(Wikimedia Commons public domain)
Please click to enlarge the photo.
What on earth am I doing in Turkey right now?
Some may have noticed that President Barack Obama is here in Turkey for the 2015 G-20 Summit. Well, I’m here for the G20 Interfaith Summit, which is devoted to the theme of “Religion, Harmony and Sustainable Development.” If anybody’s in town, please drop by: My particular panel will be held on Wednesday afternoon.
Yesterday, some of the Latter-day Saints involved in the conference — joined by a couple of non-LDS (from Britain and Russia) and two local members of the Church — headed to the Develi Restaurant in Istanbul’s Samatya district — a wonderful place for kebab (or, in Turkish, kebap) and other Anatolian food. My şaşlık was some of the best kebab that I’ve ever, ever had. And the mezze was wonderful. I recommend this place very highly. It was good to be with our good friends Kent and Gayle Brown, who are serving a mission here in Izmir, to the south. Kent is the author of a large number of significant works, including the Journey of Faith films and a recent LDS commentary on the gospel of Luke.
This morning, my wife and I went with Keith Thompson, Ed Newell, and my longtime mission friend Fred Axelgard to visit the Sultanahmet or Blue Mosque, the Hagia Sophia, and the Byzantine Hippodrome.
It’s impossible for me to convey how fascinating I find these sites. I probably seemed a bit overexcited to the others, but the history here is unbelievably rich.
At the Hippodrome, for example. where Constantine the Great dedicated his city of “New Rome,” which transformed ancient pagan Byzantium into Constantinople (the future Istanbul), I recalled the horse and chariot races and the city factions and the famous early-sixth-century Nika Riots, at the conclusion of which Justinian had his general, Belisarius, lock the doors of the stadium and massacre approximately 30,000 members of the offending factions.
(Wikimedia Commons public domain)
Click to enlarge.
The Blue Mosque is among my favorite buildings. I never tire of it.
(Wikimedia Commons; click to enlarge.)
The sense of history in the Hagia Sophia is virtually overpowering to me. In fact, the idea occurred to me there of writing a popular-history book about the building and the city that it crowned, as a means of sharing with others my excitement. Many years ago, I seriously considered becoming a Byzantinist rather than an Islamicist, and the call of this city, every time I come here, reminds me why.
A fun moment came in the Hippodrome, when a woman came up to me and asked “Are you Daniel Peterson?” I answered that I was, and she told me that she and her friend, standing with her, were visiting Istanbul from Abu Dhabi, and that she’s a reader of this blog. I trust that those who were with me were suitably impressed with my global fame.
Posted from Istanbul, Turkey
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