Talk:Istanbul/Archive 5

This is an archive of past discussions about Istanbul. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

Archive 1

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Pre-Byzantium history

I thought the early history of Istanbul was very poorly presented, but someone seems to disagree. The original text is as follows:

In 2008, during the construction works of the Yenikapı subway station and the Marmaray tunnel at the historic peninsula on the European side, a previously unknown Neolithic settlement dating from circa 6700 BC was discovered.[15][16][17] The first human settlement on the Anatolian side, the Fikirtepe mound, is from the Copper Age period, with artifacts dating from 5500–3500 BC.[18] In nearby Kadıköy (Chalcedon) a port settlement dating back to the Phoenicians has been discovered. Cape Moda in Chalcedon was the first location which the Greek settlers from Megara chose to colonise in 685 BC, prior to colonising Byzantion on the European side of the Bosphorus under the command of King Byzas in 667 BC. Byzantion was established on the site of an ancient port settlement named Lygos, founded by Thracian tribes between the 13th and 11th centuries BC, along with the neighbouring Semistra,[19] of which Pliny had mentioned in his historical accounts. Only a few walls and substructures belonging to Lygos have survived to date, near the Seraglio Point (Turkish: Sarayburnu), where the famous Topkapı Palace now stands. During the period of Byzantion, the Acropolis used to stand where the Topkapı Palace stands today.

Compare to the current:

Recent construction of the Marmaray tunnel unearthed a Neolithic settlement underneath Yenikapı on Istanbul's historic peninsula. Dating back to the 7th millennium BC, before the Bosphorus was even formed, the discovery indicated that the peninsula was settled thousands of years earlier than previously thought.[15] Thracian tribes established two settlements—Lygos and Semistra—on the Sarayburnu, near where Topkapı Palace now stands, between the 13th and 11th centuries BC. On the Asian side, first settlement has been placed around 3000 BC, and a Phoenecian trading post was located in present-day Kadıköy three centuries before Greek settlers from Megara established Chalcedon there in 685 BC.[16]

Explanations of the changes:

Mentioning "2008" at the beginning of the History section is a bit odd. That year is not explicitly mentioned in the BBC article (the article is from January 2009), and the other two sources are in Turkish, which seems completely unnecessary for an article on the English Wikipedia. Still, the recent discovery is still mentioned. So, there's hardly any change there.
The info about the Fikirtepe mound and the Copper Age is sourced by a dead link. But if I were to look at the current Ministry of Tourism page, you see the following:
- (A): "The oldest signs of habitation in Istanbul have been found on the banks of the Kurbağalıdere Creek in Kadıköy, in the Fikirtepe locality. It is considered that these findings date from the end of the 4th century or the beginning of the 3rd century BC."
  I can't tell whether they meant to say 4th or 3rd millennium, but it contradicts the well-known fact that Byzantium was founded in the 7th century BC and it does not support the idea that Anatolian Istanbul dates back to the Copper Age.
- (B): Another source that doesn't give a mention to Istanbul prior to the 1st millennium BC.

Pretty much the rest of the text is in there, but I eliminated some pedantic details (e.g. "Cape Moda", "Seraglio Point (Turkish: Sarayburnu)"); the information can be said far more concisely. I also tried to make the information more chronological, so you're not jumping all over history. The old text went from 2008 AD to 6700 BC, up to 685 BC and 667 BC, back to the 13th and 11th centuries BC. That jumping around makes it hard to infer the time periods of the remaining information and makes it difficult to understand the very early history of the city.

Essentially, I tried to make the content more chronological, better referenced, and more concise. -- tariqabjotu 03:08, 24 April 2010 (UTC)

From User talk:88.251.76.242: Please read Talk:Istanbul#Pre-Byzantium_history instead of continually reverting. Most of the changes I made to that piece are simply rewordings, rather than removal of information. So, you are reverting the entire piece, citing the removal of information without explaining why you're reverting the rewordings. And, in regards to the removal of information: As I mention on the talk page, non-English sources should be a last resort. Similarly, tertiary sources, like encyclopedias, "may be used to give overviews or summaries, but should not be used in place of secondary sources for detailed discussion". And yet, you are using a non-English tertiary source eight times to provide detailed discussion on a topic. As I said, I tried very hard to confirm this information in scholarly English-language sources, but came up empty. While that does not mean the information in the article must be false, it does indicate that the information probably isn't important enough to be in the Istanbul article, which is only meant to give an overview of the city's history. If you want to fight that battle on the History of Istanbul article, knock yourself out, but the Istanbul article should rely on what most people would discuss when talking about the city (and, in this case, its history).

You initially complained that the reason I couldn't find this information in scholarly sources was because this is new. Instead, your statement is further evidence that you're not reading what you're reverting; the new part is mentioned in the BBC article and remained in what I had written. The other information, as demonstrated by your use of a 1988 encyclopedia, is not new, and therefore should exist in some of the modern history books. You look at any website (obviously written after 1988) or book on the history of Istanbul, and they begin their discussion at Byzantium, offering only a few sentences -- if that -- to colonization before then. This is what I said in the two edit summaries, and this is what I said on the talk page.

Note also that in reverting, you have added back very little information; most of the information in the original was in the version I wrote. However, in reverting, you have removed quality English-language secondary sources and replaced them with questionable non-English tertiary sources. That's not good, and I have no qualms reverting you again. Please continue at Talk:Istanbul#Pre-Byzantium history. -- tariqabjotu 20:47, 25 April 2010 (UTC)

Regarding the date 667 BC, I have added a rather lengthy footnote detailing the multiple positions on the city's foundation. Further, in accordance with that, I have generalized the foundation date to c. 660 BC. -- tariqabjotu 17:42, 27 April 2010 (UTC)

Geography section

As one might have noticed already, I have been trying to improve the Geography section, adding references, cutting unnecessary info, etc. However, one editor seems intent on reverting all of these edits -- and any others that get in his way -- because he thinks the Flora section is important. I want to point out, as I'm sure the rest of us know, it is not impossible to make an edit to the article without reverting. If one feels the "Flora" section is so important, it is possible to re-add the section and keep the other changes made in the interim. However, this individual chooses to completely revert everything that occurred between his desired version, with the "Flora" section, and the current version.

But back to the Flora section. First, one will quickly notice looking at any of our featured city articles (e.g. New York City, San Francisco, or Delhi), Flora and Fauna sections are not standard. I understand the reverter's point that Istanbul has a transitional climate and that that may be reflected in the city's animal and plant life, but there is no reason we need to devote six paragraphs to saying that. This could be discussed concisely when talking about the Climate. Most of what is interesting or important here, I feel, can be placed under the "Climate" sub-section.

Finally, the section is poorly written and even more poorly referenced; it reeks of original research. -- tariqabjotu 21:38, 20 June 2010 (UTC)

The IP is evidently Saguamundi (talk · contribs), who I have warned against revert-warring while logged out. Fut.Perf. ☼ 21:46, 20 June 2010 (UTC)

I was aware that he was the same user as Saguamundi, but that doesn't change much, insofar as I can tell. Saguamundi is neither banned nor a proven sockpuppet, so I am still not entitled to simply reverting on sight. -- tariqabjotu 22:01, 20 June 2010 (UTC)

Yeah, but following this warning, I'm prepared to block him and then treat all subsequent IPs as revert-on-sight socks if he chooses to revert-war logged out again. Using IPs for contentious editing to evade scrutiny on one's main account is essentially the same thing as sockpuppetry. Fut.Perf. ☼ 22:04, 20 June 2010 (UTC)

Merge of Istanbul Province and Istanbul

According to the Turkish law on the formation of Metropolitan cities [1], the cities of Istanbul and Izmit have the same borders as their respective provinces. Therefore most things that can be said about the city of Istanbul in this article (e.g. geography, culture, transportation) could be stated identically in the article about Istanbul Province. The exceptions would be in the sections on administration and history. Thus, if the article on Istanbul province were to be developed to a comprehensive article, I estimate that these two articles could overlap by about 80%. I wonder whether these two articles should be merged and the two concepts discussed together to clarify the distinction and highlight the relationship between the city and the province. The alternative would be to keep them separate and mostly redundant, but this is likely to cause content forking as people will add material to one article but neglect to add it to the other. I am envisioning one merged article that states in its Intro section that Istanbul is the name of both a city and a province in Turkey, that the two geographical entities have the same borders and therefore aspects that are common to the two will be presented together; the History and Administration sections would each have separate subheadings for the city and the province. Does this merge make sense? --İnfoCan (talk) 14:57, 13 August 2010 (UTC)

-OPPOSE MERGE since they are two different entities, one is a city the other is a province. The province has in its borders Istanbul but also other cities like Şile or Silivri. Then what will we do about all Turkish cities who share the same name with their province, like Ankara or İzmir?

Important note:

Büyükşehir belediyesinin sınırları

MADDE 5.- Büyükşehir belediyelerinin sınırları, adını aldıkları büyükşehirlerin belediye sınırlarıdır.

İlçe belediyelerinin sınırları, bu ilçelerin, büyükşehir belediyesi içinde kalan kısımlarının sınırlarıdır.

İlk kademe belediyelerinin, büyükşehir belediye sınırları dışında belediye sınırı olamaz.

Büyükşehir belediyesine katılma

MADDE 6.- Büyükşehir belediyesinin sınırları çevresinde ve aynı il sınırları içinde bulunan belediye ve köylerin, büyükşehir belediyesine katılması konusunda Belediye Kanunu hükümleri uygulanır. Bu durumda katılma kararı, ilgili ilçe veya ilk kademe belediye meclisinin talebi üzerine, büyükşehir belediye meclisi tarafından alınır.

http://www.tbmm.gov.tr/kanunlar/k5216.html does not in any way mention that the Büyükşehir (Metropolitan City) covers ALL the province, it is for the cities that are out of the agglomeration or metropolis to decide wether they join in or not to the Büyükşehir, as a matter of fact, Silivri and Sultanbeyli, which are in the Province of Istanbul, are NOT in the Metropolis of Istanbul, and the Büyükşehir Mayorship has no power on them. (They have different taxies for example). --88.224.109.12 (talk) 22:57, 23 August 2010 (UTC)

You missed the following:

GEÇİCİ MADDE 2.- Bu Kanunun yürürlüğe girdiği tarihte; büyükşehir belediye sınırları, İstanbul ve Kocaeli ilinde, il mülkî sınırıdır.

(Provisional Article 2: On the date the law goes in effect, the metropolitan city government boundaries in Istanbul and Kocaeli are the provincial boundaries. ) --İnfoCan (talk) 16:40, 24 August 2010 (UTC)

Yes, as the name says, GEÇİCİ MADDE / Provisional Article... --81.213.70.247 (talk) 17:09, 1 September 2010 (UTC)

Istanbul Region: Europe and North America????????

In the headlines resume: Obvious Istanbul is considerated Europe and Asia but never North America. This you have to change. Thanks. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 83.57.30.91 (talk) 10:40, 16 August 2010 (UTC)

Within the classification scheme of UNESCO World Heritage Sites, Istanbul belongs to the "Europe and North America" region [2]. --İnfoCan (talk) 18:33, 16 August 2010 (UTC)

Area and Population

I am going insane trying to state and properly cite what should be two very simple, basic facts -- the area and population of Istanbul. I came across three numbers (1831 sq. km, 1538.9 sq. km, and 5343 sq. km). The last one is quite clearly wrong, being the area of the entire province. And I settled on the second figure being correct, based on the 27 districts that, according to the MMI, compose Istanbul, and ignoring the 17 town municipalities that also fall under the 1831-sq-km MMI authority area. To that end, I posted a lengthy note alongside the area (transcribed below):

An area of 1,831 square kilometers (707 sq mi) is commonly cited for the area of Istanbul, which apparently corresponds with the area under the authority of the Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality (MMI).^[1] However, as the MMI notes, this figure includes seventeen "town municipalities"—most not contiguous with central Istanbul—which account for 305 square kilometers (118 sq mi).^[2] The MMI explicitly states that "Each MM is sub-divided into District Municipalities ("DM") of which there are 27 in Istanbul" [emphasis added], and proceeds to enumerate these 27 (contiguous) districts.^[3] Their total area of 1,538.9 square kilometers (594.2 sq mi), which omits most of the land within the town municipalities, is used within this article for the city's area and all related statistics (e.g. population and density). Note, further still, that a figure of 5,343 square kilometers (2,063 sq mi) (or greater) is also sometimes used for the area of the city, but this, in fact, is the area of the entire Istanbul Province.^[1]^[4]

^ ^a ^b "Authority Area". Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality. Retrieved 17 June 2010.

^ "Towns". Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality. Retrieved 17 June 2010.

^ "Districts". Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality. Retrieved 17 June 2010.

^ "İstanbul İl ve İlçe Alan Bilgileri" (in Turkish). Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality. Retrieved 17 June 2010. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |trans_title= ignored (|trans-title= suggested) (help)

However, when using the same method to come up with a population figure (summing the district population figures provided by the MMI), I get a value close to 8.56 million, far lower than the 12+ million figure that seems to be everywhere. Does anyone know what's going on here? Unfortunately, I can't read Turkish, save with the help of Google Translate, but it appears Ref 6 above confirms that those 12+ million figures are for the population of the entire province (not what we're looking for), with a corresponding area of 5343 sq. km. However, it does appear that some of the information on the Districts page of the (English version of the) MMI may be outdated (as it includes Eminönü, which is not a district). Any help here would be appreciated. -- tariqabjotu 12:17, 17 June 2010 (UTC)

I think you should ask User:Polaron on this. He seems to have some knowledge of the population of Istanbul based on the notes at List of cities proper by population. Elockid ^(Talk) 16:43, 24 August 2010 (UTC)

I don't understand if there is a difference between Istanbul Province and Istanbul Municipality. So how many inhabitants are in Istanbul Municipality? Over 12 million or over 8 million? The map of this article (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Istanbul_location_districts.svg) is referred to the Province. Maybe the map of the municipality is http://www.ibb.gov.tr/en-US/Organization/AuthorityArea/Pages/Districts.aspx --Pascar (talk) 16:32, 9 October 2010 (UTC)

The Name

Istanbul is the only official name of the city, why can't some of you comprenhend this? Its a simple fact. There is already a link to the historical names of the city right next to the name and an explantion in the toponymy of the article. Mystery.sin (talk) 13:48, 18 June 2010 (UTC)

What is "official" is of no relevance whatsoever. The two historical names are extremely prominent in English discourse about the city, and therefore need to be presented to the reader right away – indeed, if we don't remind the reader that these names exists, the reader won't even understand why they should click a link to that names section. There is hardly any other city world-wide where alternative names (and I mean true different names, not just different versions of the same name in different languages) are so important historically as here.

Wikipedia is governed by WP:CONSENSUS. Your opinion stands alone against a very long-standing, stable consensus of all other editors, and you have edit-warred against several editors to enforce your isolated minority opinion. I will therefore revert to the consensus version. Fut.Perf. ☼ 19:45, 18 June 2010 (UTC)

Mystery.sin's real issue is the reference I placed here[3], since he has a history of insulting me[4]. So the real issue isn't Constantinople or Byzantium, but the reference that stated, "..Istanbul was only adopted as the city's official name in 1930.", which has been changed to this, Britannica, Istanbul:When the Republic of Turkey was founded in 1923, the capital was moved to Ankara, and Constantinople was officially renamed Istanbul in 1930. --Kansas Bear (talk) 21:34, 18 June 2010 (UTC)

Well, that sentence is in fact wrong, even though Britannica has joined in the propagation of that error. Istanbul wasn't "renamed" in 1930. The Turkish authorities merely began to insist that foreign usage should adapt to what had been the native Turkish name all along. Fut.Perf. ☼ 21:37, 18 June 2010 (UTC)

Here's a quote on the history of the name, which shows that the current name dates from before the Turkish conquest. From page 30 in Roger Crowley's 1453. New York: Hyperion (2005), where he speaks of toponymic changes in 13th and 14th century Anatolia:

"As they advanced, the conquerors smoothed the Greek place-names of captured cities to the vowel harmonies of Turkish.... Constantinople, though the Ottomans would continue to refer to it officially by the Arabic name Kostantiniyee, evolved in everyday Turkish into Istanbul by a mutation that is still unclear. The word may be a simple corruption of Constantinople, or it could be derived quite differently. Greek speakers would refer to Constantinople familiarly as polis, the city. A man going there would say he was going eis tin polin--'into the city'--which could have been interpreted by Turkish ears as Istanbul."--Anthon.Eff (talk) 14:25, 21 June 2010 (UTC)

the citys official name was konstantinoupoli till 1930, and dispite the fact that the turkish "version" of the greek phrase dates back to byzantine times, we should not forget that during the 470 years that the ottoman empire state had it as a capital, the city was still officialy named konstantinoupoli. both the greek name Κωνσταντινούπολη and the latin form constantinople should be mentioned along with the turkish name. diferently this article should only concentrate on the history of the city from 1930 to the present day.

the proper thing to do would be to add all information for the city, from ancient times to byzantine times to ottoman times and modern times to a single article, but i guess that would create problems, cause then the modern part of the article would just apear too small. also i cant find a reason for the explanation of the modern turkish name to be on the page "names of instanbul" since it doesnt make sence that a name of instanbul is istanbul and it should be explained on a diferent page. this should be explained on the main page. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Evangelos Ionas (talk • contribs) 14:35, 22 July 2010 (UTC)

Vangel, the "official" name was not "konstantinoupoli" (especially not with this, must I add ugly greeklish orthography) but "Konstantiniyye", and this was NOT the only official name, "Dersaadet", "Istanbul" and "Âsitâne" were used jointly, at a more or less equal level, I'd say. The only thing that changed in 1930 is that "Istanbul" became the only official name, abandoning the others. That specific law was actually more or less a political answer to one from Greece (Yunanistan) that started to -return to sender- letters that went to cities such as "Selânik", "Gümülcine", "İskeçe" or Dedeağaç", not to mention "Kuleliburgaz" and "Kumçifltliği"... Again... All politics, Isn't it?--85.104.128.3 (talk) 23:43, 15 September 2010 (UTC)

PS: On your names of Istanbul figuring on the same article idea: It was like that around 3 years ago, but after long heated debates we decided by clear consensus it would be better if moved to another distinct page, since it is THE city in the World with the most different names. Just read archives.

Now on your idea to take all cities, as Constantinople, etc. under one same umbrella, I second to it as a very good idea, you should do all you can to make it happen, I'll be backing you up at any moment I have free time... After all, "Athens" has one article for both the ancient and the modern city, right? ;)

Historical population

Can someone please provide sources for the historical population shown in the table? Thx --Dada (talk) 11:38, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

I don't have a source to back the table of historical population. But the present population can easily be found. [5] is the page of Turkish statistical Institute (in English). The population of İstanbul (and the districts) are in the subpage [6] Nedim Ardoğa (talk) 12:47, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

Well, as I said, I am mostly interested in the historical population and where those numbers in the table come from. I already have a reliable source for the 19th century (Shaw S.J., The Population of Istanbul in the Nineteenth Century, International Journal of Middle East Studies, Vol. 10, No. 2 (May, 1979), pp. 265-277). According to Shaw four major census surveys of Istanbul were carried out, in 1826, 1838, 1844, and 1856. These years however are not present in the table. Modern Ottoman census resumed in 1880 as a result of the personal interest of Sultan Abdulhamit II and the population is relatively well known for 1882, 1885, 1896, 1906 and 1914. Again, the table does not include some of those years. However, for 1885 and 1914 the numbers given in the table are the same as those given by Shaw. Before the 19th century, I am not sure how reliable any estimation of the population can be, but apart from that I would appreciate it if some sources were provided. --Dada (talk) 13:33, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

Anonymous Vandal - Page under Attack

People, there is that "person" who subsequently vandalizes the Istanbul page and many topics related to Turkey in a very swift (but time consuming and stupid) manner by shuffling pictures of the article and eventually removing a third of them, actually ones that matter. Doing so gets him mostly unnoticed by neither the bots and admins that are around nor by any of the fellow editors, but ultimately gives the article a quite ugly face. He used to go by the name User:Andreas2009 until he got undefinitely blocked. Now he edits under various anonymous IP's. Dear editors, please help me in protecting the article, as I do not know what to do. --78.170.194.120 (talk) 07:15, 26 December 2010 (UTC)

Anyways he is still around, but I would like to hear your ideas about how does our page look now, as I passed a couple of hours on it. The problem is that, Istanbul has so many different architectural and artistic styles combined in one city, so I did my best to show them all. Feel free to brainstorm.

Cheers! (Emir) --78.170.198.32 (talk) 17:18, 29 December 2010 (UTC)

Meeting of wikipedians in Istanbul

YOu mihght already know that http://ten.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Istanbul for the anniversary, there will be a meeting in istanbul. I just want to let you guys know this. Bamtelim (talk) 06:48, 5 January 2011 (UTC)

Yes we are all meeting, the place will be the oldest coffeehouse in the world, Çorlulu Ali Paşa Medresesi in Çemberlitaş, Anyone interested can (and should) come! You can always e-mail me or Bamtelim for confirmation.

--Emir Ali Enç (talk) 17:48, 6 January 2011 (UTC)

PS: Asım, neredesin abi? Sana ulaşamıyoruz bir türlü, senin de gelmen lazım, bana mail at lütfen.

Size of the article

The article is excessively long with a furry of pictures which don't make it accessible! Please someone must technically improve the article by creating new pages-articles which they can absorb chapters or sections of Istanbul article. It must be done quickly — Preceding unsigned comment added by Worldglobal (talk • contribs) 17:07, 7 January 2011 (UTC) Worldglobal (talk) 17:18, 7 January 2011 (UTC)

No... The article is quite accessible, and all these pictures give a good idea "at the first glance" of the city. Well there are SO many things and SO many different styles in Istanbul that pictures will be also many, as a matter of fact. Any person with a hardship of accession can peruse the lightened "http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki?search=Istanbul" (as a matter of fact http://en.m.wikipedia.org/ for any "heavy" article).

PS, I did a count. the article only has a few pics more than London which is really a low one when thinking about how much more Istanbul has...

--78.171.131.144 (talk) 23:11, 10 January 2011 (UTC)

Please separate the article

This article is excessively long and it becomes significantly uneasy for someone to read it! Please cut the article into other articles and please reduce the amount of pictures is having to less than 20 in order for passage to be a little more comfortable for international readers. Many problems regarding the size of the article have been worrying us for over a month. Do something please. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Economiesofscale (talk • contribs) 20:34, 26 January 2011 (UTC)

Problems with the article. Makale ile ilgili sorunlar!!!

The text of the article focuses on many many different stuff. I would prefer to see it more compromise to the main points have to do with Istanbul. I support view of previous accounts also demanding the dicrease of the size of the article. Turkish Professor in Erzurum —Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.228.183.50 (talk) 10:23, 30 January 2011 (UTC)

Proposed merger with Istanbul Province

Oppose. Keeping them apart makes sense. Moonraker2 (talk) 07:21, 5 November 2010 (UTC)

Agreed, I oppose it too. Nozdref (talk) 00:27, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

Oppose.They are two different political systems. Dinkytown talk 22:08, 24 November 2010 (UTC)

Could you two provide some rationale? -- tariqabjotu 05:27, 30 November 2010 (UTC)

Support. The city and the province are legally defined as having the same boundaries. If the article on the City and the Province were distinct, they would share about 80% of their content: geography, climate, transportation, fauna and flora, culture. They would only differ in the sections on history and administration. According to Wikipedia:Merging, if "there are two or more pages on related subjects that have a large overlap" they should be merged. This can be accomplished by starting the merged article as "Istanbul is a city and province in Turkey..." and creating "City" and "Province" subsections for each of the "History" and "Administration" sections. --İnfoCan (talk) 17:06, 29 November 2010 (UTC)
Suggestion Since there isn't much of an article at Istanbul Province, why not just rename it to "Cities and districts of Istanbul Province" or "Political subdivisions of Istanbul", and redirect "Istanbul Province" here with slight revisions in terminology.-- Patrick, _oѺ^∞ 23:35, 29 November 2010 (UTC)
Oppose: to my understanding, the city and province are separate in which they do not share the same legal boundary. Our articles also seem to support this also. Elockid ^(Talk) 23:41, 29 November 2010 (UTC)
Support The city and the province do, in fact, have the same limits. From the Istanbul Municipality history page (emphasis mine):

After being in effect almost for twenty years, Decree Law no.3030 was replaced by Public Act No.5216, which was drafted in the course of substantial reforms in the local government system and was adopted on July 10, 2004. With this law, Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality’s jurisdiction was enlarged to cover all the area within the provincial limits. Furthermore, the number of the district municipalities rose to 32 while the number of First-Level Municipalities became 41.

As on the Dubai page, where there was debate over what to do with the fact that the city and emirate of Dubai are coterminous, there should be only one article to discuss the topic. Leaving the province page as a standalone sub-stub, aside from violating WP:MERGE, creates confusion that there are other municipalities in the Istanbul Province when, in fact, that's not the case. -- tariqabjotu 05:27, 30 November 2010 (UTC)

Support per Patrick. A Macedonian, a Greek. (talk) 06:17, 30 November 2010 (UTC)

Support (conditional): In Turkey out of 81 provinces two have special status. According to act no 5216, İstanbul municipality encompasses whole province. (By the way this is also true for Kocaeli Province) Thus, İstanbul city and İstanbul Province are identical. They can be merged. But I have doubts about the system of merging in Wikipedia. If one article is merged into the other, the history of the first disappears from the history page. This is unfair to the editors of the merged article and it also creates problems for those viewers who wish to address the editors. Thus I support merging only if a solution for the above problem is proposed. Nedim Ardoğa (talk) 07:26, 30 November 2010 (UTC)

Merging histories is not a problem. Template:Db-histmerge notifies admins that the histories of the two articles need to be merged. The page Wikipedia:How to fix cut-and-paste moves has the necessary details. --İnfoCan (talk) 16:45, 30 November 2010 (UTC)

Actually, that is not correct. The histories will not be merged in this situation because there was no cut-and-paste move; the two articles are radically different and were originally intended as two separate articles. What Nedim said is pretty much correct. The history of Istanbul Province will be hard to find; you'll have to look up Istanbul Province, override the redirect, and then look at the history of that page. But that's not a very good reason to object; that's how merges are done all over Wikipedia, and he seems to have a problem with the process more than this merge specifically. -- tariqabjotu 01:52, 1 December 2010 (UTC)

I hate to digress on this technicality, but I thought that when you want to merge the histories of articles A and B, you temporarily delete A, rename B as A, then bring back all the deleted revisions of A. The result is that the two histories are interlaced. Of course as you follow the history, you may well see the article switch from being about the city to being about the province and back again: something like A1-A2-A3-B1-A4-B2-B3-A5-... . Nevertheless, all the changes will be visible. I am an admin on the Turkish Wikipedia and that's how we do it over there. --İnfoCan (talk) 15:09, 1 December 2010 (UTC)

Yes, that is what you would do when you want to merge the histories. But, we don't want to merge the histories here. That's only reserved for cut-and-paste moves (hence, why the only place you find info about this type of merging is on the cut-and-paste page) -- i.e. where someone moves an article by copying the contents of A to B (rather than doing a move) or when the an article develops in parallel in two places. Doing it for all types of moves would result in the difficult-to-follow and not-very-useful A3-B1-A4-B2-B3 scenario. Perhaps that's acceptable on the Turkish Wikipedia, but that's not desirable here. In the vast majority of cases, when someone wants to see the history of a merged article on en:wiki, they have to, as I said above, override the redirect of the original page and look at that page's history.

It's not even technically possible for an English Wikipedia admin to merge the history of another article into this one. Because Istanbul has more than 5,000 revisions, only a steward can delete the page and merge the history. This measure was put in place to prevent wayward admins from deleting huge pages and slowing the servers down. And that's perfectly fine, because an article like this should never need to be deleted or have its history merged with another article. -- tariqabjotu 19:59, 1 December 2010 (UTC)

Fine, so then the two articles histories won't be merged. However, Patrick's suggestion above is a good one, the article Istanbul Province doesn't have to disappear, it could be converted into a stub article called "Districts of Istanbul Province". The Turkish Wikipedia has a Featured list tr:İstanbul'un ilçeleri on this topic and it could be translated into English. Thus, the article history of Istanbul Province would be preserved in a natural way. --İnfoCan (talk) 19:39, 2 December 2010 (UTC)

Shall we put the former governors on this article? A city has a mayor and a province has a governor. --Seksen iki yüz kırk beş (talk) 15:47, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

Former governors may be too detailed for this article and should probably be placed in a separate article on the the administrative history of Istanbul province, which might have a similar content to that of tr:İstanbul'un ilçeleri. --İnfoCan (talk) 15:44, 31 January 2011 (UTC)

Oppose. Both articles should be kept apart.

Istanbul Province with an area of 5,196 square kilometers (2,006 sq mi) is twice the size of the Grand Duchy of Luxemburg or the German state of Saarland. While small by Turkish standarts, the province is large enough that it has different types of climates and vegetation (not to mention the city of Istanbul itself) and has rural districts, towns and villages dispersed on its territory that are far removed in distance and also by influence from the city of Istanbul itself as well as from its suburbs. While the rural population of the province outside the city borders is small, the province itself is virtually ignored in every aspect (when described, only the towns and its populations of these rural districts are put at most), and though the history of Istanbul is intertwined with the province, a merger would totally ignore the countryside and its geography, flora, fauna, climate and precipitaiton that diverge significantly from the city.

As stated above in the “Area and Population” disussion about Istanbul, the area of 1,831 square kilometers (707 sq mi) (35.24% of the province) is commonly cited for the area of the city of Istanbul, which apparently corresponds with the area under the authority of the Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality (MMI).^[1] Then the remaining area of Istanbul Province outside the city limits would be 3,365 square kilometers (1,299 sq mi) (64.76% of the province).

There are three rural dsitricts, where the city limits, sprawling urbanization and the authority of the Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality (MMI) does not extend at all. These rural districts have total area of 3,300 square kilometers (1,300 sq mi) (63.50% of the province) and a total population of 215,000.

- Silivri: Area: 860 km2 Population (2000): 108,155 (District)

Silivri district consists of 8 towns and 18 villages. The population of the town of Silivri is 44,530 in, with the remainder population dispersed in the surrounding towns and villages.

- Çatalca: Area: 1,715 km2 Population (2000): 81,589 (District)

The population of the town of Çatalça is 36,544 in, with the remainder population dispersed in the surrounding towns and villages.

- Şile: 755 km² Population (2007): 25,169 (District)

The population of the town of Şile is 9,831, the population of the nearby town of Ağva (Yeşilçay) is 2,096 and the population in the surrounding villages is 13,242.

Also the Istanbul article is already very long and large, and expanding the article with more mergers would make absorptions more difficult. The best option is to retain this article and try to diverge certain too large sections and topics in the Istanbul article to already exisiting and new articles.

--Menikure (talk) 02:34, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

Your information is out of date. As I mentioned above, according to the 2004 law on the Metropolitan Administration Laws [7] it says "On the date the law goes in effect, the metropolitan city government boundaries in Istanbul and Kocaeli are the provincial boundaries." (Bu Kanunun yürürlüğe girdiği tarihte; büyükşehir belediye sınırları, İstanbul ve Kocaeli ilinde, il mülkî sınırıdır.). Nor is it true that Silivri, Çatalca or Şile are separate from the Istanbul Metropolitan City. Read about it in this detailed news page of the Istanbul City government [8]. You can also easily see this with a Google search that restricts these words to the Internet domain "ibb.gov.tr": [9][10][11] The city has many Web sites about offices and projects for these three municipal districts. As for the article being too long, the guidelines on this matter are detailed in Wikipedia:Manual of Style (summary style). --İnfoCan (talk) 15:38, 31 January 2011 (UTC)

Absorb information of Istanbul article to other more specific articles

{{edit protected}} In an attempt to dicrease size of Istanbul article I would suggest to remove touristic and useless pictures from the article. With Respect Economiesofscale. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Economiesofscale (talk • contribs) 00:03, 6 February 2011 (UTC)

Size doesn't matter

I think the contrary and propose to conserve this size of the article. As mentioned above, one can always take the example of London for a comparison. The pictures are NOT touristic and reflect the (too) many different faces and aspects of this beautiful city, without a doubt the most beautiful in this world. --151.32.48.86 (talk) 15:18, 11 February 2011 (UTC)

SEAL?

This article is not an article about the metropolitan municipality of Istanbul, which suggests the seal (actually the logo) for the municipality be removed from this article, given the reason that Istanbul does not have a seal since it is not a city-state nor anything similar. I suppose Istanbul and Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality aren not the sam thing! --Stultiwikia^{text me} 23:35, 12 February 2011 (UTC)

Leave Good Enough Alone

Every time I look here, there is a totally different version of the article. People should stop playing with it. It is a good article. I had seen a few better versions but enough is enough. It should have been a good article by now. Cant some of you leave your politics and baggage at the door? I had really liked the panaromic view with Kiz Kulesi on the top and page wide, but I know esthetics does not mean that much to some, I get it. It is accessible enough. There is no way to make a condenced version. There is an outline uses it if you think you are getting lost. One can also link here directly to some of the countless cameras in the city, real time. Seal of the city does not belong in this article? As I said... —Preceding unsigned comment added by 173.77.162.40 (talk) 05:36, 24 February 2011 (UTC)

Governor Change

It's no longer Muhammer Güler ever since last year. Now it's Hüseyin Avni Mutlu. This has been corrected in some pages in Wikipedia and not in others. I am changing this one.

Source is the offical government site but there is no English. But still note the date in the picture. 31.35.2010 http://www.istanbul.gov.tr/?pid=113

--78.172.180.174 (talk) 14:21, 13 March 2011 (UTC)

Hagia Sophia

Hagia Sophia is an impressive church in Istanbul. Unfortunately it was not always used as a church. When the Ottoman Turks conquered Constantinople it was used as a mosque. Then the government decided to transform it into a museum. The carpets were removed, the altar was taken away, and the veils that covered the mosaics. After that theseats were taken away. It was built by Emperor Justinian. There were actually 3 churches but the 3rd one is the one we see now. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 110.54.177.111 (talk) 13:23, 15 January 2011 (UTC)

boo hoo hoo what a tragical story isnt it :(( —Preceding unsigned comment added by 151.32.48.86 (talk) 15:13, 11 February 2011 (UTC)

You should be greatefull that Fatih Sultan Mehmet actualy covered the amazing art work with plaster instead of chiseling them of for good, which would have been tragic.Tugrulirmak (talk) 07:11, 7 April 2011 (UTC)

Climate

"the lowest temperature ever recorded is −16 °C (3 °F)" that is totally wrong!! and all year average values of minumum and maksimum temperature is wrong too.Acording to turkish meteorology service the lowest temperature ever recorded in İstanbul is only −8 °C (not -16) also maksimum and minimum tempratures of istanbul is in this site. look at that official turkish meteorology service site " http://www.dmi.gov.tr/veridegerlendirme/il-ve-ilceler-istatistik.aspx?m=ISTANBUL " I want to correct these values but controllers didn't accept it.but I say again, the climate values in İstanbul page is wrong.User must correct it.(Gerçekler (talk) 23:25, 29 March 2011 (UTC));

Thank you and welcome. There was a vandal (the 212.* IP) who changed the value to that false -16. Unfortunately it happens quite often that vandals mess around with climate charts. By the way, were you the person who made these edits? In that case, I apologize for first reverting them together with those of the 212.* vandal; I had thought they were part of the same vandalism. Fut.Perf. ☼ 00:07, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

Name of the city

From the main article:

:Etymologically, the name "İstanbul" (Turkish pronunciation: [isˈtanbuɫ], colloquially [ɯsˈtambuɫ]) derives from the Medieval Greek phrase "εἰς τὴν Πόλιν" [is tin ˈpolin] or, in the Aegean dialect, "εἰς τὰν Πόλιν" [is tan ˈpolin] (Modern Greek "στην Πόλη" [stin ˈpoli]), which means "in the city" or "to the city".[17][20] In modern Turkish, the name is written "İstanbul", with a dotted İ, as the Turkish alphabet distinguishes between a dotted and dotless I.

This is a silly explanation. I've never heard before that a name of a city is deducted from such a cheap description (in the city). I guess this is taken from Greek sources by authors in order to give the Turkish name a Greek basis. Turks should investigate this.Chonanh (talk) 22:51, 6 April 2011 (UTC)

Sigh. This is the commonly agreed explanation in all the literature on the topic (including, of course, the Turkish literature). There is no alternative to it anywhere in any reliable source I've seen. Fut.Perf. ☼ 07:41, 7 April 2011 (UTC)

Military schools

THE ARTİCLE İS SAYİNG KULELİ MİLİTARY HİGH SCHOOL İS ONLY ONE MİLİTARY HİGH SCHOOL İN İSTANBUL BUT İT'S NOT TRUE İNFORMATİON THERE İS DENİZ ASKERİ LİSESİ /HEYBELİADA (NAVAL HİGH SCHOOL) BAHRİYE MEKTEBİ THİS SCHOOL İS ESTABLİSHED İN 1773 BY CEZAYİRLİ GAZİ HASAN PAŞA PLEASE FİX THİS ARTİCLE AS SOON AS POSSİBLE. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Stultiwikia (talk • contribs) 16:07, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

Support There are a few more military schools in Istanbul, remember that it was a capital in her time, and most reforms ended up with new schools, palaces, etc. I may prepare a list and add them sometime. By the way, writing everything in capital letters means anger or yelling, which isn't good, try to avoid it mate. No offense, just suggesting.Heruamarth (talk) 08:16, 20 April 2011 (UTC)

More info about earthquake risk/natural disasters

I think that the risk of earthquakes and other natural disasters in Istanbul should be given more space. What plans are in place for the earthquake? What protections are there? Attaturk is Greek (talk) 17:06, 5 June 2011 (UTC)

Proposed Move

The following discussion is an archived discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: Not going to happen. Ucucha 21:24, 5 June 2011 (UTC)

Istanbul → Constantinople – Proposed move in favour of a more Western, modern name that has no islamist POV. Attaturk is Greek (talk) 20:47, 5 June 2011 (UTC)

Can someone please ban this provocateur clown? 88.251.95.240 (talk) 20:59, 5 June 2011 (UTC)

I direct you to WP:Civility. Your mother was a Kurd! Attaturk is Greek (talk) 21:06, 5 June 2011 (UTC)

Support I think Constantinople sounds better. It also has more history behind it (we don't call Cambodia "Kampuchea") OsamabinLuvin (talk) 21:23, 5 June 2011 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

Establishment Date

Constantinople was the name of the city up until 1930 Turkish Postal Service Law. Therefore, it would be wrong to write "Istanbul" was the official name of the city, since Constantinople was used official till the fall of empire. --Cerian (talk) 12:38, 10 June 2011 (UTC)

Just to clarify what I meant, I was talking about establishment date of the city thats written in infobox. I wasn't questioning city's modern name as there is no room for argument there.--Cerian (talk) 19:06, 10 June 2011 (UTC)

I think there's a slight confusion there. Constantinople was never the official name of the city since its conquest by Ottomans. Its name in Turkish was already shaped to some extent as a close variant of Istanbul long before (a few centuries, roughly said) its conquest. On the other hand, it was called Constantinople by the entire West until that postal law, not by the Turks. That law in 1930 is to oblige the Western countries to use the name Istanbul. Nothing changed domestically after the law.

Name of the city in other articles

Maybe the wrong place to ask, but should all references to the city prior to 1930 be Constantinople and everything after 1930 be Istanbul? Is this the Wikipedia policy? I ask because this is the argument in Evliya Çelebi, and if it is correct then I assume it should be applied everywhere. Ordtoy (talk) 04:39, 17 June 2011 (UTC)

"Eis tin poli"

Why are we repeating this silly piece of folk etymology? Istanbul is just a contracted Turkish rendering of "Konstantinoupolis", just as Edirne, Iznik and Izmir are renderings of Adrianoupolis, Nikaia and Smyrna. There's no logical reason why the Ottomans would have adopted this Greek phrase, and every reason to see why Greeks would have invented this story. Also, I don't believe that the name Istanbul has been in use since the 10th century. Turkic-speaking people didn't enter western Anatolia until well after the Battle of Manzikert in 1071. Intelligent Mr Toad (talk) 03:32, 27 June 2011 (UTC)

Whether you are right or not (and I suspect there is a lot of merit to your argument), a form of the name "Istanbul" was recorded in use in Constantinople by non-Turks well before the conquest. I don't know what sources the "10th century" comment refers to, but it definitely existed in the early 1300s. Ordtoy (talk) 04:01, 27 June 2011 (UTC)

Of course, because by 1300 Anatolia was filling up with Turks (using that term loosely). But in the 10th century Anatolia was still Greek. The most common name was simply "i Poli" (the City), which is what Greeks still call it. Intelligent Mr Toad (talk) 04:04, 27 June 2011 (UTC)

Sure, it's entirely possible that it originated with the Turks. But the fact that Arabs (who were in the area first) were using "Istanbul" can't be ignored. The p->b shift is something that would happen in Arabic (which has no 'p'), whereas there is no need to shift from 'p' in Turkish, which usually retains the letter in Greek borrowings. In any case, this doesn't invalidate your point that the derivation from Constaninople is likely... just that it might not have been the Turks that did it. Now to find a source for it... Ordtoy (talk) 05:49, 27 June 2011 (UTC)

On Greek to Turkish adaptations, I don't think that's correct: the p to b shift happens in Τραπεζοῦς to Trabzon, for example. Intelligent Mr Toad (talk) 00:28, 28 June 2011 (UTC)

It's definitely the case there, but there are many cases where the 'p' stays. There are probably articles about Greek borrowings into Turkish which take up the issue in more depth. Ordtoy (talk) 00:37, 28 June 2011 (UTC)

For the millionth time: is tin polin isn't a folk etymology, it's the only, universally accepted, etymology given by 100 % of the reliable literature, and it's entirely plausible linguistically. Fut.Perf. ☼ 21:54, 27 June 2011 (UTC)

It's linguistically plausible, since "Eis tin poli" does sound rather like "Istanbul", but that's a circular argument, because of course that's also how the folk etymological explanation for the name Istanbul arose. But it's historically quite implausible. Why would the Ottomans have adopted a Greek phrase for the name of their imperial capital? Everything we know about Ottoman attitudes to conquered peoples argues against them doing so. All the sources you list are just repeating each other, which I can tell you is a very common phenomenon among amateur historians (including historians of language). To prove this thesis, you'd need to find an Ottoman document in which the "eis tin poli" phrase is stated to be the origin of the name. In the absence of that, the simplest and therefore most likely explanation is that it's a contraction of the Greek name - which is both linguistically and historically plausible. We know that's what the Ottomans did with long Greek names because there are many other examples: Thessanoniki - Selanik, Adrianoupolis - Edirne, Ioannina - Yanya. I realise, however, that what matters at Wikipedis is not what is true, but what most people think is true, so I won't try to change the article. Intelligent Mr Toad (talk) 00:28, 28 June 2011 (UTC)

Istanbul/Constantinople

We can find these sources in many article:

"Constantinople<ref>''The Encyclopædia Britannica'', Vol.7, Edited by Hugh Chisholm, (1911), 3; ''Constantinople, the capital of the Turkish Empire...''</ref><ref>[http://concise.britannica.com/ebc/article-9368294/Istanbul Britannica, Istanbul]:''When the Republic of Turkey was founded in 1923, the capital was moved to Ankara, and Constantinople was officially renamed Istanbul in 1930.''</ref>"

But those sources have no directly relationship with articles. It's similar to this edit. I think we'd better remove these sourses. Wikipedia articles usually rely on material from secondary sources. Articles may make analytic or evaluative claims only if these have been published by a reliable secondary source.

And scholars who prefer to use "Constantinople" remain minority, at least they are not in mainstream. Peter Hopkirk is one of them (Peter Hopkirk, Like Hidden Fire: The Plot to Bring Down the British Empire, p. xiii.). But Hopkirk's preferance depends on neither official names nor names on postal service.

I think we need some criteria on usage of Istanbul/Constantinople not to spend energy for meaningless edit war.

I researched some samples with google books.

Constantinople "Ottoman Empire" -Llc 231,000 results
Istanbul "Ottoman Empire" -Llc 865,000 results

Constantinople Tanzimat -Llc 5,190 results
Istanbul Tanzimat -Llc 17,400 results

Constantinople "Mustafa Kemal" -Llc 10,300 results
Istanbul "Mustafa Kemal" -Llc 20,500 results

Takabeg (talk) 03:46, 28 July 2011 (UTC)

Constantinople was the name of İstanbul prior to 1453. During the later ages, Constantinople was never used by either the government or by the citizens. The names Dersaadet, Asitane, İslambol, İstanbul and Konstantaniye were all used simultaneously. (Konstantaniye was the corrupt form of Constantinople) . The assertion "Constantinople was officially renamed Istanbul in 1930" is a result of misunderstanding. Up to 1930s Turkey used Arabic script and in 1930, Turkish post office which recently adopted Latin script standardised envelope addresses. This had nothing to do with renaming the city (Anyway, post office didn't have the legal power to rename a city). Nedim Ardoğa (talk) 09:56, 28 July 2011 (UTC)

The point is that Istanbul is closely associated with the Ottoman era. Virtually every academic book on the Ottoman period uses Istanbul. I know of none which use Constatinople. It is astounding that Wikipedia's opinion on this matter is driven by one sentence in a non-academic book (Finkle's) rather than the rest of the academic literature. Please see my comments on the Talk:Evliya Çelebi page. And no, Takabeg, your famous Google Books searches are not a substitute for actual research since it is the same mindless attachment to finding a source without actually reading, understanding and evaluating it that has caused the Istanbul/Constantinople mess in the first place. Ordtoy (talk) 13:20, 28 July 2011 (UTC)

Whilst in a big hurry to remove Constantinople from each and every Turkish article, you should remove this sentence, "During its long history, Istanbul has served as the capital of the Roman Empire (330–395), the Eastern Roman (Byzantine) Empire (395–1204 and 1261–1453), the Latin Empire (1204–1261), and the Ottoman Empire (1453–1922).". If we are going to use "academic literature" as a reasoning, then Istanbul was never the capital of the Roman Empire, the Eastern Roman Empire or the Latin Empire. I find it astounding that such mindless statements are made on wikipedia. Also, since we are not interested in historical accuracy, then the changes concerning surnames("..Shaw, refers to "Ataturk" as Kemal, which is historically accurate(until 1934), on the Battle of Sakarya should be reverted since it quite clear that historical accuracy is not important here. --Kansas Bear (talk) 17:23, 28 July 2011 (UTC)

Constantinople was certainly the name used in English until 1930. Middle Eastern historians may have taken to using "Istanbul" for the period between 1453 and 1930 (this seems dubious to me, but I've certainly seen it), but European historians certainly still use "Constantinople" for this period. Try to repeat your google book searches, but use "Crimean War," "Congress of Berlin," "Eastern Question," "Russo-Turkish War." Hell, even try "Sublime Porte" - in all cases, Constantinople is more common. And, of course, every older source in English will also use "Constantinople". john k (talk) 17:54, 28 July 2011 (UTC)

Certainly Constantinople was used in English into the twentieth century and slowly fell out of use after the founding of the Turkish Republic. However, Constantinople was not the name regulary used by the Ottoman Turks. The criteria on Wikipedia is not what was used in English at that time. Beijing is used throughout Wikipedia (certain proper names such as Peking University are natural exceptions) even though it was known as Peking in English until quite recently. Choosing 1930 is also completely arbitrary. English certainly did not suddenly switch to using Istanbul at that date. John K, I never support using Google Book counts to prove anything by the way! In any case, the point here is that Istanbul is a much more appropriate name for the Ottoman period, during which time the old name of Constantinople was replaced in official and popular local usage. Ordtoy (talk) 04:45, 29 July 2011 (UTC)

Beijing/Peking is a matter of Romanization. That is not the same thing as here. My point, at any rate, is to look at English usage, not "official and popular local usage" at the time. Do English language historians of the Ottoman Empire use Istanbul or Constantinople? I'm no expert in that, I couldn't say. I feel as though I've seen it written both ways, and perhaps "Istanbul" is the primary usage there. I can say, though, that in European history, Constantinople is pretty universally used to refer to the city in the nineteenth century. john k (talk) 15:36, 29 July 2011 (UTC)

True, Beijin/Peking is not a perfect analogy... but it isn't bad either. Wikipedia usage for Beijign does not follow English usage over time and I don't know any other instance where something like the Istanbul/Constantinople situation occurs. I also agree with you that there is not a universally accepted name in historical works (and in the 19th century there is no double that Constantinople was all but universal in European works) although I would argue that Istanbul is more in modern historiography. But let's leave that aside as well. I think the point is that the argument for Constantinople is that Istanbul was not the official name used by the Ottoman government. However, this is terribly inaccurate. The name Istanbul is very closely associated with the Turkish conquest of Constantinople and was the name used by the government in most situations (Dersaadet being a close second). Wikipedia recognizes 1453 as being the turning point in the city's name as can be seen in the history section where there are clear divisions: Byzantium - Constantinople - Istanbul, with the latter section being tied to "Turkish Rule". In any case the suggestion that the Turkish postal service's 1930 decision to no longer accept letters to "Constantinople" as the turning point rather than the conquest in 1453 borders on the absurd. Ordtoy (talk) 02:44, 30 July 2011 (UTC)

As long as I understand, I couln't explain my proposal precisely. According to secondary and tertiary sources (In wikipedia we must prefer secondary and tertiary sources rather than primary sources), both of Istanbul and Constantinople is used topics that related with the Ottoman era. We can understand this situation when we see the results of reserch of google books.
- At first, let's remove irrelevant sources (''The Encyclopædia Britannica'', Vol.7, Edited by Hugh Chisholm, (1911), 3; ''Constantinople, the capital of the Turkish Empire...'' and [http://concise.britannica.com/ebc/article-9368294/Istanbul Britannica, Istanbul]:''When the Republic of Turkey was founded in 1923, the capital was moved to Ankara, and Constantinople was officially renamed Istanbul in 1930.''") from articles (except Istanbul, Constantinople, Names of Istanbul etc.), and built consensus among us about usage of Istanbul/Constantinople and "prohibit"/"avoid" some peterns of edits.

For example,

"Istanbul (Constantinople)" acceptable
"Constantinople (Istanbul)" acceptable
"Constantinople" (Istanbul) NG
"Istanbul (Constantinople)" NG
[[Istanbul|Constantinople]] NG
[[Constantinople|Istanbul]] NG

And those edits must not be done:

Case 1: If existing term in text is Constantinople:

Constantinople -> Istanbul NG
Constantinople -> Istanbul NG
Constantinople -> [[Istanbul|Constantinople]] NG
Constantinople -> [[Constantinople|Istanbul]] NG
Constantinople -> Istanbul (Constantinople) ?
Constantinople -> Istanbul (Constantinople) ?
Constnatinople -> Constantinople (Istanbul) ?
Constantinople -> Constantinople (Istanbul) acceptable
Constantinople -> Istanbul (Constantinople) acceptable

Case 2: If existing term in text is Istanbul:

Istanbul -> Constantinople NG
Istanbul -> Constantinople NG
Istanbul -> [[Istanbul|Constantinople]] NG
Istanbul -> [[Constantinople|Istanbul]] NG
Istanbul -> Istanbul (Constantinople) NG
Istanbul -> Istanbul (Constantinople) ?
Istanbul -> Constantinople (Istanbul) acceptable
Istanbul -> Constantinople (Istanbul) ?
Istanbul -> Istanbul (Constantinople) acceptable
Istanbul -> Istanbul (Constantinople) acceptable

Takabeg (talk) 06:20, 29 July 2011 (UTC)

Istanbul should be renamed as "Constantinople"

Istanbul → Constantinople – This is what the media seems, researchers and historians have been calling the biggest city of Turkey, I suggest move per WP:COMMONNAME and per above. Strovolos01 (talk) 16:18, 23 May 2011 (UTC)

Istanbul until the earliest of 20th century was called Costantinople in English, Constantinople in French, and Konstantinopel in German. All researchers know Istanbul as Constantinople, the city of Great Constantine. It is absolutely ridiculous having Constantinople (such a popular and beatiful name) as Istanbul (the recent islamic name).

What a biased comment is the one above! And also a funny one probably written by a Christian having an apostolic subconscious :) For sure Istanbul will appear in an Islamic name here, simply because it belongs to a Muslim-majority nation for more than 600 years. Istanbul has nothing to do with Christianity anymore. Please drink in this bitter fact :) You yourself said that all historians call it Constantinople referring to old times. That's history. And in all recent texts, in whatever language, it's referred to as Istanbul. Welcome to earth :)

Speedily closed. Not a snowball's chance in hell of succeeding. Fut.Perf. ☼ 13:20, 23 May 2011 (UTC)

First of all, Istanbul is not and Islamic name. It is the Turkish name, which is derived from Greek. Secondly, Istanbul still has a lot to do with Christianity: at the very least, it is the seat of the Orthodox Patriarchate. Additionally there are Armenian and Syriac Orthodox Patriarchs located there. There are still many sites in the city which are revered by Christians. That being said, the name is Istanbul not Constantinople. Ordtoy (talk) 14:48, 11 August 2011 (UTC)

Yes, it is an Islamic name. It comes from "Islam-bol" which literally means "full of Islam", originating from the endeavour of Sultan Mehmet to make Istanbul the global centre of Islam. Sure it is a very strong inspiration from its Greek name, which is natural. But if you read the history of the etymology careful, you'll see a lot more than a mere adoption of the Greek name in Turkish phonetics. I guess we agree on that the current name should appear as Istanbul anyway. On the other hand, the Turkish state has full sovereignty rights on the Patriarchiates of two sub-sub-sub sects of Christianity that you mentioned. In legal terms they do not have any kind of international (ecumenic) status, in practice they have a quite infinitesimal influence cross-borders. Their domestic influence is even less. There are less than 10000 Christians living in Istanbul which has 14 million inhabitants. Yea, maybe I have gone too far to say it has NOTHING to do with Christianity. I should have said, it has SO LITTLE to do with Christianity, maybe even less than Vatican has to do with Islam (there are muslims living there for real), that we can safely ignore that fact when naming the city by a single word. Otherwise, Istanbul definitely has some strong historical relations to Christianity, which do not correspond to any practical meaning to today's Christians, except a few patriotic Greeks and a few other anti-Islamist extremists.

You should read Ibn Battuta. He visisted the city long before it was conquered by the Turks and heard people using the name "Istanbul". "Islam bol" was a play on words. Evliya Çelebi knew this 500 years ago and I'm surprised that people actually think it's true! Also 10,000 Christians in Istanbul is much too low. There are roughly 70,000 Armenians (with Turkish citizenship). Add to that the Greeks and Syriac Orthodox and you hae 100,000. You can add thousands of non-citizen Christians if you really want to count.

Please read what I wrote a bit more carefully. I explicitly mentioned above that the name Istanbul is highly influenced by the Greek "est-in-poli" (or something like that). About Ibn Battuta, I read his writings about the Asia Minor. OF COURSE, they called the city est-in-poli BEFORE the conquest :) All I talk above is about AFTER the conquest. And yes, it's a play on words, as I said above, but that's not a direct adoption of est-in-poli in Turkish phonetics. In the first years of the conquest it is referred to as "a-sitan", meaning the land of beauty in Arabic. Yes, that's also playing with words, but I guess this does not hinder it be Islamic-originated :) To me, the late-Ottoman name Istanbul evolved under the influence of all these three names used by different chambers (est-in-poli, Islambol, and a-Sitan). None of these names are even close to Constantinople anyway, which is the main theme in this discussion. Right? About the number of Christians in Istanbul, again read my text more carefully. You give the number in entire Turkey. I talk about only Istanbul. These two numbers do not have to be in the exact correlation that you have in your mind. Armenians in Turkey might not be grouped in Istanbul, which was hardly their main site of residence in the history. Plus, there are more than 40000 refugee Armenians illegally working in Istanbul without citizenship, which again shouldn't be taken into account if we talk about Istanbul's LEGAL status related to Christianity. Then you follow a sloppy line of thought by saying "if we add Syriac and Greeks... I feel that it should be more", without taking into account that during the population exchange years and the aftermath, almost ALL Greeks left the country. There are less than a few thousand Greeks living in Turkey now, though there are around 70000 who live in Greece although they hold Turkish citizenship. Check out any census records. About Syriac Christians, they never existed in Istanbul in masses, so that their rights were not even spoken out in the Lausanne Treaty, unlike ALL other Christian minorities. Moreover, I have hard time to understand how you seek for a meaningful conclusion to this discussion by trying to increase the number of Christian population by very tiny amounts. Let's assume there are 100000 Christians living in Istanbul. That's still an infinitesimal amount to render Istanbul a base of Christianity so that its name should be reconsidered. I think you are so much into details that the essence of the discussion is diverging to nonsense paths.

Ordtoy (talk) 02:07, 13 August 2011 (UTC)

Population as of 2010

In the article on the Turkish Wikipedia, two figures represent the population in the city: 13,255,685 for "Merkez" (meaning central city proper) and 13,120,596 for "Metropol" (meaning metropolitan area). Seems to be really strange that the population inhabiting the metropolitan area is less than in the city, but it is well referenced and I suggest to use this data for the English article, instead of the obsolete figure of 2000.--Kiril Simeonovski (talk) 15:34, 13 August 2011 (UTC)

Toponymy

"Europeans often used Stamboul alongside Constantinople to refer to the whole of the city, but Turks used the former name only to describe the historic peninsula between the Golden Horn and the Sea of Marmara."

This sentence is wrong. All the nineteenth century European books which I read (quite a few, among them De Amicis and Gautier, which are the Classics about the City) follows the Turkish usage. These authors call "Stamboul" the walled city and Constantinople the city as a whole. Which author does not follow this usage? Cheers, Alex2006 (talk) 07:40, 26 August 2011 (UTC)

Indeed, at Names of Istanbul we also have a reference for this distinction being made by English sources. What I would really like to know is whether we have reliable material for such a distinction in Ottoman Turkish. Also, if Turkish did make such a distinction, is this actually referring to the form Stambul (without the "I-"), as the sentence seems to say, and what would have been the name for the whole metropolis then? (Kostantiniyye?) Fut.Perf. ☼ 08:16, 26 August 2011 (UTC)

For the record, the current version has been in place since this edit by Tariqabjotu in April 2010. Previously we had a version that seemed to be basically a summary of what the Names of Istanbul article says. Maybe it was just a misunderstanding while paraphrasing and reworking the old version? Fut.Perf. ☼ 08:26, 26 August 2011 (UTC)

Historically, Istanbul was the city on the peninsula. There were many surrounding villages/settlements which are now entirely part of the metropolis but which were considered separately during Ottoman times: Galata, Pera, Üsküdar and so on. Istanbul could also sometimes be used for the city proper and the surrounding areas, especially as these grew together into a single city. In any case, all of these were part of the province (eyalet, vilayet) of Istanbul. Ordtoy (talk) 14:58, 26 August 2011 (UTC)

Alles klar :-) I changed the sentence accordingly, and put two (but could have been also twenty) "european" references. Cheers, Alex2006 (talk) 08:37, 31 August 2011 (UTC)

Hallo Fut.Perf., I still owe you an answer. I checked my sources (until now Mantran and Necipoglu, but I can find others), according to Mantran, the Ottomans used two names for the metropolis: Istanbul and Kostantiniyye. Stamboul was - as written above - the Turkish name for the walled city (the byzantine Costantinopolis). Necipoglu just mentions the former two as related to the whole city. I must admit that this is pretty confusing :-) Alex2006 (talk) 16:31, 2 September 2011 (UTC)

removal of paragraph on Greeks

This edit by Fut.Perf. [12], removes a well sourced and considered paragraph on the transference and removal of Greeks from Istanbul. The Demographics section has a lot of detail, so I don't see why any detail on Greek demographics ought to be removed, other than PR/face-saving or Denial-of-History motivations. Manocihr (talk) 11:20, 1 September 2011 (UTC)

I would insert it in the religion paragraph after "...between 1914 and 1927.". Consider however that some of the info that you added is already in there article, and that in what you wrote there are a couple of errors / omissions. The Rum of Istanbul residing in the city before 30 October 1918 (the etablis) were exempted by the exchange of population because of their economic importance. Moreover, many Rum emigrated also because of the tax on capital gain in 1942 and after the Cyprus crises in 1974. Cheers, Alex2006 (talk) 11:39, 1 September 2011 (UTC)

Ok, sounds fine, go ahead, I won't be stopping you. Manocihr (talk) 11:41, 1 September 2011 (UTC)

No? How surprising. Issue was discussed at length today on Al Jazeera English's Inside Story - Is Turkey appeasing the EU? http://english.aljazeera.net/programmes/insidestory/2011/09/20119183535328713.html Manocihr (talk) 11:59, 1 September 2011 (UTC)

Hallo Manocihr, yes :-), but etiquette wants that we wait sometime to allow others to participate to the debatte. Some patience, please... Cheers, Alex2006 (talk) 13:10, 1 September 2011 (UTC)

Oh etiquette? Didn't seem to have any influence on you reverting my edits at will, calling me a vandal, and a waste of your time... Some integrity, please... Manocihr (talk) 18:04, 1 September 2011 (UTC)

I don't see a problem with Manocihr's addition about the dwindling of the Greek population from 100,000 to 2,000 today. I think this is not an insignificant point. There is somewhat of an issue in that there is some overlap with the Religion section though. My take on this would be to to have the Religion section focus solely on strictly religious aspects (e.g. Ecumenical Patriarchate) rather than having turn into a section on ethnic demographics in general. Athenean (talk) 19:57, 1 September 2011 (UTC)

I agree, this info must be present only in one section. About Manocihr: if you would have started from the discussion page, you would have not been reverted. :-) Cheers, Alex2006 (talk) 04:57, 2 September 2011 (UTC)

And if you started from the discussion page, you wouldn't have been reverted and had to be warned by an admin about your misconduct. :-) But since I'm a new user and you're not, that clearly says a lot more about you than it does me. You also might want to think about improving your English language skills before making such edits as the one you just did. "Cheers," Manocihr (talk) 07:27, 2 September 2011 (UTC)

I know Manocihr, my English is far from being perfect. :-( But this is not a problem in Wikipedia: there will always be someone with better language skills willing to correct you :-) Prosit :-) Alex2006 (talk) 07:48, 2 September 2011 (UTC)

Hallo, I corrected the paragraph according to what I wrote above. Please check. Moreover, was is lacking here is info about other minorities, above all the Armenians, who still live in a sizable number (I think about 50'000) in the city. Thanks, Alex2006 (talk) 14:11, 2 September 2011 (UTC)

Population, official vs. unofficial

I am a foreigner currently living in Istanbul. Every Turk I meet insist that there are many more people living here than the official 13mio (the metropolitan area). The most common number I hear is 20mio.

So what is "the official number" and what is the unofficial number? Is this just "street logic" that the average inhabitant can kind of feel that "there has to be more around 20". Or are there government officials who suggest 20 mio? Or newspapers? Or researches? And if so, who are they. When I ask these people how they know I get answers like: "It is obvious" and "Everybody knows".

In 2005 I spent time in Izmir, and the official number for Izmir was around 2.5mio. But everybody I met said that there was much more (again citing "common knowledge") with many people saying 5 mio.

I will try and compare the official figures to street knowledge for every city/town/village I visit here from now on :)

So is there any truth to these greater numbers? And if so, then why does the censuses not show?

88.234.100.33 (talk) 19:15, 23 October 2011 (UTC)

Myself, I would never listen to "the man on the street" when it comes to population numbers. It's a somewhat common phenomenon over the world to exaggerate such numbers, and I guess it sometimes is about ignorance or misunderstandings but I think it often is some kind of paranoia against authorities. To my experience, the normal exaggeration is to add about two thirds or up to the double to the official numbers, so the 20 million figure for Istanbul follows this pattern. I have rarely encountered the other way around so to speak - like "they say that our city has 5 million but everybody knows we are only 3". A problem I have seen many times with population figures from Turkey is that some people confuse the city with a higher level of administrative unit with the same name (as a province, or a district). My advice is basically to trust the official numbers. The effort by the authorities, with their methods and tools, beats "street logic" any day of the week - even a bad day.--Pjred (talk) 22:16, 23 October 2011 (UTC)

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April 24, 1915 - Armenian Genocide

Where is this VERY SIGNIFICANT DATE in this article? If this article does not mention the Armenian genocide it is then simply a biased article. April 24, 1915 is a symbolic date in Istanbul which marks the "official" beginning the Armenian Genocide which continued to 1923, and therefore the reason for the decline of the Christian population of Istanbul in the early 20th century which later also affected the Greeks. This is part of the heritage of Istanbul, and it cannot be ignored. I am expecting to see the inclusion of this history in this article soon.99.7.123.116 (talk) 23:56, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

The official beginning of the armenian relocation process (armenian genocide) started in berlin germany . Wilhelm II as the emperor of germany at that time .german government planed armenian relocation (armenian genocide) . do you see any significant (armenian relocation) date on berlin article ? please do a real research i am sure you will find very surprising facts that so much people don't want you to know. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 78.173.238.250 (talk) 10:55, 15 November 2011 (UTC)

I have now added a paragraph on the subject. As it links to the main articles, The Armenian Genocide and Deportation of Armenian notables in 1915, I think this is sufficient information, without going into too much detail about the consequences of these actions here. -- Marek.69 ^talk 17:00, 15 November 2011 (UTC)

Varlık Vergisi & Gecekondu

I'm changing the phrase capital gain tax, a reference to the varlık vergisi in the population section, to wealth tax. I am doing this because capital gains tax is an actual tax that exists in many modern countries, paid on interest and the appreciation in value of capital investments. The article that is linked from here suggest two translations wealth tax, and capital tax. I think wealth is both a better translation (varlıklı means wealthy) and also a simpler word. Additionally the wealth tax was not paid on any gains but on "existing" wealth (existing is in quotes because the wealth of many minorities was unfairly inflated)

I am also changing the word gecekondus to shanties (gecekondus)

--Kaanatakan (talk) 22:34, 19 November 2011 (UTC).

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