One may love London because of the Thames or because of Soho or because of London Bridge, shopping centers and Hyde Park. There are countless reasons to love London. As former London Mayor Ken Livingstone formulated it: London is the world in one city. But İstanbul is loved because it is İstanbul. Just as a husband feels helpless in the face of his wife asking, “Honey, why do you love me?” the lovers of İstanbul have no explanation for why they love İstanbul other than the fact that “being loved” is intrinsic to “being İstanbul.” Love and identification is a part of the definition of this city.For some time, I have been observing the love and affection people feel toward İstanbul in almost all the cities of countries founded on the former lands of the Ottoman state. The love of İstanbul is like the grin of the Cheshire Cat in “Alice in Wonderland.” All of the Ottoman past may have disappeared in those post-Ottoman cities, but the love of İstanbul is still there.
My most recent observation of this pure love was from Arbil, the capital city of the Kurdish regional administration in northern Iraq. A Turkmen citizen of Iraq told me how badly he wanted his son to see İstanbul “with the eyes of this world” -- a Turkish saying referring to a desire to see a place or a person before one dies. Just as Muslims all over the world pray to see Mecca and Medina in their lives and as Jews pray for the reconstruction of Jerusalem in their own days, many people around the world feel that urge to see İstanbul.
Only recently, I heard an Uighur from Turkestan refer to İstanbul as the center of their world perceptions. “We look toward İstanbul, and we take our inspirations from İstanbul,” he told a national TV station here in Turkey. The love of İstanbul was packed by the Greeks and Jews that were made to flee this country in the first half of the 20th century. The love of İstanbul was inherited by the second and third generations of Armenians that were exiled from Anatolia in the beginning of that century. I met people that hated Turks for ideological reasons while keeping that love for the city in their hearts.
One may claim that this love is irrational. Which love, then, is rational?
Be it irrational or not, the love for İstanbul is a reality, and it has its external expressions.
This love gives İstanbul a unique power for city diplomacy. City diplomacy can prevail when state-to-state diplomacy fails. Diplomacy between Turkey and Armenia has a lot of prejudices, historical stumbling blocks and misrepresentations to overcome. An alternative can be İstanbul-Yerevan diplomacy. “Turkey speaking to Kurdistan” is a prospect that can annoy many nationalists. İstanbul may speak to Arbil without any ideological, political or nationalistic reservations.
The same is true for identification. Many people who are legally Turkish citizens feel more affection toward a particular city or region in Turkey than they feel toward the country as a whole. I have seen ideologically mobilized Kurds in Europe. They were all Turkish citizens, but they preferred to call themselves Kurds. When it came to speaking about İstanbul, I observed them speaking about the city as one of their cities.
İstanbul can be a social bond between the different segments of Turkish society. It can be a kind of “social contract” embodied in the image of a city.
*A special thanks to Mesut Çevikalp, who opened my eyes to the prospects of the love of İstanbul turning it into a social-diplomatic capital. 
