On a sunny April day in 2015 I decided to go in search of Frenk Caddesi, the old Frank (Foreigners) Street that was once the bustling commercial heart of old Smyrna (modern İzmir). Frank Street ran from somewhere near the harbour, up through the Armenian and Greek quarters to the start of the European quarter in what was then called Punta (The Point) and is now Alsancak. In many ways it was the focal point of Levantine and European life in Smyrna which is not to say that it was at all grand. Pictures show a street no wider than modern Anafartalar with shutters, street signs and awnings protruding into it. It looks as chaotic, noisy and colourful as the bazaar today with many businesses fronting onto the street and backing onto the quayside.
In the Tourist Office Gürfem Hanım had sketched the route of pre-1922 Frenk Caddesi on a map for me although there’s no longer any physical trace of it. It’s rather as if İstanbul’s İstiklal Caddesi had been burnt beyond all hope of recall along with the Pera Palace, the Grand Hotel de Londres, the Rixos Pera and the Marmara Pera.
Following her directions, I start at the westerly end of Fevzipaşa Bulvarı where the broken brick stumps of the late 18th-century Büyük Karaosmanoğlu Han lurk behind palm trees, a brief glimpse of a prettier past amid what is otherwise harsh concrete modernity. As I start to walk up Necati Bey Sokak I’m immediately struck by how the fire offers the key to understanding its appearance. For here, just inland from the quay, there is a little quarter of İzmir that was, in the 1920s, completely redesigned in a nationalist style of architecture that aimed to blend aspects of Selçuk and Ottoman architecture to create something new and distinctively Turkish. Strolling around what is now called the Architect Kemalettin Fashion Centre after one of the movement’s leading lights I can pick out all its trademark elements: overhanging eaves, thick lancet windows, decorative semi-circles of stone such as can be seen on the portals of the great Selçuk caravanserais. But how could all these First National Architecture buildings have sprung up in such a prime piece of real estate that must surely have been occupied for centuries? Like the Wren churches of London, they presuppose the vast empty spaces left behind after fire-damaged buildings had been demolished.
Necati Bey Sokak leads me to a small square in front of the Hilton Hotel where the externally austere and internally exuberant Church of St Polycarp bears silent witness to the fact that this was once a European quarter. Across the street pedestrianised Sevgi Yolu (Lovers Lane) cuts up between the gardens of the Swissotel and the Hilton. It’s lined with bookstalls and stands touting an idiosyncratic mix of souvenirs and handicrafts. Embedded in the pavement Hollywood-style bronze stars commemorate the great and good of Turkey’s artistic community. But there’s nothing to suggest that there was ever anything old here, not the tiniest smidgen of ancient wall, not a single overlooked brick.
I approach a man inking cartoons of passers-by. “Do you know the history of this street?” I ask him.
He smiles. “No! Turks forget quickly. They’re too busy with the day to day.” But, wanting to be helpful, he immediately introduces me to a friend who runs a nearby antique stall.
“Yes!” he says. “There used to be a park here. And a tram.”
“Before that? Before the fire?”
“That’s a long time ago. Yes, it was Frank St. The Fuar was the Armenian quarter, I think.”
Beyond a stand that has been dispensing pickles to passers-by for forty years I find myself wandering past neat apartment blocks with smart shops occupying the ground floors. There’s a branch of Marks & Spencer here. There’s a branch of L’Occitane. There seems little point in bothering their youthful sales staff with awkward questions about the past.
Finally, I strike up Kıbrıs Şehitleri Caddesi, a furiously busy modern street of shops and restaurants that is İzmir’s much less picturesque answer to İstanbul’s İstiklal Caddesi. Somewhere here Frank St came to an end. Somewhere here too the fire also burnt itself out which means that at the north end of the road it’s possible to turn down the side streets and catch glimpses of the old Smyrna in the form of lovely little houses with protruding cumbas (oriel windows), each of them now housing a café-bar.
Here in Alsancak I stumble on a corner of İzmir that is forever England. The sturdy Gothic Revival Church of St John’s, built in 1898, wouldn’t look out of place in a London suburb. Right beside it the Union Jack still flutters above the entrance to the British Consulate. I ring the bell during working hours on a weekday. When the door opens barely enough to reveal the face of a man whose job appears to be to repel all comers, I can’t help but think ruefully of how different it would have been for the British explorer, Gertrude Bell, who came here in the late 19th century: doors swinging wide for her, warm welcomes being offered, cups of tea or something stronger appearing as if by magic. During her first visit the British Consulate would have been down by the harbour but after the British completed work on the new railway in 1858 a move inland made more sense. Her meetings with the then consul Henry Alfred Cumberbatch will probably have taken place here.
Written: April 2015
