City of Countless Names- Orta Keui p1

Orta Keui (Orta Kui, Ortaköy ,Orta-kioy, Ortakoi, St. Phocas, Messochori)

West of the palaces and gardens of Beshiktash, the pastoral and elegant waterside village of Orta Keui marks Constantinople’s north-easternmost extremity. Its name means “middle village” in Turkish, perhaps because much of the Orta Keui sits in a valley between two great hills north of the shore. A stream runs through the valley right down the center of the village, into the quickening current of the Bosporus. Due to the constriction of the strait, the current runs stronger as it passes Orta Keui than further downstream when it widens toward Stambul and Scutari. Because of this narrow point in the Bosporus, Sultan Abdulmejid and a team of Turkish engineers plan to soon build a bridge in Orta Keui terminating in the village of Beyler Bey to connect the strait’s northern bank to its southern.

Nearly seven miles away, Stambul’s dirty streets are only a memory on Orta Keui’s halcyon shore. The finest flowers in Constantinople grow in the village’s gardens watered by the stream.  Orta Keui’s orchards grow beautiful fruit and its strawberries are in particular demand all over the city.

Back when it was an outpost of the Byzantine capital, the village’s name was St. Phocas for the eponymous monastery and church dedicated to the martyred St. Phocas. These buildings once housed many relics associated with the saint, but only the Church of St. Phocas remains. It’s oddly appropriate that a monastery dedicated to the patron saint of gardeners and sailors once existed in Orta Keui where plentiful flowers and fruits grow and ships passing  to the Black sea get a last glimpse of Constantinople.

At the encouragement of Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent in the mid-1500s, Turks from Constantinople moved to Orti Keui, which had been primarily a Greek village until their arrival. As Constantinople’s metropolis expanded into the hills of the surrounding countryside, the wealthiest denizens of all nations built summer mansions in Orta Keu for relaxing holidays away from noises and smells of city life. The grandest are the waterside mansions built on the Bosporus’s bank called yali’s belonging to Ottoman officials.

The Jews of Orti Keui live gathered together around the Bosporus’s bank, Greeks and Armenians live on the valley slopes further north, and the Turks live through the whole village. Recently, the village gained an influx of Greeks wanting to leave behind Turkish repression in Stambul.  Orta Keui’s heterogeneous population is evidenced by its collection of cemeteries devoted to the departed of each religion, and the close proximity of the Church of St. Phocas, Etz Ahayim Synagogue, and the Orta Keui Mosque near the stream’s outlet into the Bosporus.

In 1854, a devastating city fire incinerated most the buildings in Orta Keui along the Bosporus.  A year later, streets full of half burnt homes and shops still deface Orta Keui’s landscape of mansions and gardens. Merchants sell and conduct business from tents until they can afford to rebuild. Feral dogs scavenge from the ruins. The streets smell of smoke and ash.