Üsküdar

The women left on October 21st, 1854, arrived in Crimea November 5th.

The Barak Hospital, Barak, excuse me, hospital, located in Skutari, now called Uskudar, which is across the Bosporus Strait from Istanbul.

The Bosporus Strait divided Europe and Asia.

Still does, actually.

Paid subscribers can get the transcript and links to the stories I cover here at turkeyrecap.com.

The story clearly dominating the opposition newspaper's front pages is yesterday's city council elections in Istanbul's Üsküdar district.

This conservative district was long known as one of the bastions of AKP.

It is also where President Erdoğan has his official residence registered.

So it came as a surprise to many when in the 2024 elections, local elections, the CHP won this municipality for the first time in 30 years.

But it didn't last long.

Sinem Dedetaj, the CHP Üsküdar Meyye, was recently arrested on charges of extortion, leadership of a criminal organization, and bribery.

The centre-left Kemalist paper, Nefes, offers the following summary.

Then we knew that the hospitals were full to suffocation, that scarcity and exposure were the fate of all in the camp, and that the brave fellows, for whom any of us at home would have split our last shilling and shared our last meal, were dying thousands of miles away from the active sympathy of their fellow countrymen.

Fast and thick upon the news of Inkerman, fought by a handful of fasting and enfeebled men against eight times their number of picked Russians brought fresh and animated to the contest, and while all England was reeling beneath the shock of that fearful victory, came the sad news that hundreds were dying whom the Russian shot and sword had spared, and that the hospitals of Scutari were utterly unable to shelter, or their inadequate staff to attend to, the shiploads of sick and wounded which were sent to them across the stormy Black Sea.

But directly England knew the worst, she set about repairing her past neglect.

In every household busy fingers were working for the poor soldier.

For although they were going home invalided, the brave fellows' hearts were with their companions, for all the hardships they had passed through.

We stopped at Malta also, where, of course, I landed, and stared about me, and submitted to be robbed by the lazy Maltese with all a traveller's resignation.

Here also I met friends, some medical officers who had known me in Kingston, and one of them, Dr. F., lately arrived from Scutari, gave me, when he heard my plans, a letter of introduction to Miss Nightingale, then hard at work, evoking order out of confusion, and bravely resisting the despotism of death, at the hospital of Scutari.

So on, past beautiful islands and shores, until we are steaming against a swift current and an adverse wind, between two tower-crested promontories of rock, which they tell me stand in Europe and in Asia, and are connected with some pretty tale of love in days long by.

Above its rooftop stands its tower, the great round tower the Genoese built when they held that shore, a shape of pure dark against the stars, the night's one uninhabited silhouette, seeing nothing, saying nothing, and away to your right, where the horn opens out, The water widens into the mouth of the strait itself, the Bosphorus, the running sea water that parts two continents, black and cold out there in the dark and across it, small and far and perfectly clear in the washed winter air, a scatter of low lights that are not this continent at all.

That is Uskudar over there.

That is Asia.

putting its lamps out for the night.

It rolls out across the black harbor.

It reaches you in the lane, standing still with your lantern, inside it, part of the all.

And from across the strait, at the very edge of what an ear can claim, you seem to catch one more thread of it, thin as starlight, from Uskudar, from the towers of Asia, joining in.

Perhaps you truly hear it.