Tulip Festival

Emirgan Park
Originally uploaded by ccarlstead

This past week has brought the start to the Tulip festival in Istanbul. I was very pleased to have the time to explore some of the area in the city known for their tulips, and enjoyed the extra sense of discovery that having a friend visiting brought. Last weekend Casey and I made our way up to Emirgan, which is past the 2nd bridge on the European side of the Bosphorus since I had heard that the park there had tulips extraordinaire. We weren’t disappointed when we finally spilled off a slow moving city bus and walked up the hill. The park was full of Turkish families enjoying the laleler (tulips in Turkish) and the beds were full of more tulips then I had even imagined. What a bright colorful sight!

I was a bit curious as to the specific role of tulips in Turkey, especially as they appear on many of the designs (in tiles, on fences…). It turns out that while tulips aren’t native to Turkey (that didn’t surprise me as they seem to plant them for the festival) Turkey, or rather the larger Turkish empire, was the first to cultivate the vibrant flowers. They were developed for the please of Sultan Suleiman I in the 1500s and became a sign of wealth and privilege. Tulips were so highly prized that you could be punished by exile for selling or cultivating them outside of the capital. It is said that the tulip was more highly valued than human life in that time period.