After a
period of silence, I am back again.
A lot of
things have happened, both in Antakya and in the rest of the Middle East.
Consequently we have moved our residence from Antakya to Istanbul; but as I am
working on a second book on Antioch, we visit the place quite often. My second
book will be in Turkish and is not a translation of my book Antioch on the
Orontes – A History and a Guide (Lanham, Maryland: Hamilton Books, 2012). In my first book, which was addressed to a
Western audience, I have stressed the importance of Antioch in church history.
My second book is for Turkish readers who couldn’t care less about the religious
development of Christendom. On the other
hand, they find the Ottoman period interesting. Therefore my change of focus!
A lot has
happened in Antakya since our arrival in 2008. At that time the city was dirty
and run down. When you arrived from the airport, you did not need to look out
the car window to see when you were in Antakya. The roads downtown were so
bumpy that you immediately felt when you had arrived.
The streets
were dirty. People left their garbage in barrels on the street corners, and
often the barrels were so filled that an area around them was packed with
litter and with cats as dirty as rats.
This has
changed. Even in the historic part of town close to the Bridge where garbage
trucks cannot get in, a small army of garbage men are keeping the narrow
streets amazingly clean. One must admit that the municipal administration deserves
much commendation for its work.
Unfortunately,
many of the youngsters do not appreciate the new image of their city. They use
the walls of old listed buildings as billboards for their pathetic graffiti. Mind
you, in some countries graffiti has been elevated to art and is executed with
great skill. Not so in Antioch. Most of the youngsters ruin the walls – and
sometimes even doors – with scribblings they themselves regard as love poems.
Afterwards they have themselves photographed in front of their vulgarities.
When I
asked one of the perpetrators – I guess he was about thirty years old – he
answered: “This is real feelings!” If this is the case, their emotional life
must be exceptionally shallow. Even an old mosque from the early 16th
century has not been spared. One automatically gets the suspicion that parents
and school teacher have neglected something somewhere.
The walls of a mosque in old Antakya
One
wonders: when there is so much ugly concrete with smooth dull surfaces, why
ruin the façades of old listed houses? But of
course, one has seen similar cases of lack of respect for historic values on an
even higher level. After all, it was in Antioch that an old bridge from the
beginning of the 4th century was destroyed to make way more cars.
Another
thing which is ruining the ambience of the classic centre of Antakya is that as
soon as an old building has been restored into its original state, it is turned
into a blaring bar or a café (which is more or less the same thing down here). Whatever
can be turned into money must be turned into money, never mind how much you
ruin on the way. This was what happened to the Aegean village of Gümüşlük, Myndos of the antiquity,
after people realized its existence. And this was what happened to the Istanbul
quarter of Asmalımescit at the bottom of Istiklal Caddesi. As soon as somebody started the renovation
of the old buildings, whatever cavity was found at the ground floor was turned
into a bar. The sound of “music” from who knows how many competing bars was unbearable.
Let us hope that central Antakya will be saved from a similar fate!
But there is a reason for hope. The interest taken in preserving old
Antakya which has been witnessed during the last four years or so indicates
that somebody may be going to see to it that old Antakya will not be ruined.
