Baghdad Street

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article or section does not adequately cite its references or sources.
Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. (help, get involved!)
This article has been tagged since February 2007.

Baghdad Street (Turkish: Bağdat Caddesi) is a notable high street located in the Anatolian part of İstanbul, Turkey. It can be seen as the counterpart of Istiklal Street on the European side in importance and glamour. The street runs 6 km from Bostancı to Kızıltoprak almost parallel to the coastline of Sea of Marmara within the district of Kadiköy.

It is a main street in an upper-scale residential area. The one-way street with old plane trees is flanked with shopping malls, department stores, fashion garment stores, elegant shops offering world famous brands, restaurants of international and local cuisine, pubs and cafés, luxury car dealers and bank agencies. Baghdad Street is called also as a big open-air shopping mall. Most of the retail stores are open also on Sunday afternoon.

In summer time and on weekends, the sidewalks of the street are crowded with people window-shopping and youngsters lingering around. Traffic congestion or traffic jam is almost a standard situation on the three-lane Baghdad Street.

Since the 1960s street racing had been a sub-culture of this street, where young wealthy men tag-raced their imported muscle cars. Most of these young men are now middle-agers reliving their years of excitement as famous professional rally or track racers. With the heightened GTI and hot-hatch culture starting in the 1990s street-racing was revived in full. Coming to the end of 1990s, mid-night street racing caused many fatal accidents, which came to a minumum level by strong police patrol.^[1]. Lately the pressure has been relaxed and there are signs of a new trend catching on called drifting.

The neighborhoods on the route westwards are: Bostancı, Çatalçeşme, Suadiye, Şaşkınbakkal, Erenköy, Caddebostan, Göztepe, Çiftehavuzlar, Selamiçeşme, Feneryolu and Kızıltoprak.

The area around Baghdad Street has a variety of transportation alternatives in addition to the bus and taxi options. There are sea bus terminals in Kadiköy and Bostancı, and a regional rail running just north of the street, which serves the district.

1 History
2 Namesakes
3 See also
4 External link
5 References

[edit] History

The origin of Baghdad Street was a road connecting Constantinople with Anatolia in the Byzantine Empire and later in the Ottoman Empire, which was used for trade and military purposes. The road was named so following the recapture of Baghdad by Sultan Murad IV in 1638. However, the original road started from Üsküdar and passed through Haydarpaşa Meadows joining the recent route in Kızıltoprak. The Ottomans built fountains with praying places atop on the road for travellers coming to or leaving the city. Some of the neighborhoods on Baghdad Street are still named after these fountains (Turkish: Çeşme) like Söğütlüçeşme (Willowed fountain), Selamiçeşme, Çatalçeşme (Forked fountain).

During the reign of Sultan Abdul Hamid II (1876-1909), some Pashas, high officials and wealthy traders, who wanted to be as close as possible to the palace, purchased land around Baghdad Street and erected luxury, mostly wooden mansions, some of which still exist today.

Before World War I, the street was paved with cobblestone, and carriages were used for transportation. In the early years of the Republican era, the street was surfaced with asphalt, and a tram line was constructed between Kadiköy and Bostancı.

Until the 1960s, the area around Baghdad Street was used as a summer resort only for the city's wealthy and middle class, who lived actually on the European part of İstanbul because of their business. Following the opening of the Bosphorus Bridge in 1973, the low summer houses were pulled down making place for high condominiums and the district developed to one of the most desirable residential areas of the city.