Sultanahmet Four Seasons at the nexus of divergent geographical imaginations

The challenge of defining Four Seasons Istanbul simultaneously within its actual geographical context and within a supranational web of comparable spaces serving an affluent global elite highlights the third dimension of hetero­topic relations instigated by the conversion. To better assess this, we need to briefly look at the historical and cultural context at the time of the prison’s construction. The distinctive well-proportioned fagade unmistakably identifies the building as an example of Ottoman Revivalism. The signature characteris­tics of this style, which became fashionable during the last two decades of Ottoman sovereignty include volumetric compositions inspired by Ottoman domestic architecture with a pronounced horizontality, articulated with multiple cantilevers and wide eaves; the stylized use of pointed Ottoman arches; handcrafted tile ornaments; wrought iron tracery and window grills mimicking wooden residential precedents; and carved marble details. Such formal accents were frequently used by Ottoman – and later republican – architects in modern institutional buildings like banks, railway stations, or government offices. In their appropriation of Ottoman-inspired elements, the architects were eclectic – they delved into the ornamental repertoire of Ottoman architecture, but deconstructed it, borrowed selectively, and used conventional forms out of their customary contexts in unconventional ways. Architects Kemalettin and Vedat were the prime exponents of Ottoman Revivalism – and the building has been variously attributed to both.

The practice of coupling modern design programmes with a visual ornamental vocabulary that reaffirmed the distinctiveness of national origins also had parallels in other contemporary European cities and in other areas of cultural production, such as music and literature. Structures such as the Sultanahmet Prison – built during the apogee of the first wave of European nationalism – had an unenviable double duty. On the one hand they had to satisfy the utilitarian requirements of their respective programmes. On the other, they also had to serve as articulations of the rather uneasy marriage of the universalizing principles of modernity with the distinctive local – read national – traditions.

Preserving the building’s fagade while rebranding it under the Four Seasons logo inevitably reinvokes the unresolved tension between preserving local identity and asserting modernity. But the change of ownership also reframes the original design solution. Through the language of Ottoman revivalism, reformist Ottoman bureaucrats and architects had sought to assert their claim to modernity while retaining what they saw as their own identity. But when taken over by Four Seasons and retrofitted with more

Ottoman-inspired interiors than any comparable building of that period, ‘Turkishness’ or ‘Ottomanness’ becomes an attribute conferred to the building from without, by enterprising entities that stand to make a profit from ‘orientalizing the hotel’.

Nowhere is this tendency to ‘orientalize’ more apparent than in the publicity photos taken by the Four Seasons chain’s inhouse photographer Jaime Ardilles-Arce. His frames portray the hotel and, by extension, Istanbul, as ‘even more eastern than we are’ says interior designer Sinan Kafadar who had paid particular attention to having understated interiors with none of the gimmickry such as tiles, copper urns, ceramic bowls, hand woven and embroi­dered textiles featured in many of the hotel’s widely circulated images in the media. A most striking image, which is featured, among other places, on the hotel’s homepage, shows the restored courtyard in the middle ground and the Hagia Sophia in the background – the latter standing as the symbol of Istanbul’s mixed heritage between the East/Islam and the West/Christianity (Figure 10.7). The image is framed by the stylized modern decor of the room and the amenities offered by the hotel – a long stemmed yellow rose in a vase, a bowl of fresh fruits. In the foreground, the glass of wine, the eye glasses, and the open book suggest the room is occupied. And it is no accident, that the guest in question is looking at one of Ingres’ famous paintings of imagined naked female bathers in a Turkish bath, for a stay at the Four Seasons Istanbul is truly intended as a journey to that imagined East.

In contrast, for the people of Istanbul, the hotel is yet another sign of their city’s integration with the West and the Western-dominated spatial logic of global capitalism. In order to account for this alternative interpretation we need to situate it within the larger context of economic and political changes which facilitated the introduction of a luxury chain such as Four Seasons into the Turkish landscape. Two major developments, both of which took place in 1980 are widely considered to be turning points in recent Turkish history. First, on 24 January, jolted by incessant political unrest and grave economic crisis, the government signed an agreement with the International Monetery Fund, which, by all accounts, constituted the country’s first step toward integration with the global economy. This agreement – and several others that have since been signed – required the abandonment of protec­tionism and state-driven planned development that had characterized Turkey’s economy during the first sixty years of the republic. The second important event that year was the military coup which took place on 12 September. Military rule effectively brought an end to the street violence, but it also dissolved the parliament, annulled the constitution, and imprisoned many who were involved in political activities. Without political discourse and constitu­tional protections, under the military regime, structural changes to Turkey’s
trade and financial policies were implemented virtually without opposition.32 Gradually an economically liberal approach that encouraged the sweeping privatization of state-owned economic enterprises, promoted partnerships with international investors, and favoured integration with the supposedly self-regulating global free market, was adopted.

As Turkey’s prime commercial city, Istanbul was the first to open itself up to the global economy and the first to experience dramatic changes in its social and physical fabric. The arrival of foreign investment and multi­national corporations in the Turkish economic scene was a boon for those working in the financial sector and information technology, whose buying power and patterns of consumption were comparable to their counterparts elsewhere in the world. Many worked in business-parks or high-rise office buildings that had begun to change Istanbul’s silhouette and wanted to live in gated-developments. As a well-educated, well-travelled, multilingual elite they demanded goods and services that hitherto had been rare in Turkey. Membership-only sports clubs, five-star hotels, designer boutiques, enclosed shopping malls, and gourmet restaurants offering international ethnic menus never before seen, mushroomed around upscale neighbourhoods of the city old and new.

Today, navigating from one destination to the next along the web of new highways and bridges, it is possible to by-pass most if not all of Istanbul’s ills further exacerbated by the recklessness of a global laissez-faire economy: the agony of the displaced, the squalor of its growing slums and squatters, the city’s aging infrastructure. As a rapidly globalizing city of the second tier, Istanbul now offers local manifestations of global homogeneity in its hermetically sealed privatized spaces which provide an identical standard of experience with comparable developments around the world. And for the thin stratum of privileged professionals in Istanbul, the Hotel is a place where they can plug into that larger imagined global society with shared patterns of consumption and exacting high standards for goods and service.

In conclusion, within this complicated and multilayered context, Four Seasons Istanbul is an unsettling in-between presence. It is heterotopic because it simultaneously engenders conflicting definitions, uses, and remembrances. It is a luxury hotel that thrives on the site of a former prison; its unique history and extraordinary location are precisely what incorporate it into the circuit of generic spaces of global consumption; and to reiterate the tired cliche, it is simultaneously a vessel for a journey to the East and an instru­ment to plug into the West. Through its ambivalence, the hotel not only calls into question the meanings we attribute spaces, but the very processes by which such meanings are produced.