosphorus. ‘This part of town was at its best in the mid-19th century and then fell into disrepair. But in recent decades, there has been a major effort to repair and preserve this waterside architecture.’
* * *’ Navigation in the Bosphurus has been and still is tricky today she told us. ‘In the last decades, the vessel traffic increased and the size of the tankers carrying dangerous cargo such as petroleum and natural gas increased. We have had very scary collisions in the Bosphorus in the past. So today, the navigation is controlled by a vessel traffic signalization system which guides the ships in the strong current and in foggy weather.’
*** She then spoke about sources of power. The Ottoman Empire was widely influenced by the faiths and customs of the peoples it incorporated, she told us, but the most significant influence was Islam.
She the discussed Costume as a reflection of sources of power. ‘The people were inextricably mixed together, but you could identify their ethnicity. High officials and military men dressed in an awe and fear inspiring fashion which could not be missed…Today it is as if everyone dresses the same way. Jeans and T-shirts are like a uniform for men and women. Why not? Turkey is the number one producer of denim for jeans.’ Those colourful and exotic costumes in my books on David Roberts and Amadeo Preziosi are almost gone.
*** Then there are the vendors and sounds of the city. As in Malta Istanbul too had its street vendors; its fishmongers, its icecream men, knife sharpeners and tinners. Old and small neighbourhoods still have them as vestiges from the past. But in Istanbul today there are the shopping malls.
‘Ever present is the call to prayer five times a day from the minarets of the hundreds of mosques. Our speaker then spoke of Cosmopolitanism The speaker told us that there were a number of Maltese among the Levantines, the traders and craftsmen of Mediterranean and Western European origin, with surnames such as Callus, Serra, Scarpello.
*** And so to the Economy and Women of which there were some very interesting postcards. ‘At the time of the postcards we have seen, women had obtained more freedoms with the influence of Westernization. They were better educated. They founded women’s organizations, published magazines. But the real empowerment of women came with the Turkish Republic and its secular Constitution giving men and women equal rights as full citizens.’ She then went on to speak of Istanbul today and gave us a very interesting analysis. Noted by me and no doubt the rest of the audience were the following comments: ‘The major change in life in the city since the ‘70s are the ever increasing population, the physical size of the city, and the disappearance of green and open spaces.’ Old wooden homes and mansions were first divided into apartments and then were torn down. They were replaced by blocks of concrete, multi-storied apartment buildings with no gardens…Increasing prices of real estate has lured everyone to build everywhere. Unfortunately, this construction spree is continuing mercilessly, destroying the city’s character, spirit, heritage, greenery and resources, probably irreversibly. In many parts of the city, gentrification has brought about loss of authenticity. We were not yet in the grip of consumerism. We lived modestly and thriftily.’ Exactly what is happening here I wanted to tell her. No wonder His Excellency said, in his introduction to his collection that the postcards ‘depict a bygone era, a world lost to us, but one that many Turks including myself feel great nostalgia for.’ ***
I feel so sad for Malta and our grandchildren but now I also feel sad for Turkey and the Turks. We all needed a drink at the end of this excellent talk and so upstairs we went for a post mortem and some respite from the horrors of the modern world. mbenoit@independent.com.mt