Beyond windows filled with shimmering gold jewelry and luxurious displays of leather, and further beyond narrow passageways lined with stores overflowing with ancient Greek icons and precious old Ottoman ceramics and silk caftans from Turkmenistan, and shining samovars from Czarist Russia, Erol Kazanci stands besides a shoulder-high pile of rugs.
Poised like a concertmaster, he is about to perform the art that he has perfected over the last 32 years in the same marketplace. It’s an expertise that regularly draws long-time customer Ralph Kanza back to Kazanci’s store at number 54 on the Avenue of the Rug Sellers, a small shop in the heart of the musty five-centuries-old covered market.
“This is a 19th Century Bergama,” Kazanci says as he dramatically spreads the Turkish rug out so he can point out its colors and designs. Then he moves to others from his collection of mostly old and rare weavings that sell for as much as $25,000. He has a passion, he explains, for rugs made in villages and out-of-the-way places, rugs that may not be picture-perfect but are full of soul and imagination.
Kanza, a prosperous Turk who now is a businessman in London, sits absorbed, taking in the stunning display of rugs much more than Kazanci’s words. He politely admits he often forgets even the names of the rugs he buys from Kazanci. But such fine details, he adds, are not what draw him to Kazanci and the Kapali Carsi, or covered market.
It is his deep sense of trust in Kazanci. But the market is also a powerful magnet. He could shop in any number of upscale, more convenient places in Istanbul. Yet they are not the market of his childhood dreams and middle-aged reveries.
“Istanbul changes. Istanbul today looks like a city buried under another city. But not the Kapali Carsi. Here the spirit is the same,” Kanza says, perched on a rug-covered bench, arms folded, seemingly ready to listen for some time to Kazanci’s lecture.
Istanbul has indeed changed, and immutably so in some ways. Yet the covered market remains a thick-walled, high-domed bastion of other times, a monument to a way of life nurtured by caravans and daring merchants and foreign trade that prized silk slippers and silver mirrors.
It is a link to a time of glorious markets that stretched from Fez to Cairo to Jerusalem to Damascus to Samarkand to Bukhara and beyond, a time when exhilarated shoppers rushed to these massive caverns hoping to find something new from far away as well as something that they could buy for a good price by showing ample respect for the seller but also by bargaining fiercely.
Still, the market has not been immune to change. Trades that once prospered within its walls have vanished, although they are memorialized by streets that still carry their names. And so, though the slipper makers, turban makers, and plume makers are long gone, the streets named after them remain. Gift shops selling look-alike trinkets and souvenirs have taken many of the places where artisans once worked.
Much of the market’s bustle also has disappeared lately, the toll of last fall’s terrorism attacks in Istanbul. With far fewer tourists, sad-faced shopkeepers shrug and offer bargains that they say they would never have offered before. But then again, some market veterans say that even in very good times some shopkeepers always complained and that some of today’s deals, as well as the authenticity of the items up for sale, should be taken with a grain of salt. Such, they explain with a knowing nod, is the way of the market.
Within its realm, the covered market is its own world fed by six major gates and a dozen smaller entranceways. It is a 100-acre world of several thousand stores and dozens of courtyards where artisans work in ways not too dissimilar from what their predecessors did hundreds of years ago It is a world of small, marble fountains where Muslim worshippers can prepare for their prayers, and small mosques scattered about so that one does not have to go far to pray. Around almost every other bend is a tea house or a small restaurant for a quick meal between shopping or selling.
The market sits in the same place as it did when Sultan Mehmet II ordered it built. That was not long after the Ottomans’ conquest of Istanbul in 1453. Only a few minutes away from the market across winding, narrow streets is Topkapi, the first palace of the Ottoman rulers.
And in almost every direction are some of Istanbul’s oldest and most stunning mosques. As it did in its first days, the market is a magnet for business. For miles around there are workshops that produce goods for the market as well as for stores which hope to lure shoppers from the market itself.
Not far from the covered market is the Sahaflar Carsisi or the old book market, a place where books and papers were sold before the Ottomans’ arrival. Here one can find anything ranging from an ancient, beautifully inscribed Koran to a copy of an old engraving to a flashy, modern photo album of Istanbul.
Beyond the open-air market is a large square where merchants sell all sorts of used and new items, mostly clothes, however. This is the Bitpazar or flea market. Standing beside goods sprawled on the floor or on carts, the merchants loudly shout out their prices, changing them quickly if forced to do so by competition.
From the Covered Market’s busy gates almost all of the streets sprawl at right angles to each other so it’s possible to keep track somewhat of where you are headed. And whenever I wander through the market, I start out at its heart, its oldest location, the place where some of the costliest offerings are found — antiques and jewelry from around the world. This is the Old Bedestan, a large, domed hall with thick doors that can be shut nightly to protect the valuables crammed in the small shops.
And this is where I set the center of my mental map.
The Eski (Old) store at 152 on Sherif Aga Street just opposite the third doorway leading to the Bedestan is bursting with icons, Arabic calligraphy gathered from across the Middle East, ceramics, silver and gold jewelry and metalwork. There is a Passover plate made in France in the early 18th Century in the window not far from a collection of old, delicate vases with Armenian inscriptions.
But shopkeeper Irfan Karatas is not paying any attention to those wandering by his shop. He is staring dead ahead at the computer perched on his desk, immersed in a deal.
He may do business in the oldest part of the market, but he also buys and sells on eBay or scans the world, via computer, for museum buyers and collectors everywhere. Likewise, he still does business with Turkish or foreign collectors who come to his store. And he will buy as merchants did hundreds of years ago, purchasing something from someone on the road. In this case, it recently was elegant silverware from an Iraqi passing through from Baghdad.
Indeed the market is a place as much in the past as in the future.
And Metin Avcu is one of those holding the market to its origins. Down the Avenue of the Rug Dealers and beyond the Avenue of the Jewelry Makers, there is a small doorway on the Street of the Mirror Makers that leads down a long passage to another passage. On the floors above are jewelry stores that claim to have lower prices than the market’s stores and small workshops that churn out jewelry.
This is Sira Odalar or the Rooms in a Row and here Avcu and others produce jewelry and silverware by hand in small, separate rooms. Hunched over a much-chiseled wooden desk and wearing a leather apron to catch any fallen silver, Avcu, 29, is making a silver cup, the kind of work he has done since he was 12. It will take Avcu, an independent silversmith, two days to finish the work.
“All of the old handwork is gone,” says Kardem Guney, a supervisor of the Sira Odalar, who started working among the rooms 40 years ago when he was 15. “Look at this,” he says downheartedly as he peers over Avcu’s shoulders. “It will take a half an hour to do the same work at a factory. But it is not the same product. No, not at all.”
On a lonely, narrow passageway off the Avenue of the Copper Makers, Mehmet Aztebin, 60, a small gray-haired man with a long beard, is hammering away on a small piece of machinery. It is from the 78-year-old gramophone with a gold-plated horn that is sitting on his time-worn wooden desk.
He is the gramophone baba, as he calls himself, one of only a few experts left in Turkey to repair the machines that fill his tiny shop. He turns slowly and looks up. A shy man, he has little to say except that he is the second generation in this business and that he truly loves his work.
“In the world today, everything is noise. But this,” he says gesturing toward the gramophone, “this is natural. This is made for the ear.”
Down the same street and beyond a large gate, Zeki Tasiyan, 66, and his son Suleyman, 40, are waiting in their store on the far end of an open courtyard full of copper makers. They are hoping for customers. Their darkly lit store is more like a cave filled with silver and brass hanging from the ceiling, piled on the floors, heaped high one atop another.
Slowly, as if waking from a nap, they become more talkative as they bring out their favorite pieces, copper trays and dishes they bought years ago in Diyarbakir, their hometown in eastern Turkey. Some of the trays, they say, come from their own private collection. Here is a finely tooled copper coffeepot from the time before the Ottomans. And here, they say, is a remarkably well-preserved 300-year-oldcopper serving dish with an Islamic prayer for eating scrawled around its edge.
“I didn’t want to sell this, but we have not had much business,” says the father. He looks at the price tag, $500, and immediately slashes the price by more than half.
Muammer Kilic, 60, a short, soft-spoken man with a white moustache with a store on the Avenue of the Handkerchief Sellers, also knows the market’s traditions. He has been selling ceramics for nearly 40 years now, and his father spent a lifetime selling textiles in the market. By his reckoning, his store is the oldest among the market’s ceramic dealers.
But what matters more to him, he says, is that he has sold high-quality ceramics, most of them made by artists from Kutahya, the Turkish city famed for its pottery. “I love this work,” he says, leaning over to grab a plate on the wall. It is from one of his two favorite artists, and it shows a modern view of an old village design.
I am drawn, however, to a classically designed plate and he agrees that this, too, is a good choice. We bargain ever so briefly, he smiles, and I buy it for about $10.
Not far away, Abdullah Tayfunlar is adjusting a row of caftans hanging outside his store. When the craze for Central Asian textiles hit the market several years ago, he joined the trend and starting selling such textiles and caftans. A few years ago, he began ordering directly from several workshops in Uzbekistan.
Overall, prices for Central Asian textiles have come down, but his prices are extremely good. And so, a newly made Uzbek caftan that might have gone for $200 two years ago, he is selling for $60 today.
Just as the Central Asian products have filled pockets in the market, so have Uzbek and Turkmen merchants with stores in the streets behind the Avenue of the Rug Sellers. An old silver ring made of Afghani lapis with someone’s name inscribed on it can be bought for about $25 here. So, too, one can find an older, brilliantly colored hand-decorated Turkmen spice box for about $125.
But there are other new arrivals in the market. Hasan Selamet’s patchwork style kilims is one. These are hand-stitched kilims put together from older, used rugs and laid out in strikingly modern designs.
On the floor of his shop near the Avenue of the Rug Sellers, he has spread out his favorite. It’s a wild melange of oranges and reds. “It has good energy. It is exciting,” says Selamet, 39, standing over the kilim, as if in awe for the first time.
Because they offer a marked contrast to traditional designs, Selamet and his partner thought they had a sure hit with the rugs and plunged into producing them. It was a chance, they thought, to add their “soul” and new ideas to the rug business. But with the slowdown in tourism, and, likewise, Turkey’s economy, he has a store full of rugs, few buyers and a lot of soul.
Yet he is not deterred, he says.
Nearby is Metin Tosun, a fellow dreamer. At his 5-year-old store Abdulla, Tosun, who once was a sailor, sells pillows, towels, bedspreads, sheets and other textiles that are made from silks, cottons, mohair, camel hair and wools. Everything is natural as are the dyes. The work comes from workshops across Turkey, and takes months longer because it is so tedious.
His prices are probably too high to attract the average Turk or passing tourist, and his store is not as crowded as others are. But Tosun, who started out in the market with a small cafe, shows no uncertainty about his success.
After all, he says confidently, he is offering something different. He is helping preserve a Turkish way of art. And, he adds, change is good for the market.
– – –
Things to know
What to say
Merhaba (Mehr-ha-ba): Hello
Bunu ne kadar? (bo-noo ney ka-dahr) How much is this?
Pahali (pa-ha-luh): Expensive
Ucuz (oo-jooz): Cheap
Kac lira? (kahch lee-rah) How many liras?
Lutfen (lewt-fehn): Please
Tessekurler (teh-sheh-kewr-lehr): Thanks
(Note: Some Turkish letters differ from the Roman alphabet)
Paper currency
$1 U.S. is worth 1,326,000 Turkish liras. (Exchange rates vary; compare rates at different money changers in or near the market.)
In the know
Best buys: Central Asian pillows ($4 to $20); Central Asian caftans — the more expensive ones are works of art ($45 to $200); Central Asian antique jewelry ($10 for an amber signature ring from Afghanistan, $ 25 for Uzbek earrings); Turkish porcelain and pottery (prices for hand-designed plates start at $10); Turkish leather goods, old copper and rugs — bargain hardy.
Best time to shop: Avoid holidays. Otherwise, any time of the day. The market is cool. At the end of the day, you may make your pitch as the last, best deal of the day.
Best eating on the spot: Turn your back on hamburgers. Go Turkish. The market is full of small restaurants. Try the kebabs, some are spicy and some are better with yogurt on top. Try the soups: lentil, egg and lemon, and tomato soups. For hors d’oeuvres, ask if they have a meze or a collection of various appetizers. In most restaurants, they will take you into the kitchen, and show you the food. If you don’t try the desserts, you will have explaining to do when you return home. Besides baklava — finely layered pastry with a vast assortment of nuts and honey or rose water — consider sutlac (sewt-lach) a wonderful rice pudding.
Currency: Turkish or U.S. or credit cards.
Suggested negotiating technique: Do not show interest in the item. Remain calm. Bored is a good look. Mention a better buy elsewhere, if possible. Say you would like a general price, not the final one. Cut the offered price in half and bargain from there. If that doesn’t work, then walk away, and come back later. Fix a bottom-line price in your mind and don’t budge far from there. Start all over again. Be polite, courteous. This is a drama. Get used to drinking a lot of Turkish tea and coffee.
Best way to get your treasures home: You can ship it home from most merchants’ stores. Or you can bring an extra duffle back. Remember: bubble wrap for breakables, receipts of major items to show how much you paid for on arrival at Customs in the U.S., and to carefully wrap your more precious items.
Let’s count
0 sifir (su-fuhr)
1 bir (beer)
2 iki (ee-kee)
3 uc (ooch)
4 dort (durrt)
5 bes (besh)
6 alti (al-tah)
7 yedi (ye-dee)
8 sekiz (se-keez)
9 dokuz (doh-kooz)
10 on (ohn)
20 yirmi (yeer-mee)
30 otuz (oh-tooz)
100 uz (yewz)
1,000 bin (been)
1 million milyon (meel-yon)
— Stephen Franklin
