Balat

Walking on the Streets of Balat

I have made this tour in April 2007. It was a photo-trekking program organized by a photography company in Turkey as a gift to their customers purchasing new cameras. It was Sunday and the weather was perfectly nice in that spring day. Early in the morning, streets were empty, maybe most people were still at sleep after a busy saturday.

Morning Silence

Narrow street climbing towards Fener Greek High School

A man working on the street early in the morning

A steep narrow street climbing up to Mesnevihane

Lonely streets full of silence.

Merge of Cultures - Merge of Religions

Private Greek High School and the minaret of the Mevlevi Mosque in Mesnevihane (merge of two cultures).

Door to a divine world

Different angle of the same picture on the left

The Old Houses

Rotting house with jutty

An old stone house

Ruined old house

Clothes hung on the ropes

Laundry hung on a rope between the houses
Golden Horn is seen on the background

Narrow street climbing to Red School

Nothing, but the laundry ornamenting these aged buildings

The People

Young football fans

Happy pilgrim

Shyness, curiosity and hesitation

Spring in Balat

Spring tree in front of a ruin

Spring on the roof of an old house

When we were told by our instructor that we would do a photo-trekking activity in Balat, I had no idea about it though heard several times the name of that region. It was located in the historical peninsula of Istanbul.

BalatLogo

It was full of old houses some were half ruined, had rotting cantilevered roofs, some had jutty balconies on their facets.

Jutty

A red bricked giant building behind this silhouette was signing somehow the unique demographic, cultural and architechtural character of this district. This red building as we were told was the Fener Greek High School known as Kırmızı Mektep in Turkish.

Red

In the past, after Jews were expelled from Spain in 1498, Sultan Bayezid the Second had gracefully accepted those people to the Ottoman land and had some of them settled here. This place were not only harboring the Jews but also the Greek and the Armenian people. Fener Orthodox Patriarchate is also located near here. When most of the Jews left here after the establishment of Israel, and Greeks changed their location after the big fire, the cultural diversity gradually changed to include the people imigrated from the Black Sea region namely from the Kastamonu province. The area today is known to be the merge of cultures and religions and are now being restored under the rehabilitation program of UNESCO.

Red