Taksim Square

Well, so I myself moved to the, the sort of liberal area of Cihangir in Beyoğlu, which many listeners might be familiar with.

It's down the hill from Taksim Square.

It's very much the heart of the city, and that's where I lived for about eight years.

Um, I wrote my first book in that time.

Turkey had done well in the, in the financial crisis.

So yeah, they were b- he was really riding this wave of money, and then the money ru- ran out eventually.

But he really faced extraordinary opposition when he tried to take a chunk of Taksim Square itself to build a shopping mall.

What happened?

And then you have Galatasaray.

That's closer to Taksim Square, like your listeners might know Taksim Square.

It was founded in the Galatasaray High School.

We can talk about that.

It was raining and we just got off the tram to Taksim.

And we got off the train at Taksim and we were about to walk out into Taksim Square and it started pouring with rain.

And everyone was just waiting downstairs.

We didn't have an umbrella with us, so we thought, oh, we'll just wait down and see how long it's going to last.