X-Nico

22 unusual facts about İstanbul


Adrien de Gerlache

After a trip to Constantinople and the Black Sea he worked for the Holland-America Line as fourth officer, before obtaining an appointment as lieutenant in the Belgian Navy.

Cenk Ünnü

Cenk Ünnü (born 1967 in Istanbul) is the drummer of the heavy metal band Mezarkabul (also known as Pentagram).

Deniz Seki

After being kept in detention for two days, she was released without charge, however, on February 23, 2009 Deniz Seki was rearrested by Drug Squad officers and detained in Zekeriyaköy Gendarmerie station at the request of the public prosecutor.

Direc-t

In 2004 the band performed in the Rock Istanbul Festival which was broadcast live from Dream TV.

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In addition, Direc-t performed in many bars in Istanbul such as Line, Kemancı, Life Bar, Bronx, Gitar Bar, Vox, Yeni Melek Gösteri Merkezi ("Yeni Melek Show Center"), Stüdyo Live and also in other cities such as Ooze Bar (İzmir), Saklıkent (Ankara), Bar Fly (Ankara) and Doors (Eskişehir).

Edip Cansever

Born in Istanbul, Turkey, Cansever attended Trade Academy for some time, and worked as an antiquity salesman in Grand Bazaar, Istanbul.

Forum of the Ox

The Forum lay along the southern branch of the Mese Odós (the main street of the city), in the valley of the Lycus creek, between the seventh and the third hills of Constantinople.

Grand Bazaar

Grand Bazaar, Istanbul, one of the largest and oldest covered markets in the world

Hasköy

Hasköy, Istanbul, a quarter or neighborhood of the district of Beyoğlu in Istanbul

Isaac Karo

Although the details of Rabbi Karo's life afterwards are unclear, it is apparent that he lived Istanbul in Turkey.

Istanbul-Pythio railway

In 1971, the State railways built a new line from Pehlivanköy to the Bulgarian border at Kapıkule.

Kabataş

Kabataş, Istanbul, a quarter in the European part of Istanbul, Turkey

London Somalia Conference

A follow-up meeting is scheduled to be held in June 2012 in Istanbul.

Louis Hartz

He retired in 1974 due to ill health and spent his last years living in London, New Delhi, New York, then Istanbul, where he died.

M. K. Perker

Kutlukhan Perker (born November 2, 1972, Istanbul) is one of the most prominent and internationally recognized artists of his native Turkey.

New Palace

The former name of Topkapı Palace in Istanbul after its completion (in Turkish: Yeni Sarayı)

Revolutionary People's Liberation Party–Front

On 29 September 2013 DHKP/C members clash with drug gang in Maltepe.

Rudolf Belling

He succeeded in saving his son and emigrated once again, in 1937, this time to Istanbul, Turkey.

Sarıyer

The largest of these developments is the new village of Zekeriyaköy, which is now one of the most expensive residential areas in Istanbul.

Tafsir Imam Ja'far al-Sadiq

In al-Dharia, there is reference to a treatise titled Tafsir Imam Jafar ibn Muhammad al-Sadiq, a manuscript of which is available with Ali pasha Library in Istanbul.

Vasily Kamensky

On his release, he traveled to Istanbul and Tehran; the impressions from this Eastern trip would leave a mark on his later work.

Zekeriyaköy

Zekeriyaköy, Istanbul, a village in the district of Sarıyer, Istanbul Province


Adnan Menderes

On 17 February 1959, the Turkish Airlines aircraft Vickers Viscount Type 793, registration TC-SEV, carrying Adnan Menderes and a party of government officials on a special flight from Istanbul to London Gatwick Airport crashed a few miles short of the runway, near Rusper, Sussex in heavy fog and caught fire.

Ahmet Muhtar Merter

Ahmet Muhtar Merter, also known as Ahmed Muhtar Bey (? İstanbul - 1959; Istanbul) was a Turkish irregular fighter in the Turkish War of Independence.

Alfredo Jaar

His work has been shown extensively around the world, notably in the Biennales of Venice (1986, 2007), São Paulo (1987, 1989, 2010), Istanbul (1995), Kwangju (1995, 2000), Johannesburg (1997), and Seville (2006).

Ali Yıldırım Koç

Ali Koç is a Rotarian and a member of the Istanbul Open Sea Yacht Club and New York Yacht Club.

Anadolu Agency

After Istanbul came under occupation on March 16, 1920 and the Ottoman parliament was annulled, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk called on all provinces to hold elections for a new parliament to be established in Ankara.

Anna Balakian

Anna Balakian (14 July 1915 in Constantinople, Ottoman Empire (now Istanbul, Turkey) – 12 August 1997 in New York City, United States), former chair of the Department of Comparative Literature at New York University, was internationally recognized as an authority on symbolism and surrealism.

Aslıhan Koruyan Sabancı

Between 1998-2002, she held different managerial positions at Ethicon Inc. and Ethicon Endo-Surgery Inc. in New York, New Jersey, and Istanbul.

Avraham Elmalih

Born in Jerusalem, Elmalih was educated in a yeshiva and an alliance school before studying at the Archeological Institute, before working as a teacher in his home city, Istanbul, Jaffa and Damascus.

Ayub Thakur

Dr. Ayyub Thakur also attended the 1991 Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC) Foreign minister meeting in Istanbul, Turkey, the 1993 OIC summit meeting in Dakar, Senegal and World tactics did not yield the desired result.

Bektashi Order

Bektashis continue to be active in Turkey and their semi-clandestine organizations can be found in Istanbul, Ankara and Izmir.

Carmen Moral

Since then, several orchestras have entrusted her with the post of Music Director, such as the Bogotá Philharmonic Orchestra (Colombia), I. Frauen-Kammerorchester von Osterreich (Vienna), the Symphony Orchestra of Mimar Sinan University (Istanbul), and, for a second time, the National Symphony orchestra of Peru.

Çetin Emeç

Çetin Emeç was assassinated in the morning of March 7, 1990 in front of his home in Suadiye, Istanbul as he got in his car to go to his office.

Charles Duchaussois

It was 1969 at the zenith of the hippie movement, from Marseille to Beirut, from Istanbul to Baghdad, taking long detours in India, by boat, on foot, in car, Charles bit by bit got closer to Kathmandu, the height of drugs and hippies.

Claude Farrère

Claude Farrère, pseudonym of Frédéric-Charles Bargone (27 April 1876, in Lyon – 21 June 1957, in Paris), was a French author of novels set in such exotic locations as Istanbul, Saigon, and Nagasaki.

Dumitru Stăniloae

He went to Munich to attend the courses of Prof. August Heisenberg (father of physicist Werner Heisenberg), and then went to Berlin, Paris and Istanbul to study the work of Gregory Palamas.

Evliya Çelebi Way

(Heavy urbanisation prevents the Way entering either Istanbul, from where he set out in 1671, or Bursa).

Expulsion of the Jews from Portugal

Most Portuguese Jews, thousands, would eventually leave the country to Amsterdam, Thessaloniki, Constantinople (Istanbul), France, Morocco, Brazil, Curaçao and the Antilles.

Finansbank

It also launched a telephone banking system and set up an operations Center in Ümraniye, Istanbul.

Foreign purchases of real estate in Turkey

The particular case of Hatay put apart, as of 1 June 2006, Antalya Province was in the lead in the number of foreign purchases of real estate in Turkey with 5566 lots sold, provinces of Aydın (3998), Muğla (3035), İstanbul (1463) and İzmir (722) occupying the following places.

Görgün Taner

Gorgun Taner (born 1959) is the General Director of the Istanbul Foundation for Culture and Arts (İKSV), a non-profit, non-governmental organisation founded in 1973 that organises four international festivals (Film, Theatre, Classical Music and Jazz), the Istanbul Biennial, and the Istanbul Design Biennial.

Gülderen Çelik

She was born the youngest of five children in the Mecidiyeköy neighborhood of Istanbul.

Hagop Vahram Çerçiyan

Hagop Vahram Çerçiyan was a professor of mathematics, geography, and calligraphy at the Robert College of Istanbul, known for designing the signature of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the first president of Turkey.

Hakham Bashi

Stanford J Shaw, 'Appendix 1: Grand Rabbis of Istanbul and the Ottoman Empire, and Chief Rabbis of republican Turkey', in The Jews of the Ottoman Empire and the Turkish Republic (New York City: New York University Press, 1991), 272-273.

Haldun Alagaş Sports Hall

It is in usage of sport teams such as Istanbul Büyükşehir Belediyesi Men's Volleyball and Men's Handball Teams and Tekelspor basketball team.

Hunca Cosmetics

It is a well established company, with head offices in Istanbul, Sarıyer, which runs a factory in Çerkezköy, Northwest Turkey and has an annual turnover at US$50 million 2008 together with 550 employees.

İş Bank commercial featuring Atatürk

To find a suitable location for the take representing the features of the era, three separate teams searched İstanbul, Edirne, Bursa, İzmir and Antalya.

İzmir Cumhuriyet Square

The monument at the center of the square, which features an equestrian statue of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, is made of marble and bronze, and was crafted by the renowned Italian sculptor Pietro Canonica in 1927 (he also crafted the Republic Monument at Taksim Square in Istanbul, and other monuments in Ankara, Turkey.)

João do Rio

In November, makes his third voyage to Europe, having visited Lisbon (where his play A Bela Madame Vargas – The Beautiful Madame Vargas – is staged with great success), Paris, Germany, Istanbul, Russia, Greece, Jerusalem and Cairo.

John Burgan

In Berlin, Burgan worked as a writer, director and editor and also taught documentary and media production at the Berlin University of the Arts and at workshops at the University of Fine Arts, Hamburg and the Bilgi University, Istanbul.

Joost Lagendijk

The two were married on 28 October 2006 by the mayor of Beyoğlu, Istanbul, in the famous Pera Palas hotel.

Jules Védrines

After Prague he proceeded via Sofia, Constantinople (where he pleased the Sultan by dropping a Turkish flag on the Imperial palace), reaching Beirut on 25 December, Jaffa on the 27th, and finally, on the 29th, landing on the polo ground at Heliopolis, where he was greeted by a representative of the Khedive and by the French Agent, who placed a laurel wreath bound with a tricoleur around his neck.

Kefeli Mosque

All the Latin, Greek and Jewish inhabitants who lived in Caffa ("Caffariotes" or, in Turkish, Kefeli) were then deported to Istanbul and relocated to this quarter.

Moez Masoud

Masoud's first Arabic program was “Al-Tareeq Al-Sah” (The Enlightened Path), which premiered during Ramadan 2007 and was filmed on location in Cairo, Jeddah, Istanbul, London and Madinah.

Mustafa Akaydın

Mustafa Akaydın was born in 1952 and received his primary and secondary education in Ankara and Istanbul.

Neşâtî

Neşâtî first become affiliated with the Mevlevi order as a disciple of the shaykh Ağazâde Mehmed Dede, first in Gelibolu in Thrace and then in Beşiktaş in Istanbul.

Pera Palace Hotel

In Ernest Hemingway's short story The Snows of Kilimanjaro, the main character, writer Harry, stays at the Pera Palace hotel while serving in the military during the Allied occupation of Constantinople (Istanbul) in World War I.

Rabia Haseki Sultan

In 1691, at the age of about nineteen, she was captured by Crimean Tatars during one of their frequent raids into this region and taken as a slave, probably first to the Crimean city of Kaffa, a major centre of the slave trade, then to Istanbul, and was selected for the Sultan’s harem.

Şakir Eczacıbaşı

He died on January 24, 2010 in Istanbul and was laid to rest at the Zincirlikuyu Cemetery.

Semih Kaplanoğlu

In 1984, Kaplanoğlu moved to Istanbul and worked for a couple of years as a copywriter for advertising companies like Güzel Sanatlar Saatchi & Saatchi and Young & Rubicam.

Shamsuddin Effendi

He was born in Istanbul at the turn of the century and died in 1986 in Diyarbakır.

Shmuel-Bukh

Zalman Shazar (president of Israel 1963–1973) believed that it was written by an Ashekenazi rabbi active in Constantinople (now Istanbul) in the second half of the 15th century.

Sir Edmund Monson, 3rd Baronet

He entered the British diplomatic service in 1906 and served in junior capacities in Constantinople, Tokyo, Paris and Tehran.

Tropaeum Traiani

48 metopes are hosted in the Adamclisi museum nearby, and one metope is hosted by Istanbul Archaeology Museum, the rest having been lost (There is a reference from Giurescu that two of them fell into Danube River during the transport to Bucharest).

Turgut Berkes

He worked as a radio programmer, librarian, journalist and translator until 1989 when he founded with his partner Fuat Güner (of the famous Turkish pop trio Mazhar-Fuat-Özkan (MFÖ)) FT Recording Studios in Istanbul, which was at the time the most advanced in Turkey.

Üzeyir Garih

Being one of the best engineers of the country, he started his career at the İstanbul agency of Carrier Corporation in the field of heating, vantilation and air conditioning.