Why Can't Istanbul Create a New Pera?

As a city gains more possibilities, why doesn't its cultural ambition grow at the same pace?

Orkun Akçasarı | October 11, 2026

Crowded, yet something is missing

I was sitting at Ada Bookstore & Café on İstiklal Avenue, watching people pass by. It was the first Friday evening of October. Then a thought came to me quite suddenly: Pera had become just another pedestrian street.

It was a harsh judgment, especially with that crowd in front of me. There were people everywhere, lights and storefronts. None of those things was missing. I was looking for the possibility of discovery and unexpected encounters—the things that can make a street singular. There is a difference between being crowded and being the center of a culture, even if it isn't immediately visible.

At first I wondered where Pera's joy had gone. Then I realized that the question gave the past an unfair advantage. I didn't want the old Pera back. What I couldn't understand was something else: with resources that earlier generations could scarcely have imagined, why can't Istanbul create a new Pera?

Not a glowing photograph of the past

In the nineteenth century, Pera was a place where languages, commerce, theater, music, and new habits mingled. There were pastry shops, hotels, arcades, and stages. What made them significant wasn't simply that their doors were open. People could walk in with one set of ideas and leave with another.

It was no golden age for everyone. Its class divisions and contradictions were real. What interests me isn't the supposed superiority of the past, but its willingness to try something new. At its best, Pera didn't merely consume what arrived from elsewhere. It interpreted it and made something of its own.

Today we can eat food from distant countries in a single evening or look at exhibitions around the world on our phones. Strangely, such access can also produce sameness: identical menus, a shared visual language, spaces that feel interchangeable. We have more choices. Do we have more surprises?

What a pastry shop could do

It would be unfair to remember Markiz only for its ceramic panels. It also represented an idea of life in which pastry-making, hospitality, conversation, and art could meet. The worth of a pastry isn't confined to its flavor. The maker's skill, respect for the ingredients, and time spent around the table are part of what we taste without necessarily noticing.

I don't look down on the tourist-oriented offerings along İstiklal today. Turkish delight is no less valuable than cake, nor tradition less valuable than novelty. But when a city presents everything in the same way, its variety may remain in the shop window without finding its way into life. Markiz has reopened at different moments and found renewed connections with art. That matters. Still, restoring a room and seeing a community form around it are two different things.

Perhaps the word I am looking for is being a regular.

Why do we remember certain tables?

Think of the writers who gathered at Baylan and gave an entire literary circle its name, or of Cumhuriyet Meyhanesi, associated across generations with poets and authors. More recently, filmmakers and theater people met at Arif Keskiner's Çiçek Bar after exhibitions to discuss films and scripts. Kaktüs offered a different kind of place to sit, read, and talk in the 1990s. The pastry café at The Marmara also evokes the possibility of carrying an evening of art in Taksim into a conversation afterward.

What matters isn't simply who sat at those tables, but what emerged from them. An idea could become sharper through disagreement. A play might take another shape through conversation. Two strangers might meet and remain in one another's lives for years. Culture wasn't produced only on stage; sometimes it began after the performance.

To me, being a regular is more than having a server remember your order. It means returning not only to consume something, but because you might encounter someone again. It means a thought returning to the same table and memories accumulating between people.

Of course, there may still be tables like these. Perhaps their addresses have changed, or they are less visible. I am not asking whether they have all vanished. I am asking whether such encounters are giving rise to cultural communities that will leave their own mark on Istanbul.

Fifty years of hotels, one Pera Palace

Pera Palace offers another way of looking at the question. Built to host Orient Express travelers, the hotel became part of the city's memory of literature, politics, travel, and encounters with the wider world. The traces of Atatürk and Agatha Christie remain part of its story.

Over the past fifty years, Istanbul has gained many distinguished luxury hotels, admired for their architecture and service. Yet to my mind, none has become another Pera Palace. That isn't a dismissal of those hotels. It is a recognition that a building's price and its cultural weight are different things. You can design an excellent hotel. But can you design a place that generations will inhabit and that a city will weave into its own story?

Perhaps today's hotels will build such histories over time. For now, I keep wondering whether our ability to produce comfort and splendor is matched by an ability to create meaning and belonging.

When the stage lights come on

That evening, I also visited the newly restored Muammer Karaca Theater. I saw the exhibition Mengü Ertel's Theater Universe and attended the event. It was moving to see an artist's work brought back into view and a long-closed building returned to the city.

I had a brief chance to speak with Mahir Polat. I told him how much I valued the work that had been done. But another, more difficult question was on my mind, and I shared it with him: Is preserving a city's physical heritage enough to preserve its cultural life?

Buildings are a means to a larger end.

I find myself thinking about the life that might follow this restoration. A theater can reopen its doors, but can we know which new play or voice people will remember from that stage years from now? Opening a door and having people walk through it into one another's worlds are not the same thing.

Perhaps a new Pera isn't a building

Taste isn't the ability to recognize what is expensive; it is the ability to notice something made with care. Grace isn't trapped in the clothes we see in old photographs of Istanbul. It lives in listening to people who think differently, acknowledging the labor behind a work of art, and making room at the table for someone we don't know.

Perhaps what stands between Istanbul and a new Pera isn't a shortage of hotels, restaurants, galleries, or theaters. Perhaps the question is how these places relate to one another and to the people around them—how much room they make for difference and unexpected encounters. That is what I found myself asking that evening.

I remember the crowd on İstiklal. Tomorrow's writers, artists, and debates may have been right there among them. My not recognizing them doesn't mean they weren't there. Still, if Istanbul has a new Pera, I think it should become visible not only in its buildings, but in the lively exchange between its people.

We can spend hours recounting what remains of the old Pera. I find myself wondering about something else: With so much at its disposal, why can't Istanbul yet tell the story of a new Pera emerging from within it?

Editorial Note and Rights

This original essay draws on Orkun Akçasarı's personal observations, experiences, reading, and cultural reflections. References to people, places, institutions, and works are for cultural commentary, criticism, and factual context; they do not imply sponsorship, endorsement, representation, or an official relationship. The essay's narrative structure, personal assessments, transitions, title, and original expression belong to Orkun Akçasarı. Except where permitted by law, republication, adaptation, translation, narration, and commercial use require the rights holder's permission. Permitted short quotations should credit the author, full title, and original URL. Substantiated factual errors will be corrected transparently. © 2026 Orkun Akçasarı. All rights reserved.

Sources

1. Koca Mehmet Kentel, Assembling 'Cosmopolitan' Pera: An Infrastructural History of Late Ottoman Istanbul (2019). https://digital.lib.washington.edu/researchworks/items/71bb48f5-7272-44cb-bb36-7ac780e22f98 — Erişim / Access: 11.10.2026

2. Seza Durudoğan, XIX. Yüzyılda Pera/Beyoğlu'nun Ekonomik, Kültürel ve Politik Yapısının Mimariye Etkileri (1998). https://polen.itu.edu.tr/entities/publication/b0280a2d-61e3-4627-9354-499ddaca7dbb — Erişim / Access: 11.10.2026

3. Gazete Oksijen, Bir kültür mirasçısı: 100 yılın Baylan'ı (2023). https://gazeteoksijen.com/o2/bir-kultur-mirascisi-100-yilin-baylani-195778 — Erişim / Access: 11.10.2026

4. Anadolu Ajansı, Arif Keskiner, Beyoğlu'nun nabzını tuttuğu Çiçek Arif'li yıllarını anlattı (2022). https://www.aa.com.tr/tr/roportaj/arif-keskiner-beyoglunun-nabzini-tuttugu-cicek-arifli-yillarini-anlatti/2592176 — Erişim / Access: 11.10.2026

5. Arafta Bir Beyoğlu, Tarih İçinde Beyoğlu: 1971–2000 / Kaktüs (t.y.). https://araftabirbeyoglu.com/tr/Tarih-Icinde-Beyoglu/1971-2000/ — Erişim / Access: 11.10.2026

6. Time Out İstanbul, Markiz'e Pilevneli dokunuşu (5 Mart 2025). https://www.timeout.com/istanbul/tr/haberler/markize-pilevneli-dokunusu-030525 — Erişim / Access: 11.10.2026

7. Pera Palace Hotel, Hakkımızda (t.y.). https://perapalace.com/hakkimizda/ — Erişim / Access: 11.10.2026

8. İBB Şehir Tiyatroları, Muammer Karaca Tiyatrosu İlk Temsil oyunuyla kapılarını açtı (2026). https://sehirtiyatrolari.ibb.istanbul/haber/muammer-karaca-tiyatrosu-ilk-temsil-oyunuyla-kapilarini-sanatseverlere-acti — Erişim / Access: 11.10.2026

9. İBB Kültür Sanat, Mengü Ertel'in Tiyatro Evreni (2026). https://kultursanat.istanbul/etkinliklerimiz/3697/mengu-ertelin-tiyatro-evreni — Erişim / Access: 11.10.2026