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Buenos Aires twice as good as Istanbul
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I thought Istanbul was the most beautiful city in the world; until I saw Buenos Aires. I was fooling myself. Argentina’s capital city and Istanbul where I was born and raised are incomparable
Please don’t be mad at me just because I don’t see Istanbul as "the most beautiful city in the world" and instead prefer Buenos Aires. You’ll think I’m right as we move along. As the bayram holiday was 10 days long, my wife, Cemre, and I went on a Buenos Aires to Rio tour, which we had been curious about for years.
Our first stop was Buenos Aires. Much praised, but I didn’t think I’d be as impressed as I was. I don’t know how to describe it. Imagine this É take a little of Madrid’s exquisite arenas and add some of Paris’s great wide boulevards. This will not be enough, so place some great old buildings from Barcelona, Rome and again Paris into this picture. Mix them all like a cocktail and decorate all the streets and boulevards with marvelous trees. If you think there won’t be enough greenery, then place parks full of big centuries-old trees.
This is what Buenos Aires looks like. Buildings, each one more decent than the last. Clean roads. Colorful streets. Rich shops. A city where each detail has been planned carefully. It has adopted the most beautiful part of the most beautiful cities in Europe and ascribed them to itself. Only it did not stop at that. Music has been placed into all this beauty. Can you think of a city where music bursts from every corner? Tango has here become a part of everyday life.
You hear tango on the street when you go shopping. Every street is full of cafes and restaurants, and tango music is heard on every corner. Wherever you go, either a tango show is put on or tango is danced in the streets. Music becomes a part of your life. Argentina is an enormously big country, 2,766,890 square kilometers, three and a half times bigger than Turkey, of which 2,736,690 square kilometers are mainland, 30,200 square kilometers are water, and its population is only 40 million. Four million people are living in Buenos Aires. It was occupied by Spain for 500 years before it achieved autonomy in 1816. Afterward, it lived through consecutive military coups and for the past 25 years the country has been enriched by democracy.
There is no natural beauty in Buenos Aires. But on the contrary, engraved like a pearl it has become a green city. Whereas Istanbul possesses the world’s most natural beauty: The Bosphorus decorates it like a necklace made of diamonds. On the contrary, Istanbul is a city with buildings badly built, their sprouts fill the hills with ugliness, full of TV antennas and advertisements that do not appeal to one’s eye. It is a city that grew without any plan or program.
No green, no parks, no large boulevards É Istanbul is a concrete jungle full of dirt. You can’t help but be angry.
I compared my beautiful Istanbul with Buenos Aires and became especially angry at the municipalities that contributed to the deformation campaign that started in the 1970s, and became angry at journalists and politicians who did not spend any effort on stopping this course. We were ruled by peasants. We were all tasteless people who were not aware of the fortune at hand. We are still that way. I understood more clearly how we destroyed a dear city when I saw Buenos Aires.
Argentinas agenda not different from ours
You need to fly 17 hours from Istanbul to Argentina’s capital city. We live on one side of the world. Argentineans live on the other side. But we face almost the same problems. Fifty percent discounts in display windows of shops that you see as soon as you enter the streets, comments on crises in newspapers and unemployment anxiety was enough to tell that there is no difference between the agenda of Turkey and Argentina, thousands of kilometers away.
Just like at home, the government announced a 10 percent inflation rate, but international assessment organizations claimed the inflation pushes 25 percent and Argentina needs to tighten its belt. On the contrary, the only excitement the people experience is limited to the competition between the football teams, Boca Junior and Rio Platai, which is even worse than the competition of our Fenerbahçe and Galatasaray teams. Buenos Aires constantly lives with football. However they are advanced in this matterÉ Did you know that Maradona is being raised to a deity position? Maybe you won’t believe it, but there is a church named after Maradona. Those who visit this church, along with the 120,000 fans, pray for Maradona. He is coach of the Argentinean national team, he no longer uses drugs and he lives at the level of a deity (!) We too have exaggerations, but we cannot pass beyond Argentina. One of them is the country’s cheapness. You won’t believe it, but you can buy shoes, clothes and all sorts of things in Buenos Aires for half the price as in Istanbul. It probably is a prestigious status to be a Turk in Argentina, one of the rare countries that do not require a visa from us. You are not treated like an illegal worker, or drug dealer or a Muslim who could be involved in terrorism attacks any time, as you would be treated in Europe. We quite often met Turkish groups on shopping streets. Their biggest concern too was, why is Istanbul not like Buenos Aires?
Our first stop was Buenos Aires. Much praised, but I didn’t think I’d be as impressed as I was. I don’t know how to describe it. Imagine this É take a little of Madrid’s exquisite arenas and add some of Paris’s great wide boulevards. This will not be enough, so place some great old buildings from Barcelona, Rome and again Paris into this picture. Mix them all like a cocktail and decorate all the streets and boulevards with marvelous trees. If you think there won’t be enough greenery, then place parks full of big centuries-old trees.
This is what Buenos Aires looks like. Buildings, each one more decent than the last. Clean roads. Colorful streets. Rich shops. A city where each detail has been planned carefully. It has adopted the most beautiful part of the most beautiful cities in Europe and ascribed them to itself. Only it did not stop at that. Music has been placed into all this beauty. Can you think of a city where music bursts from every corner? Tango has here become a part of everyday life.
You hear tango on the street when you go shopping. Every street is full of cafes and restaurants, and tango music is heard on every corner. Wherever you go, either a tango show is put on or tango is danced in the streets. Music becomes a part of your life. Argentina is an enormously big country, 2,766,890 square kilometers, three and a half times bigger than Turkey, of which 2,736,690 square kilometers are mainland, 30,200 square kilometers are water, and its population is only 40 million. Four million people are living in Buenos Aires. It was occupied by Spain for 500 years before it achieved autonomy in 1816. Afterward, it lived through consecutive military coups and for the past 25 years the country has been enriched by democracy.
There is no natural beauty in Buenos Aires. But on the contrary, engraved like a pearl it has become a green city. Whereas Istanbul possesses the world’s most natural beauty: The Bosphorus decorates it like a necklace made of diamonds. On the contrary, Istanbul is a city with buildings badly built, their sprouts fill the hills with ugliness, full of TV antennas and advertisements that do not appeal to one’s eye. It is a city that grew without any plan or program.
No green, no parks, no large boulevards É Istanbul is a concrete jungle full of dirt. You can’t help but be angry.
I compared my beautiful Istanbul with Buenos Aires and became especially angry at the municipalities that contributed to the deformation campaign that started in the 1970s, and became angry at journalists and politicians who did not spend any effort on stopping this course. We were ruled by peasants. We were all tasteless people who were not aware of the fortune at hand. We are still that way. I understood more clearly how we destroyed a dear city when I saw Buenos Aires.
Argentinas agenda not different from ours
You need to fly 17 hours from Istanbul to Argentina’s capital city. We live on one side of the world. Argentineans live on the other side. But we face almost the same problems. Fifty percent discounts in display windows of shops that you see as soon as you enter the streets, comments on crises in newspapers and unemployment anxiety was enough to tell that there is no difference between the agenda of Turkey and Argentina, thousands of kilometers away.
Just like at home, the government announced a 10 percent inflation rate, but international assessment organizations claimed the inflation pushes 25 percent and Argentina needs to tighten its belt. On the contrary, the only excitement the people experience is limited to the competition between the football teams, Boca Junior and Rio Platai, which is even worse than the competition of our Fenerbahçe and Galatasaray teams. Buenos Aires constantly lives with football. However they are advanced in this matterÉ Did you know that Maradona is being raised to a deity position? Maybe you won’t believe it, but there is a church named after Maradona. Those who visit this church, along with the 120,000 fans, pray for Maradona. He is coach of the Argentinean national team, he no longer uses drugs and he lives at the level of a deity (!) We too have exaggerations, but we cannot pass beyond Argentina. One of them is the country’s cheapness. You won’t believe it, but you can buy shoes, clothes and all sorts of things in Buenos Aires for half the price as in Istanbul. It probably is a prestigious status to be a Turk in Argentina, one of the rare countries that do not require a visa from us. You are not treated like an illegal worker, or drug dealer or a Muslim who could be involved in terrorism attacks any time, as you would be treated in Europe. We quite often met Turkish groups on shopping streets. Their biggest concern too was, why is Istanbul not like Buenos Aires?
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