WordBulletin

World Bulletin / News Desk

Istanbul residents marked on Friday 556th anniversary of conquest of Istanbul with various events across the historic city, Turkish media said.

Ottoman Sultan Fatih, known as Fatih Sultan Mehmet, took to the ancient city from Byzantine ruling in 1454 when he was only 19. This fact date was accepted as motivating effect the Europeans through New Age by some world historians.

Istanbul municipality organized a commemoration with light and laser shows. A film about the conquest of Istanbul was displayed by using watchout system on 15m x 60m huge screen.


Poetic conquest

A celebrated professor of Turkish literature and poet, İskender Pala , said that Fatih Sultan Mehmet understood that he could not conquer Istanbul by only force and he prioritized the cultural civilization riches across the city.

Highlighting that "Fatih cruised to the west by sword and to the east by pen", Pala told World Bulletin that "it cannot be ignored the fact that the East had the large accumulation of knowledge when Europe was in dark ages."

Pala explained how Fatih selected statesmen and thinkers according to their intellectual profile after the conquest of İstanbul and quoted Fatih's call: ''O thinkers, come to my city! I established labs for you! O artists, come to my city! I set up workshops for you!"

Pointing out the importance of Fatih as a poet, Pala said Fatih built the walls of the city not with the bricks, but with culture.

Important Turkish historian Professor Ilber Ortaylı said that Fatih knew Italian and Greek and wrote poems in Arabic and Persian, reminding he was a big intellectual without any complex.

Ortayli expressed that Fatih started to rebuild the every devastated corner of Istanbul after the conquest, turned the markets into the covered market, and gave orders to pashas to build baths, mosques and madrasahs.