The end of the line

I can. It was around 3.30 p.m. on a crisp, clear blue day with İstanbul bathing in wintry afternoon sunshine. I had just finished a conversation group and was wading against the human tide flowing up Bahariye Cad., Kadiköy, towards the famous bronze bull in Altıyol when the air was brutally torn by the screaming and whining of emergency sirens followed instantly by the appearance of a racing convoy of fire engines and, seemingly, every single police car from the precinct. They were heading down towards the Iskeler, which made me suspect an incident had occurred involving one of the many ferries or launches.

I looked left, down the hill towards the Bosporus and immediately saw the billowing black clouds beginning to fill the skies above the harbor. I assumed there must be a fire in the dockyards somewhere and continued on my way. As I passed a cafe with a large TV I was arrested by the images flickering from the screen: Pictures of Haydarpaşa train station, with smoke and flames belching from its roof, were being commented on by an over-excited and almost incoherent TV reporter. I felt my heart lurch and my stomach cramping at the appalling images I was seeing. It was a truly sad sight to witness the imminent collapse of one of the architectural jewels of this beloved city; one of the greatest faux-baroque train stations on earth, dying before my eyes in this inferno.

Back in the staff room at school I switched on the television, having explained to incredulous colleagues what was going on. As with millions of viewers across the city and probably throughout the land, we sat transfixed by the unfolding drama. In the end it was “only” about 1000 square meters of the roof that had been consumed by the conflagration. Internal destruction was largely restricted to water damage on the fourth floor caused by the fire hoses from the trucks on shore and the boats on the water. Fortunately, no loss of life was to be lamented and the unique interior of the world-famous entrance hall remained untainted and intact.

Despite being the capital of the Ottoman Empire, İstanbul, incredibly, had no rail link; so, in 1871 Sultan Abdülaziz ordered the building of a railway line from Haydarpaşa in Kadiköy to İzmit on the Aegean coast. The station opened in 1872 with an initial rail link as far as Gebze (of special interest to Elsie Alan, Today’s Zaman Jan. 25). In 1888, the Anatolian Railway (CFOA) took over the line and the station and the first regular passenger service started in 1890: a daily train from Haydarpaşa to İzmit. In 1892 the CFOA built a line to Ankara and shortly after a daily train ran between the two cities.

Haydarpaşa was chosen to be the northern terminus of the Baghdad Railway (İstanbul-Konya-Adana-Aleppo-Baghdad) and the Hejaz Railway (İstanbul-Konya-Adana-Aleppo-Damascus-Amman-Medina) in 1904 and as rail traffic was increasing, a new and larger station was required. To achieve this, two German architects, Otto Ritter and Helmut Conu, were hired to design and build the new edifice. They chose a neo-classical structure and construction started in 1906. The facade embellishments of the terminal were crafted by German and Italian stonemasons and this now pseudo-castle station was completed on Aug. 19, 1909 and inaugurated on Nov. 4, for the anniversary of Sultan Mehmed V.

Following the formation of the Republic of Turkey in 1923, Haydarpaşa station was still under CFOA control, but in 1927, the newly formed Turkish State Railways (TCDD) took over the CFOA and the station in an attempt to nationalize all of Turkey’s railways. In the same year a premier train service started from Haydarpaşa to Ankara: the Anatolian Express. This all-sleeper train travelled daily between the two cities. In 1938 the Eastern Express entered service to the eastern Turkish city of Kars, a distance of 1,994 kilometers; the famous Taurus Express in 1940 from Haydarpaşa to Baghdad, a distance of 2,566 kilometers and in 1965 the Trans-Asia Express began running all the way to Tehran, a distance of 3,059 kilometers. It was not until 1969 that the tracks from Haydarpaşa to Gebze were electrified for the Haydarpaşa-Gebze Commuter (Banliyö) Line.*

As the steam was still rising from the charred remains of the station’s ruined roof, and a small army of railway employees shoveled, scooped and swept up the damp debris, the conspiracy theories had already begun to vault from the bars to the cafes and on to the tea-houses around the city. While the fire was eventually attributed to an electrical fault caused by the assumed stupidity of Turkish workmen, tongues told a different tale: one of government collusion to render the station inoperable and thus ripe for sale to a Japanese consortium that would turn the glory of Ottoman/Germanic railway architecture into an hotel-shopping mall-cum-casino-cafe-bar-restaurant extravaganza and thus the removal, forever, of this most famous of railway termini.

How ironic then that Elsie’s article should have drawn our attention to the catalogue of chaos and non-planning that will see the closure of the train services from Haydarpaşa, allegedly to allow for the full up-grading required for the eventual arrival of the High Speed Train service. In the meantime, millions of commuters will have to engorge already overcrowded bus, mini-bus and dolmuş services not to mention adding thousands of private vehicles to İstanbul’s already vastly over-congested roads. The laughable suggestion of bus services at TL 15-20 a trip (as opposed to the socially democratic TL 2 of the intra-city rail connection) will leave the poorer members of society, who provide the bulk of public transport passengers, literally and figuratively standing by the roadside.

What is clear, is that this is a “lose-lose” situation and if the government or the municipal officials and money-grabbing local politicians think this will be easily swallowed by already long-suffering İstanbulers, they should think again. Following on the heels of the third Bosporus bridge and tunnel debacle -- the “Marmaray Project,” for which the $5 billion required will now have to be stumped up by Turkish taxpayers -- any credibility that the Justice and Development Party (AKP) may have engendered will wither on the vine. İstanbul commuters have already drunk the bitter wine of municipal projects to the dregs. This might just be the end of the line.

*Additional statistics from Wikipedia and www.trainsofturkey.com