About two thirds of the way up the Bosporus on Istanbul’s European shore sits Tarabya, a little hamlet of glassed-in fish restaurants. In front, the coast road doglegs around a mini-inlet, snarling traffic while black SUVs drop off designer-shod belles. Behind, steep slopes host an improvised McSuburbia with a fabled Bosporus view—increasingly of other McSuburbias. Not the stuff of myth, perhaps, but a boon to any broker’s slick brochure. Tarabya was not always thus. Legend has it that, in antiquity, the witch Medea, heartsick after fleeing her homeland with Jason on the Argo, recovered her serenity upon glimpsing Tarabya’s bucolic magic and threw away her potions—hence the town’s name “Therapia” in the original Greek.
One wonders what the villagers thought the money would bring to compensate for the loss of their blessed landscape. The same applies to the developers—on what undisturbed view will they rest their affluent eyes to enjoy their wealth? It’s not a matter merely of concrete sprawl or unchecked suburbanization but of what the writer J. G. Ballard called “the suburbanization of the soul.” There’s still plenty enough of enchantment on offer. One still understands what the ancients felt, why they sensed Apollo on the beach in Side and Aphrodite in Knidos. But from the way things are going, Medea would do well to keep her prescriptions updated.
For more: Travel: Turkey in a Time of Change - Newsweek
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