Reflections on Istanbul, Turkey

Last week Lisa, Drew and I took a trip to Istanbul, Turkey. It was a 9 hour bus ride from Sofia. The trip had three purposes for us – one we needed to be out of Bulgaria for 5 more days to allow our 90 day tourist visa to take us to our end date of June 6th. We were also able to visit and stay with some of our new friends living in Istanbul – they have 4 kids and Drew loved his time with them. We were also blessed to see our good friends, Chris and Holy Justice from Kansas City, who were there at the same time, visiting their brother Scott, who is a journalist living in Istanbul. It was a great long weekend and a blessing to see one more unique part of this side of the world.

Istanbul was very different than what we had expected. I don’t know if it was better or worse than expected – just different. For some reason in my mind I expected Turkey to be more like a middle-eastern Arab country – given their strong Islamic culture. However the parts of Istanbul I saw reminded me very much of Eastern Europe. They actually had more in terms of shops and restaurants than Sofia does, but it still had more of a European feel, than I had expected. The stark differences being a Mosque on every other corner and the large number of people. Istanbul is a city of over 16 million people – and there were people everywhere. As an example - we went out to a popular square on a Friday night and when we came home at 1:00AM the streets were still packed with cars.


We spent a day seeing the sights of Istanbul – highlighting the Hagia Sophia and the Blue Mosque. They were nice, yet it made me wonder how a Christian stronghold – St. Paul’s original mission field, Turkey being home of the 7 churches, the previous Christian capital named Constantinople – is now, in relatively a short period of time, a Muslim mini Mecca, with 98% of the population being Muslim. The multiple spires in the air over the city are a constant reminder of that fact.

I have become more interested in the events occuring in Turkey, give we now live so close, as Bulgaria is a neighboring country. We have become very aware of the instability there. Just a month ago three believers (one German and two Turkish men) were brutally murder in Malatya, Turkey. (for more information, Google: Tilman Geske - the German who was killed.)

Two days ago a bomb exploded in a mall in the capital of Ankara killing six and injuring over one hundred people. Political elections are about to happen and everyone is concerned. Tens of thousands march in protest against the ruling party.

So I admit, my experience was not that of your average tourist. We still enjoyed the trip and had a great time with all our friends. I guess you could say my perspective is changing - which could be a good or bad thing... I'm still working that out.