Story

Turkey: A Golden Future in Doubt

June 13, 2012 | Pulitzer Center
By
Dimiter Kenarov, for the Pulitzer Center, Istanbul, Turkey

Istanbul's Grand Bazaar was founded in 1461 by Sultan Mehmed II, eight years after he conquered Constantinople, and soon became the most important trading center in the Ottoman Empire. Today it spans a maze of 64 covered streets and 3,600 shops spreading over a total area of 45,000 square meters, making it one of the oldest and largest covered markets in the world. About 20,000 people work here, haggling with up to 400,000 customers daily. Image by Dimiter Kenarov. Turkey, 2012.

The Grand Bazaar may have lost much of its old import, but it is still the largest public gold market in Turkey, a country that, together with China and India and the US, currently ranks as one of the world’s top consumers of gold. Image by Dimiter Kenarov. Turkey, 2012.

The Turkish jewelry industry is considered to be one of the five biggest in the world, employing 250,000 workers and generating some $1.5 billion in exports for 2011. Image by Dimiter Kenarov. Turkey, 2012.

Ozkan Caglayan, 36, is the sales manager of the jewelry store Saray. “A lot of people are buying gold right now,” he says. Image by Dimiter Kenarov. Turkey, 2012.

Esra Ozavar is the owner of Topkapi, one of the older jewelry stores in the area. Her customers have included Dwight Eisenhower, King Hussein, Grace Kelly, Shirley MacLaine, Haile Selassie, and Kylie Minogue, but she says that these days trade is slow. Image by Dimiter Kenarov. Turkey, 2012.

Veysel Basat, 75, is Esra Ozavar's business partner at Topkapi. “There were only eight or ten stores in the past, but now there are hundreds and there is too much competition,” he says. Image by Dimiter Kenarov. Turkey, 2012.

More popular than the jewelry stores in Turkey are the retail stores for bulk gold. While the Turkish jewelry demand has actually contracted by 10 percent in 2011, the demand for gold investments has increased by 99 percent to 80.4 tons. Image by Dimiter Kenarov. Turkey, 2012.

Even with the global gold trade thriving, the jewelry sector is paradoxically in decline. Image by Dimiter Kenarov. Turkey, 2012.

Much has changed in Istanbul, and the booming economy of the city has now moved high up into the offices of the shimmering steel-and-glass towers of Levent, on the other side of the Golden Horn, but the Grand Bazaar, which first appeared in the 15th century, continues to exert a special pull on tourists and Turks alike, nostalgic for their imaginary Orients. They come here to buy that special carpet and chat with the craftsmen over a cup of tea – a form of human communication that has long ago disappeared in the modern shopping malls – or just wander aimlessly among the network of galleries and look at the wares. But it is the numerous jewelry shops with their brightly-lit storefronts stacked with a dazzling array of treasures that stop customers in their stride. There are solid gold bracelets, delicate platinum necklaces, silver flowers, sapphires, diamonds, rings encrusted with Koranic verses, gold prayer beads. Perhaps the Oriental fairy tales are true, after all.