Cumhuriyet'in İlk Yıllarında İstanbul Ve Türkiye

Arnold Bennett, Mediterranean Scenes, Rome-Greece-Constantinople, Cassell anf Company Limited, London, 1928. 83, [1] s, başlık s önünde 1 levha, metin dışında 39 levha, 1 ex-libris etiketi, 26 x 20 cm, yayıncısının bez cildinde. 2 kenarı kesilmemiş filigranlı özel kağıda basılmıştır. 1.000 adetlik sınırlı baskının 738 №’lusudur. Kitaptaki levhaların 13’ü İstanbul ile ilgilidir. İngiliz romancı Arnold Bennett’in (1867-1931) çok nadir Yunanistan ve Türkiye seyahatnamesi. 19 bölümden oluşan kitabın birer bölümü Çanakkale (s 59-61) ve İstanbul’a (s 62-73) ayrılmıştır. Bennett’in İstanbul tasvirleri oldukça ilgi çekicidir. Üç yıl önceki Şapka Kanunu sayesinde sokaklarda fes görmek imkânsız hale gelmiştir. Çarşaftan kurtulan kadınlar sokaklarda özgürce dolaşabilmektedir. Aya Sofya’yı uzun uzun anlatan Bennett Türklerin mimaride ileri gittiklerini, Sultan Ahmed Camisinin de bunun ispatı olduğunu yazar. Yıldız Sarayı’nda açılan Casino’ya gider, Osmanlı dönemindeki ihtişamından eser kalmayan Boğaziçi’nin kiralık ve satılık evlerle dolu olduğunu görür. Cumhuriyet’in ülkeye, şehre ve insanların kültürel ve sosyal hayatlarına getirdiği değişimlerden söz eder. Bennet’in kitabı Cumhuriyet’in ilk beş yılında meydana gelen değişimlere getirdiği çarpıcı tespit ve yorumlarla dikkat çeken nadir ve sıra dışı bir kitaptır. Kitaptaki ex-libris etiketi Londra’nın bir zamanlar önde gelen sigortacılarından Arthur Digby Besant’a (1869 – 1960) aittir.
Yıldız Sarayı’ndaki Casino’nın anlatıldığı bölüm (s 67 vd)
Prominent among the ingenious ideas of the new Turkish regime has been the transformation of one of the seven palaces in the vast sultanic enclosure near the city into a municipal casino. The extinguished sultans appear to have had quite a habit of building white palaces ; and as sultans were not fond of travel, all the palaces are close together. There are I don't know how many within and just without the sacred enclosure. Any pretext served for putting up a palace. The present casino was built, it is said, to house the German Emperor when he announced the Imperial intention to honour a brother monarch with a visit. It is a large structure, utterly without originality, garishly and tastelessly decorated: with one good characteristic, symmetry. Here you can have a thé dansant, you can dine, and you can gamble. The park is enormous: thirty-six miles of carriage roads ; and under the old regime it must have been a stronghold. Even under the new regime, you pass through gateway after gateway, and are interrogated by officials. So that you have to take some trouble in order to reach pleasure,— the food, the wine (wine in a sultan's palace l), the houris, the cabaret show, and the roulette and chemin de fer tables, and night-life generally.
The huge gaming-saloon is a quiet, Oriental flattery of Monte Carlo. The croupiers say "rien ne va plus" and call the winning numbers with such nonchalance that you can scarcely hear them. On the whole an effect of sadness, of wistful melancholy. There is a café with cocktails, and a reading-room with Turkish illustrated dailies, whose make-up is obviously modelled on that of the largest circulations of Western Europe. The Turk is determined to be European in all possible ways. And the entire affair, set in the very midst of scenes of autocratic rule, whose splendours, voluptuousness, slavery, intrigue, corruption, assassinations, were in plenary activity only a few years ago I Never was a more theatrical and effective denial of an accepted axiom than this denial of the statement that East is East and West is West and never the twain shall meet I After this you feel that anything might happen. The instability of the most ancient institutions is demonstrated. No gradualness in the process of change. It is accomplished, as you might say, in a night, and accomplished past return… And when you leave the place you are escorted to your car by an attendant whose high sneaky intonations clearly indicate that he had quite another duty under the old regime.