Turkish Delight

The rise of Beyoglu is a good metaphor for Istanbul as a whole. At its best, it showcases all that's original and vibrant in the city. At its worst, it does just the opposite--testifying to Turkey's cultural insecurities. Yes, the melting pot that is the Istiklal Caddesi is genuine enough. But what to make of the Fransiz Sokak, a whole street filled with faux French cafes and restaurants, complete with baguettes and piped accordion music? Contrast that with the restaurant Dilara's Abracadabra, whose owner, Dilara Erbay, conjures up a truly innovative new food culture based on traditional seasonal rhythms. "This is Anatolia, a very spiritual and holy place," says Erbay. "Anatolian food is alive, all the old stories are there. We prepare special foods when someone dies, when they are born, when guests come. You can tell all your life in food." Erbay's next big thing is Sufi cuisine, simple and pure food eaten from a communal bowl "to symbolize love and oneness," rooted in Turkey's ancient culture of Sufi Islamic mysticism.

It's a constant tussle, this East-West divide. For years being cool and innovative has long meant, simply, being Western. "Kemal Ataturk wanted to change Turkey into a Western country; everything from our own culture was forbidden," recalls Fatih Akin. Now, he adds, more and more Turkish artists are rediscovering their own voices, grounded in their own traditions rather than borrowed ones. Listen, for instance, to the weird, haunting melodies of the dervish rituals that shape the mesmerizing electronic music of Mercan Dede, who mixes Sufi classical music played on the ney (a kind of flute) with computer beats. Look at the upper floors of the Pera Museum, dedicated to the work of young Turkish artists. (One female painter crowns her angry self-portrait with a Byzantine-style gold halo; a digital photomontage of horses and soldiers turns what might have been a battle of classical Greece and Persia into something resembling a videogame; in one photo of a large mosque, minarets tilt at 45 degrees, evoking missiles.) Or try on some of designer Gonul Paksoy's sumptuous Ottoman-inspired gowns made of antique silks and rich embroidery. These are all signs of a cultural voice growing from within, and no longer imported from abroad.

Not all the new art is a celebration. Filmmaker Kutlug Ataman, shortlisted for last year's prestigious British Turner Prize, cuts close to Turkey's sociocultural bone. His latest video installation, "Kuba," constructs a communal portrait of life in an Istanbul shantytown, voice by voice. The subjects range from criminals, drug addicts and teenage delinquents to religious radicals and the poor--an uncomfortably real slice of daily life at the margins.

Bold artistic voices like Ataman's are bound to collide with Turkey's many taboos--nationalist versus European, modern versus traditional, secular versus religious. While bright young things drink and flirt in expensive Beyoglu restaurants, the more numerous poor look on in bewilderment and not a little disapproval. Outside one trendy record shop specializing in reggae and rap, graffiti on the wall reads RAP NO--MUSLIM YES. And just a hundred meters from the lively bars of Istiklal, an armored personnel carrier stands permanently parked outside the police headquarters on Tarlabasi Boulevard, ready for use during the sporadic disorders among Tarlabasi's largely Kurdish minority.

Istanbul and its artists are testing new political limits as well. Aynur, a Kurdish singer featured in "The Sound of Istanbul," recalls that when she started performing 10 years ago, police would pull the plug on her. With new laws (another nod to the EU) authorizing broadcasts in Kurdish, she can now sing wherever and whenever she wants. But, she says, "I only wish these changes were happening because we really believed in them, not because we're becoming members of the EU." Even novelist Orhan Pamuk, whose books have been a huge success in Turkey and the West, was pilloried by nationalists earlier this year when he dared to ask what had happened to the Armenians of the Ottoman Empire in 1915, when hundreds of thousands were killed.

Still, taken together, the changes have been dramatic. For decades now, Greeks and Turks have lived in enmity. Yet the Pozitif photo gallery in Galata is currently hosting a show of stark images from Imroz, a Turkish Aegean island with a tiny, and dying, Greek population. It's a sad exhibit, says photographer Murat Yaykin, but "it's important to tell the story" of how Greeks and Turks not so long ago lived side by side in harmony. A huge crowd also turned out last month when Greek singer Aliki Kayaloglou performed poetry by Greek poets Elytis, Kavafis and Sappho, as well as Turkish poet Nazim Hikmet, set to music by contemporary Greek composer Manos Hadjidakis. Greek contemporary pop sells well in the record shops on Istiklal.