Residents leaving historical peninsula

At the end of the road, he sits down for a bit and then continues onward to the mosque. He is unable to walk uninterruptedly because of his health and advanced age. When he arrives at the corner of the mosque, he takes a deep breath and heads in to prepare for prayer. Sabuncu has been living on Ayrancı Street, right behind the Süleymaniye Mosque, for more than half a century.

His memory is so strong that he even recalls his first day in the area: “On April 20, 1950, I performed my first dawn prayer at the Süleymaniye Mosque. I have never left this area and the mosque since.”

He meets with Mehmet Kurt and Sadullah Günaydın, other regular mosque attendees, every morning. They have long conversations after the prayer on the good ol' days of the district and the mosque. Because the Süleymaniye Mosque no longer carries its old spirit, the three regular attendants feel like strangers. With few people actually living in the neighborhood, mosque attendance is strikingly low now. Famous novelist Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar describes the city's historic mosques in a famous excerpt from his novel. “Istanbul was the city of unique and magnificent mosques…for my father,” he writes. These same mosques now suffer from a lack of interest and regular attendance.

Sabuncu runs a convenience store in his neighborhood and has for more than four decades. When he first set up shop, there were only three stores in the area. This was also a time when every house had a garden in front and its own water well. Housewives used to chat with neighbors before sunset and neighborly relations were very strong -- so much so that whenever anyone was about to lease out their property, they'd let the entire neighborhood know. In short, life was vibrant and colorful on the historical peninsula back then.

Tanpınar describes these days as follows: “Daily life was shaped in accordance with the call to prayer, recited five times a day. When the calls to prayer began, the atmosphere turned into one of a colorful, glorious and sometimes amusing festival. Sellers of simit, a ring-shaped bread, were an indispensable part of life in the area. All others selling traditional foods sang local and traditional tunes. Executive figures of the Ottoman state used to be trained in mosque compounds.”

No trace of this is left today as the area has turned into one full of business centers and large stores. The wooden houses, masterpieces of Ottoman civil architecture, are now rented out by single people. It is almost impossible to see a home with lights on at night or children playing soccer in the streets. This notorious change and transformation reflects the destiny of the historical peninsula. As residents leave, and businesses close for the day, no trace of life remains. Life is very vibrant in daytime but lifeless and even scary at night. Because there are no people left, dawn prayers are not performed in some of the mosques in the Mahmutpaşa neighborhood.

Rana’s house converted into parking lot

Sabuncu tries not to forget even a single detail about the area and in particular about the Süleymaniye Mosque. He still remembers old street names in the neighborhood, former clerics of the mosques and great names that once worked and lived here. We walked with him to his house after the dawn prayer and spoke about how life has changed. Sighing, he says: “In the past, people flowed through these streets. Now we have to go to the Çarşamba neighborhood in Fatih to shop. Most of the time, after getting out of the mosque, I walk alone to my house. I cannot find anyone to chat with. The cats and I are the only living beings on the street. Ninety percent of our neighbors have moved out.”

Sabuncu used to be able to get to the mosque in five minutes when he was young, but now he must rest every five minutes and makes the trip in 15. Regardless, he is eager and determined to attend the congregational prayers. If very ill, he drives to the mosque. On our way to his home, he told us about the area. “This place belonged to the former imam of the Süleymaniye Mosque, Fevzi Efendi. Someone set it on fire. And this here was the home of Kahvecizade Mehmet Efendi. Now it is abandoned and its door locked. This was the house of retired judge Fahrettin Tombul, and the house next to it belonged to Niyazi, the director of İş Bankası. The late Rana lived here. She had turtles, cats and dogs. She never married, but had company over all the time. Her house was demolished and then converted into a parking lot.” Sabuncu lives with these memories. His son bought a house in İstanbul's Bahçelievler district and asked him to move in. He says he told his son: “I have spent my whole life in this place; this is the real İstanbul. I'd be deeply saddened if I had to leave this area. All the historic mosques are here. The only remaining traces of the Ottomans are to be found in this place.”

Sultanahmet's last residents

Osman Tekiroğlu, Ramazan Gönültaş and Ali Ceyhan are regulars at the Sultanahmet Mosque. The three see this place as their second home. All live in the Dizdariye neighborhood, a place nearby. If any is not present at prayer, the others call to ask why. The memories of the glorious and bright past of the Sultanahmet Mosque are still fresh in the minds of these elderly men. Tekiroğlu has served as a cleric in several mosques of the historical peninsula since 1951. After retirement, he began attending the Sultanahmet Mosque regularly. He attended lessons by Gönenli Mehmet Efendi, a highly learned scholar of Islam, and says he can't stay longer than 15 days even in the city where he was born because he misses Sultanahmet.

Sultanahmet and its surrounding can get crowded in daytime, but once night moves in, the people move out. Apart from a few restaurants and souvenir shops, it is hard to find anything open. The mosques reflect this fact in that they are packed during the day but empty at night.

Muzaffer Korkut has been praying at the Firuzağa Mosque for the last 45 years. He starts his day by opening his store after the dawn prayer. Korkut says the area has been going through a frightening transformation over the last three decades. “Families used to live in the Cankurtaran and Küçük Ayasofya neighborhoods in the past. Firuzağa used to be full for the dawn prayer. But now, with no families left, the place is deserted at night.”

Family houses converted into boutique hotels

Gönültaş has been a regular at the Sultanahmet Mosque since 1951. “In the past, no one wanted to live outside this area, but because the number of business centers has increased, the mosques and residential areas around them were negatively affected. There is almost no one in the mosques during the night and dawn prayers. Some mosques in Mahmutpaşa don't even open at dawn. Most of the time, the Nuruosmaniye and Yeşildirek mosques are closed in the morning because there is no one praying there. The imam and three regular attendees are everyone who's left if there are no Arab tourists in nearby hotels or visitors from Anatolia,” he says.

Gönültaş says he is saddened by the current situation because his house now finds itself among boutique hotels. If he sells his house, he will have to quit attending prayers in the mosque. This thought helps him endure the hotels. “We used to have really nice neighbors in the past; now I look around and realize that I do not recognize any of these people. Rich people have bought all the buildings and converted them into boutique hotels.”

Restoration not progressing; people abandoning area

The dwindling population of the Süleymaniye neighborhood over the last three decades is a summary of this sad story. Cuma Kınalı, a local neighborhood administrator, says 2,500 people used to live in the area in 1970. Today, this figure is around 800, including students and singles living in small apartments. The number of wooden houses has significantly fallen since then.

 The region was designated a protected area in 1977, and some 2,000 wooden houses are now under protection. Because of legal regulations on this protection, restoration has advanced extremely slowly. In 1982, 150 buildings were transferred by the government at the time to İstanbul University for restoration. The university did nothing other than indicate the houses are being protected.

The inclusion of this area on the list of UNESCO World Heritage Sites in 1985 did nothing to change the fate of the neighborhood. Over 150 houses were destroyed by fire between 1994 and 2004. Parking lots were built where the burnt houses once stood.

 Süleymaniye and its surroundings were tagged for renovation in 2006. Teams conducting fieldwork in the area listed 728 registered and 1,239 unregistered buildings. The work is now promising because KİPTAŞ, the company in charge of the renovation, has purchased the buildings it is renovating. The İstanbul Metropolitan Municipality states that work is under way in the Süleymaniye Mosque, whose Ottoman identity will be restored. The renovation of 22 wooden houses has already been completed.