Living in Kadikoy

The centre of Kadikoy today is the hub of traffic for people commuting from the Asian Side of the city to the European side across the Bosphorus. There is a big bus and minibus terminal next to the ferry docks, while the main train terminus for trains to Anatolia and the nearby Harem Bus Terminal have coach services to Anatolia.

Kadikoy at night

But it is the ferry-boats that are most important, and the central market area of Kadikoy is right behind the ferry dock. The main road by the docks is unfortunately the least attractive part of Kadikoy: a busy road, crowded with buses, dolmuş, and honking taxis, while the buildings are often huge grey office blocks with billboards and business signs plastered all over them, surrounded by beggars, hawkers and shoe-shiners everywhere. But don't be put off, as the area gets prettier once you move through the streets away from the shore. There is a helium balloon moored on the shore which will take you up to an altitude of 200m for a great panoramic view of the area, and indeed the city of Istanbul across the Bosphorus.

This is a very busy shopping district, with a great variety of atmosphere and architectural styles, tiny narrow alleyways and shopping arcades, pavements crowded with tough-looking street vendors selling everything from socks to pirate copies of popular novels, classy avenues like the pedestrianised Bahariye Caddesi, and shiny modern shopping centres, especially the huge Carrefour Nautilus Shopping Mall right behind the centrum of Kadikoy. In the streets behind the main post office, there are a large number of well-known bookshops selling both new and second-hand books, craft-shops and picture-framers, and a number of shops selling music CDs and related ephemera (like film posters and T-shirts). Hard Rock and Heavy Metal fans come to the arcade called Akmar Pasajı to buy items like Heavy Metal T-shirts, rare Heavy Metal albums of alternative bands, and silver jewelry with Heavy Metal themes. On Sundays the whole area turns into a big second-hand book and music street market. Being a crowded shopping district, Kadikoy has its share of buskers, shoe shine boys, glue sniffers and schoolchildren in the streets selling flowers, chewing gum and packets of tissues, or just begging.

There is plenty of residential property in the centre of Kadikoy, mostly aging now, and working class, but you can still find quiet suburban streets. The area is home to many students as well as a small number of foreign residents.

At the top of the shopping district there is an intersection, with a statue of a bull on it, called Altıyol (Six Ways), where a road leads to the civic buildings and a huge street market called Salı Pazarı (Tuesday Market). The working-class residential districts of Hasanpaşa and Fikirtepe are located behind the civic buildings.

The centre-left Republican People's Party (CHP) is usually successful in Kadikoy in both local and national elections, (in dramatic contrast to Kadikoy's neighbouring district, the conservative Üsküdar). Since the mid-1990s the mayor has been Selami Öztürk of the CHP. It was Öztürk who established the recent growth in the number of shopping and leisure areas around Kadikoy, especially after the pedestrianisation of Bahariye Street, which is the Anatolian equivalent of İstiklal Avenue in Beyoğlu on the European side, including its nostalgic trams.

Marmara University has most of its buildings in Kadikoy, including the large and elegant Haydarpaşa Campus, while the largest private university in Istanbul, Yeditepe University, is located on the hill named Kayışdağı at the easternmost edge of the borough of Kadikoy. In the centre of Kadikoy's shopping district there is an important basketball arena, the Caferağa Spor Salonu.

The major Haydarpaşa Terminal of the Turkish State Railways is located close to Kadikoy's centrum, serving east- and south-bound international, domestic and regional trains. Haydarpaşa Terminal was opened in 1908 as the terminus of the Istanbul-Baghdad and Istanbul-Damascus-Medina railways.

Eat, drink and be merry

With all this to offer, it is little wonder that Kadikoy attracts great loyalty and sympathy from its residents, and yet there is much more to be told about its charms. For many, the joy of Kadikoy is in the narrow side streets packed with all kinds of cafés, bars and restaurants, along with a rich selection of cinemas (such as the huge Reks or the historic and charming Sürreya).

The market area is mostly closed to traffic and contains a great variety of fast food restaurants serving toasted sandwiches, hamburgers and döner kebab. Hungry students gorge themselves on ridiculously large sandwiches called 'maniac' or 'psychopath'. There are also traditional Turkish restaurants, all kinds of cafés and chocolate-cake patisseries, apart from serious bridge schools, bars to hear live jazz, folk and rock music, as well as working class tea and backgammon houses.

Behind the centre lies a large shopping and residential district winding uphill to the pedestrianised street called Bahariye Caddesi. This area took on a new atmosphere during the economic boom of the 1990s and many new bars were opened.

Kadikoy is not glitzy, more beer than champagne, lots of kebab, kokoreç and fried mussels, little haute cuisine. It's not as big a nightlife area as Beyoğlu (which also goes on much later into the night), nor does it have anything like the class of Nişantaşı for shopping or the Bosphorus for nightlife. But it is buzzing, more relaxed, offers lots of fun, and is much cheaper. In other words, Kadikoy is a student heaven.

The seagulls swooping and squawking overhead give the whole area a surreal and crazy ceiling, while a southern wind sometimes brings in the scent of the sea.

Places to eat and drink include:

    * Baylan Pastanesi - famous for its chocolate pudding

    * Petek Büfe - an ancıent purveyor of toasted sandwiches

    * Tek Büfe - a chain of burger and juice places on the Anatolian side

    * Reks Büfe - a toasted sandwich place opposite the Reks cinema

    * Mercan Kokoreç - a fast food inn famous for its kokoreç and fried mussels

    * Marmara Café - a tea and toast place inside Akmar Pasajı

    * Son Gemi - another café near Akmar

The smart residential areas beyond Kadikoy itself

Further down the coast, away from the centrum of Kadikoy, there are many expensive shops and the area goes more upmarket in neighbourhoods such as Moda and Fenerbahçe, which are attractive, old-established residential areas. Both of them are within the bounds of the borough of Kadikoy, and offer many restaurants, cafés and bars to sit by the sea and have something to eat or drink, or just sit and chat with friends while watching the sun as it sets behind the old city of Istanbul. There is a nice walk in this direction along the sea-front from Kadikoy, where young people come to sit by the sea and drink beer, or take the tram up to Moda from Kadikoy.

Moda is an old-established, quiet, cosmpolitan Istanbul neighbourhood, but is getting a little tired now, with not enough car parking and some run-down shops and buildings. Like so much of Istanbul, too many historic houses have been pulled down and replaced with apartment buildings; but still, Moda is one of the most pleasant residential districts in the city. There are still numerous churches in Moda with active congregations, and well-known schools, such as the Lycée Saint-Joseph and Kadikoy Anadolu Lisesi. There is an attractive little theatre in Moda named Oyun Atölyesi, founded by the former (BBC soap opera) Eastenders actor Haluk Bilginer.

Another smart new district is Acıbadem, home to one of the best-known private hospitals in the city and a long avenue of smart cafés, restaurants and ice cream parlours serving the residents of the tidy streets in the district.

Beyond this area, the huge stadium of Fenerbahçe football club dominates the skyline and then begins the long and impressive shopping street of Bağdat Avenue and the posh neighbourhoods between the avenue and the coastal road. Until the 1950s these areas, such as Kalamış, Göztepe, Caddebostan, Erenköy, and Suadiye, were full of summer houses and mansions for the city's wealthy and upper middle class. Since the Bosphorus Bridge was built, it is possible to commute from here to the European side, and most of these summer houses have been pulled down and replaced with modern apartment buildings; but still, these districts are among the most beautiful residential areas of the city. The coast here is very attractive, with a long stretch of seaside parks, yacht marinas, and the streets behind the coast (in areas like Caddebostan) are lined with numerous bars and cafés.

From Bostancı onwards the quality of housing gets progressively worse as you go further away from the city, where the glitzy business families merge into neighbourhoods of retired and working-class families. There are no more villas, apart from those on the coast of Dragos, and the apartment buildings are narrower and more closely crowded together. Bostancı itself is a busy shopping district built around a railway station.