The Theodosius Wall of Istanbul

The Theodosius wall was to protect Constanapolis from the Turks, and Istanbul from Atilia the Hun. I decided to walk along the wall. I tried to imagine being Turk trying to fulfill the profecy to conquer the failing and corrupt Byzantium Religious theocracy. They were living in the past. The Turks with their advanced fire power proved that the age of walled city defense was to change. Just like our society is subject to threats and subject to change. Today I was to get a lot of my questions answered by one person with their viewpoint.

As I was leaving Hagia sophia I saw Atilia the guide from a couple of days before. He was looking for someone to guide and he was good company. I offered him four hours pay, lunch, and a tip. We rode the tram together. In the tram he told me about everything we saw. I asked about him and his family. He is 56 years old. Before the pandemic he was a guide on tour buses. When that shut down he chose to wait around the places and give private tours. He speaks English and Japanese. I spoke with him a bit in Japanese but he was a lot better, so we switched to English. I asked if had ever been to Japan and he said no. It was too expensive to go there. He had come to Istanbul from Anatolia in 1995 to study Japanese language. He never left. He got married. He has a son who studied industrial engineering at Istanbul university. His son now lives on Australia working for a German company. He is continuing with his English studies. His daughter is 19 and going to university. He pays half the other she has a scholarship.

Two weeks before today, he had had a couple of stents put in his heart arteries. He said thanks to me he had his longest walk since the surgery. He told me this after we had walked about six miles. He pointed out his hospital where he goes. I thought odd when he pointed it out. He said he felt great although at the end of the day, when we took the bus to the aquaduct he looked tired. I paid him and said good bye. I was tired as well. But before all that we looked at a lot of things together. He gave me his opinion on religion, which is that the more you know the less you can believe. Opinion on the government, he loves the major of Istanbul. He avoided talking about the government or the war. He talked about the impacted on society of the war. He is quite proud of the industrial capacity of turkey. I had wondered why there were so many shop selling things, and it seems like the shops have warehouse quantities. He said most are wholesale shops. People come by bus from other countries, buy things, then return to their homes and resell it. That explains the number of hotels and the need for luggage stores everywhere. As we walked along the wall he said it was a bit dangerous because homelessness people live there. They do drugs and drink. We saw some as we walked. I asked about drugs. He said that a lot of drugs come in because of the Taliban or from central America hidden in bananas. He said the police do do much to stop it. I asked about prostitution. He said it was the foreign women who come. He said the police doesn't do much about it. I asked if Turkish women do prostitution. I thought that the Turkish men protected their women. He said the Turkish women on drugs or raised without morals do it. He said that there is some relationship of less public housing to the number of drugs and prostitution.

Ok now to some pictures.

A truck and car going through a thousand year old gate. It is normal traffic. The area inside the wall is called Belgrade. There were a lot of Turks in Serbia when the empire failed. They came here to live. I didn't know this until the other day the the ottomans where very inclusive in hiring mercenaries in their armies. He said the Serbs were excellent fighters and their women often were the wives of the sultan's.

He pointed out that behind this locked gate there was a Cannon ball stuck in the wall.

At the top of this wall the inscriptions are in Greek letters. I had read that some people use Greek script to write Turkish.

I said let's get coffee. My guide is the person to the left at the counter. The coffee here is free. It is paid by the mayor of the city. It was a library, coffee shop, a place where police can hang out with citizens. I thought that is what we should do in America. Instead of defund the police, we should fund free coffee for everyone at some public places and encourage people to talk with police over a cup of coffee.

Her is the mayor of Istanbul on an public events catalog. If I lived there he would get my vote.

We stopped at a mosque where a funeral was going on. He pointed out it was a woman who had died as the women where wearing white scarves. He said that this mosque was built by one of the castrated black servants to the sultan. As he had no heirs when he died his vast wealth went to find this mosque. It was turned into a school. The teachers graves are marked with stones with turbans. The woman are marked with flower motifs. There are few names on the stone, especially the women's graves. Who knows who they were. He pointed that there is a vast cemetery outside the old city walls. You can only be burial there if you have a family member who has a place. I asked hm if he has a spot. His place is in his home town in Anatolia with his parents.