History
[edit]
Main article: History of Istanbul
For a chronological guide, see Timeline of Istanbul history.
Neolithic artifacts, uncovered by archeologists at the beginning of the 21st century, indicate that Istanbul's historic peninsula was settled as far back as the 6th millennium BCE. That early settlement, important in the spread of the Neolithic Revolution from the Near East to Europe, lasted for almost a millennium before being inundated by rising water levels. The first human settlement on the Asian side, the Fikirtepe mound, is from the Copper Age period, with artifacts dating from 5500 to 3500 BCE, On the European side, near the point of the peninsula (Sarayburnu), there was a Thracian settlement during the early 1st millennium BCE. Modern authors have linked it to the Thracian toponym Lygos, mentioned by Pliny the Elder as an earlier name for the site of Byzantium.
The history of the city proper begins around 660 BCE, when Greek settlers from Megara established Byzantium on the European side of the Bosporus. The settlers built an acropolis adjacent to the Golden Horn on the site of the early Thracian settlements, fueling the nascent city's economy. The city experienced a brief period of Persian rule at the turn of the 5th century BCE, but the Greeks recaptured it during the Greco-Persian Wars. Byzantium then continued as part of the Athenian League and its successor, the Second Athenian League, before gaining independence in 355 BCE. Long allied with the Romans, Byzantium officially became a part of the Roman Empire in 73 CE. Byzantium's decision to side with the Roman usurper Pescennius Niger against Emperor Septimius Severus cost it dearly; by the time it surrendered at the end of 195 CE, two years of siege had left the city devastated. Five years later, Severus began to rebuild Byzantium, and the city regained – and, by some accounts, surpassed – its previous prosperity.
Byzantine era[edit]
Originally built by Constantine the Great in the 4th century and later rebuilt by Justinian I after the Nika riots in 532, the Hagia Irene is an Eastern Orthodox Church located in the outer courtyard of Topkapı Palace in Istanbul. It is one of the few Byzantine era churches that were never converted into mosques; during the Ottoman period it served as Topkapı's principal armoury
Constantine the Great effectively became the emperor of the whole of the Roman Empire in September 324. Two months later, he laid out the plans for a new, Christian city to replace Byzantium. As the eastern capital of the empire, the city was named Nova Roma; most called it Constantinople, a name that persisted into the 20th century. On 11 May 330, Constantinople was proclaimed the capital of the Roman Empire, which was later permanently divided between the two sons of Theodosius I upon his death on 17 January 395, when the city became the capital of the eastern empire. During the following millennium of Roman history the state was commonly referred to as the "Byzantine Empire".
The establishment of Constantinople was one of Constantine's most lasting accomplishments, shifting Roman power eastward as the city became a center of Greek culture and Christianity. Numerous churches were built across the city, including Hagia Sophia which was built during the reign of Justinian I and remained the world's largest cathedral for a thousand years. Constantine also undertook a major renovation and expansion of the Hippodrome of Constantinople; accommodating tens of thousands of spectators, the hippodrome became central to civic life and, in the 5th and 6th centuries, the center of episodes of unrest, including the Nika riots. Constantinople's location also ensured its existence would stand the test of time; for many centuries, its walls and seafront protected Europe against invaders from the east and the advance of Islam. During most of the Middle Ages, the latter part of the Byzantine era, Constantinople was the largest and wealthiest city on the European continent and at times the largest in the world. Constantinople is generally considered to be the center and the "cradle of Orthodox Christian civilization".
The 6th century Basilica Cistern was built by Justinian the Great
Constantinople began to decline continuously after the end of the reign of Basil II in 1025. The Fourth Crusade was diverted from its purpose in 1204, and the city was sacked and pillaged by the crusaders. They established the Latin Empire in place of the Orthodox Byzantine Empire. Hagia Sophia was converted to a Catholic church in 1204. The Byzantine Empire was restored, albeit weakened, in 1261. Constantinople's churches, defenses, and basic services were in disrepair, and its population had dwindled to a hundred thousand from half a million during the 8th century. After the reconquest of 1261, however, some of the city's monuments were restored, and some, like the two Deesis mosaics in Hagia Sophia and Kariye, were created.
Various economic and military policies instituted by Andronikos II Palaiologos, such as the reduction of military forces, weakened the empire and left it vulnerable to attack. In the mid-14th-century, the Ottoman Turks began a strategy of gradually taking smaller towns and cities, cutting off Constantinople's supply routes and strangling it slowly. On 29 May 1453, after a 55-day siege during which the last Roman emperor, Constantine XI, was killed, Sultan Mehmed II "the Conqueror" captured Constantinople.
Ottoman Empire[edit]
Main article: Istanbul during the Ottoman Empire
Topkapı Palace was built by Sultan Mehmed II between 1459 and 1465
Sultan Mehmed declared Constantinople the new capital of the Ottoman Empire. Hours after the fall of the city, the sultan rode to the Hagia Sophia and summoned an imam to proclaim the shahada, converting the grand cathedral into an imperial mosque due to the city's refusal to surrender peacefully. Mehmed declared himself as the new Kayser-i Rûm, the Ottoman Turkish equivalent of the Caesar of Rome, and the Ottoman state was reorganized into an empire.
16th century map of Istanbul by the Ottoman polymath Matrakçı Nasuh
Following the capture of Constantinople, Mehmed II immediately set out to revitalize the city. Cognizant that revitalization would fail without the repopulation of the city, Mehmed II welcomed everyone–foreigners, criminals, and runaways– showing extraordinary openness and willingness to incorporate outsiders that came to define Ottoman political culture. He also invited people from all over Europe to his capital, creating a cosmopolitan society that persisted through much of the Ottoman period. Revitalizing Istanbul also required a massive program of restorations, of everything from roads to aqueducts. Like many monarchs before and since, Mehmed II transformed Istanbul's urban landscape with the wholesale redevelopment of the city center. There was a huge new palace to rival, if not overshadow, the old one, a new covered market (still standing as the Grand Bazaar), porticoes, pavilions, walkways, as well as more than a dozen new mosques. Mehmed II turned the ramshackle old town into something that looked like an imperial capital.
Social hierarchy was ignored by the rampant plague, which killed the rich and the poor alike in the 16th century. Money could not protect the rich from all the discomforts and harsher sides of Istanbul. Although the Sultan lived at a safe remove from the masses, and the wealthy and poor tended to live side by side, for the most part Istanbul was not zoned as modern cities are. Opulent houses shared the same streets and districts with tiny hovels. Those rich enough to have secluded country properties had a chance of escaping the periodic epidemics of sickness that blighted Istanbul.
View of the Golden Horn and the Seraglio Point from Galata Tower
The Ottoman dynasty claimed the status of caliphate in 1517, with Constantinople remaining the capital of this last caliphate for four centuries. Suleiman the Magnificent's reign from 1520 to 1566 was a period of especially great artistic and architectural achievement; chief architect Mimar Sinan designed several iconic buildings in the city, while Ottoman arts of ceramics, stained glass, calligraphy, and miniature flourished. The population of Constantinople was 570,000 by the end of the 18th century.
A period of rebellion at the start of the 19th century led to the rise of the progressive Sultan Mahmud II and eventually to the Tanzimat period, which produced political reforms and allowed new technology to be introduced to the city. Bridges across the Golden Horn were constructed during this period, and Constantinople was connected to the rest of the European railway network in the 1880s. Modern facilities, such as a water supply network, electricity, telephones, and trams, were gradually introduced to Constantinople over the following decades, although later than to other European cities. The modernization efforts were not enough to forestall the decline of the Ottoman Empire.
Cadde-i Kebir in 1912 (present-day İstiklal Avenue in Beyoğlu). The entrance of the Church of St. Anthony of Padua is seen at left. A Nestlé advertisement is visible on a building in the background.
With the Young Turk Revolution in 1908, the Ottoman Parliament, closed since 14 February 1878, was reopened 30 years later on 23 July 1908, which marked the beginning of the Second Constitutional Era. The civil strife and political uncertainties in the Ottoman Empire during the months after the revolution encouraged Austria-Hungary to annex Bosnia and Bulgaria to declare its independence in a jointly coordinated move on 5 October 1908. Sultan Abdul Hamid II was deposed in 1909, following the counter-revolution attempt known as the 31 March incident. A series of wars in the early 20th century, such as the Italo-Turkish War (1911–1912) and the Balkan Wars (1912–1913), plagued the ailing empire's capital and resulted in the 1913 Ottoman coup d'état, which brought the regime of the Three Pashas.
The Ottoman Empire joined World War I (1914–1918) on the side of the Central Powers and was ultimately defeated. The deportation of Armenian intellectuals on 24 April 1915 was among the major events which marked the start of the Armenian genocide during WWI. Due to Ottoman and Turkish policies of Turkification and ethnic cleansing, the city's Christian population declined from 450,000 to 240,000 between 1914 and 1927. During World War I, between 1916 and 1918, a number of aerial bombing raids by British aircraft took place in or near Istanbul. The Armistice of Mudros was signed on 30 October 1918. Less than a month later, on 12 November 1918, a ship carrying a French brigade entered the city, beginning the occupation of Constantinople. It was followed by a fleet consisting of British, Italian, Greek, and French ships deploying soldiers on the ground the next day. The subsequent occupation of Smyrna (İzmir), which was back then the second-largest Ottoman city, on 15 May 1919 also marked the beginning of the Turkish War of Independence led by Mustafa Kemal Pasha and the Turkish National Movement, who convened in Erzurum and Sivas for consolidating the resistance groups in Anatolia. The Ottoman Parliament was dissolved by the Allies on 11 April 1920, upon which many of its former members joined the Turkish National Movement headquartered in Ankara, where the Grand National Assembly of Turkey was established on 23 April 1920. Less than four months later, the representatives of the Istanbul-based Ottoman government led by Damat Ferid Pasha signed the Treaty of Sèvres on 10 August 1920, which was rejected by the GNAT in Ankara.
Following the Turkish War of Independence (1919–1922), the Grand National Assembly of Turkey in Ankara abolished the Sultanate on 1 November 1922, and the last Ottoman Sultan, Mehmed VI, was declared persona non grata. Leaving aboard the British warship HMS Malaya on 17 November 1922, he went into exile and died in Sanremo, Italy, on 16 May 1926.
A view of Bankalar Caddesi (Banks Street) in the late 1920s. Completed in 1892, the Ottoman Bank headquarters is seen at left. In 1995 the Istanbul Stock Exchange moved to İstinye, while numerous Turkish banks have moved to Levent and Maslak
The Treaty of Lausanne was signed on 24 July 1923, and the occupation of Constantinople ended with the departure of the last forces of the Allies from the city on 4 October 1923. Turkish forces of the Ankara government, commanded by Şükrü Naili Pasha (3rd Corps), entered the city with a ceremony on 6 October 1923, which has been marked as the "Liberation Day of Istanbul" (İstanbul'un Kurtuluşu), and has been commemorated annually since.
Turkish Republic[edit]
Karaköy ferry pier in the 1930s
On 29 October 1923 the Grand National Assembly of Turkey declared the establishment of the Turkish Republic, with Ankara as its capital. Mustafa Kemal Atatürk became the Republic's first President. The name Constantinople, which remained in use for 1600 years, was officially changed as İstanbul on 28 March 1930; a decision which inspired the lyrics of the 1953 song Istanbul (Not Constantinople), written on the 500th anniversary of the conquest of the city by the Ottoman Turks in 1453. Other city names that were changed with the Postal Services Law (Turkish: Posta Hizmetleri Kanunu) of 28 March 1930 include Angora which was renamed as Ankara, and Smyrna which was renamed as İzmir, among numerous other examples of internationally used city names that were replaced by officially standardized Turkish names.
Taksim Square, c. 1936
From the 1930s onward, with large-scale urban planning efforts initially led by Henri Prost between 1936 and 1950 and continued by his colleagues such as Luigi Piccinato in later years, Istanbul underwent great structural change, as new public squares, boulevards, avenues and parks were constructed throughout the city, often at the expense of historical buildings; such as Taksim Square, Taksim Gezi Park, Vatan Caddesi, Atatürk Bulvarı, Kemeraltı Caddesi, Meclis-i Mebusan Caddesi, Barbaros Bulvarı, Cumhuriyet Caddesi and Tarlabaşı Bulvarı, among others.
The 1942 wealth tax during World War II, which was levied with much higher rates on non-Muslims, led to the transfer or liquidation of many businesses owned by religious minorities. The 1955 Istanbul pogrom, during which numerous Greeks (with various estimates) were killed, wounded or sexually assaulted, led to the emigration of most of the remaining Greeks in Istanbul. Further mass expulsions of Istanbulite Greeks took place in 1964–1965, when those who were officially citizens of Greece but were allowed to stay in Turkey according to the Treaty of Lausanne and were exempted from the population exchange were ordered to promptly leave the country, including those with a spouse who held Turkish citizenship. The decision was made after Turkey and Greece came to the brink of war in 1964 over violent clashes in Cyprus, which was averted through the intervention by U.S. president Lyndon B. Johnson, who wanted to prevent a conflict between two NATO members at the height of the Cold War. As a result of these policies, the Greek population of Istanbul decreased from 110,000 in 1919 to 2,500 by the end of the 20th century.
A view of the fourth Galata Bridge (1912–1992) in 1966, with the restoration works (1965–1967) of the conical roof of Galata Tower (the previous one was removed in the 19th century) visible at left.
Turkey suffered from political turmoil and economic crises between 1960 and 1980, and the emigration of Istanbul's ethnic and religious minorities, mainly to Europe and North America, continued in this period; while new laws with the aim of Turkification were introduced, such as the nationalization or closure of private higher education institutions in 1971. As a result, the college section of Robert College (RC) in Istanbul, which offered 4-year bachelor's degree programs (e.g. the programs of the School of Engineering) and master's degree programs (e.g. in Industrial Engineering), was nationalized and reorganized as Boğaziçi University in 1971; while its high school section, formerly named Robert Academy (RA), continues to operate as an American high school, with the Turkish name Robert Kolej referring mainly to the still active high school section since 1971. Applying the same law of 1971, the Turkish Ministry of National Education proposed to attach the Theological School of Halki (Heybeliada) to the Faculty of Theology (İlahiyat Fakültesi) at Istanbul University, but the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate, citing the Treaty of Lausanne, refused to accept this change and decided to keep the school closed until the restoration of its previous legal status, which was annulled on 9 July 1971. The autonomy of Turkish universities, granted with Article 120 of the Turkish Constitution of 1961, was suspended in 1971 and annulled in 1981. The Council of Higher Education, established on 6 November 1981 when Turkey was administered by the National Security Council chaired by General Kenan Evren between 1980 and 1983, is responsible for supervising the universities in Turkey, in a capacity defined by Article 130 of the Turkish Constitution of 1982. Civilian rule was restored with the 1983 general elections.
The Bosphorus Bridge in 1973
The overall population of Istanbul began to rapidly increase in the 1970s, as people from Anatolia migrated to the city to find employment in the many new factories that were built on the outskirts of the sprawling metropolis. This sudden, sharp rise in the city's population caused a large demand for housing, and many previously outlying villages and forests became engulfed into the metropolitan area of Istanbul as a result of urban sprawl. The Bosphorus Bridge, which connects the city's European and Asian parts, was opened in 1973 and significantly contributed to the increase in migration from Anatolia. It was followed by other bridges and tunnels which span the Bosphorus strait, namely the Fatih Sultan Mehmet Bridge (1988), Marmaray Tunnel (2013), Yavuz Sultan Selim Bridge (2016), and Eurasia Tunnel (2016).
Bağdat Avenue is the main shopping street in the Asian side
Built in the latter half of the 1980s, the Sahilyolu (Coastal Road), a scenic road along the Marmara coast of the Anatolian side of the city, parallel to Bağdat Avenue and facing the Princes' Islands (with the part between Caddebostan and Bostancı named as the Çetin Emeç Bulvarı, and the part between Bostancı and Pendik named as the Turgut Özal Bulvarı), had a major impact on the growth and development of the districts in the city's Asian side. Istanbul Sea Buses, operating between the city's European and Asian sides, were also introduced in this period, with the first generation of 10 fast catamaran ferries built by Kvaerner Fjellstrand in Norway entering service in 1987.
In 1990 the pedestrianization of İstiklal Avenue in Beyoğlu was completed and the nostalgic trams were reintroduced. Tarlabaşı Bulvarı in Beyoğlu was built in the same period as a new route for diverting the motor vehicle traffic which previously flowed along İstiklal Avenue before its pedestrianization.
Istanbul Metro's M8 line is among the new lines with fully automated driverless trains and platform screen doors for increasing passenger safety
The M1 line of the Istanbul Metro was opened in 1989. It was followed by the M2 (2000), M4 (2012), M3 (2013), M6 (2015), M5 (2017), M7 (2020), M9 (2021), M8 (2023) and M11 (2023) lines. The M10, M12, M13 and M14 lines are currently under construction. The lines on the European and Asian sides of the city are connected by the Marmaray Tunnel underneath the Bosphorus strait.
Atatürk Airport, originally named Yeşilköy Airport, was built in 1912 as an airfield for the Ottoman Aviation Squadrons. In 1933 it became a civilian airport and the hub of Turkish Airlines for domestic flights. The first international flight, between Istanbul and Athens, took place in 1947. In 1953 the airport terminal building was opened; it was the location of a few scenes in the 1963 James Bond film From Russia with Love. A new international terminal building was constructed by TAV between 1998 and 2004, and the previous building became the domestic flights terminal. Atatürk Airport remained as Istanbul's main international airport until the end of passenger flights and the closure of the passenger terminals in 2019 (cargo flights ended in 2022). Since 2019, Istanbul Airport, the current hub of Turkish Airlines and one of the largest airports in the world, is the main international airport in the city's European side. Sabiha Gökçen International Airport, the main airport in the city's Asian side, was opened in 2001.
In the late 20th and early 21st centuries, Istanbul became the new home of immigrants, residents and refugees from various countries, such as Bulgaria, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Kosovo, North Macedonia, the Turkic states of the Caspian basin, Russia, Ukraine, Moldova, the Arab states of the Persian Gulf, Syria, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Libya, Sudan, Eritrea, Somalia, Ethiopia, Kenya, Senegal, Ghana, Nigeria and numerous other countries mainly in Europe, Asia and Africa.
