In Taksim Square, the busy central hub of Istanbul, a large, viril monument stands. In the centre is Mustafa Kemal Attaturk, the father of modern Turkey (although, perhaps not the contemporary one). When Attaturk came into power, he immediately set about changing the country from Empire to Nation. This meant progressive Western values, the alphabet; a dismissal, in some cases, a blanketing of the culture and customs before it. Almost by accident, this sparked a nostalgia for the Empire that is potent in today’s Turkey.
In the hotel nearby, the Kurdish receptionist gets to work. ‘Did you see the monument?’ he says to me bleakly. I ask what he thinks of Kemal, noticing that behind him, like in many Turkish homes, there is a portrait of him on the wall, his famous blue eyes emphasised as though arguing some sort of point: ‘I don’t like him…’ he replies, perhaps thinking of the Imperial Turkey Erdogan has set about revising, ‘but he was better than what we have today.
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