Goztepe Istanbul – What to see and do
Recently, my neighbourhood Goztepe Istanbul, 20 minutes inland from Kadıköy by bus, has become somewhat popular with Chinese and Taiwanese tourists. Apparently my middle class, middle average nothing much happens mahalle has been featured on Weibo, what I’m told is the Chinese version of Instagram. The very fact Goztepe’s so normal and ordinary is what they love. I’ve come across them in the supermarkets and the Tarihi Misir Carsisi spice shop, gazing at packages covered in Turkish words as though they’ve discovered the Holy Grail.
I find it very amusing because it’s all so normal really, for Turkey that is. In many ways Goztepe offers the closest to suburban living you’ll get in Istanbul. Apart from the joyous sound of music as people celebrate their weddings and the incessant construction work it’s a lot more peaceful than the European side of Istanbul and greener too, with nice gardens and several parks. After a day out elsewhere it’s really nice to come back home to the relative peace and calm.
However there’s more to Goztepe Istanbul than the shops on Mustafa Mazharbey Caddesi which is where the Chinese and Taiwanese tourists go. With that in mind, here’s a guide to my neighbourhood Goztepe Istanbul, 20 minutes by bus from the chaos of Kadikoy or an air-conditioned ride from Sirkeci on the Marmaray rail service.
What to see in Goztepe Istanbul
Monday Markets
The Monday street markets in Goztepe Istanbul are a bit of an institution. They offer the full range of seasonal fruit and vegetables from around Turkey, including brief appearances by snow peas and asparagus.
There’s also homemade bread, jars of delicious honey and occasionally real beeswax candles for sale, bedding, basic hardware items, a man who resurfaces the insides of teapots with tin, new clothing at bargain prices and more recently 2nd hand clothes as well. There’s a lot more besides, often at lower prices than in the supermarkets, and always fresh.
Selamiçeşme Özgürlük Parkı
The Monday markets are located on the street between the Marmaray rail line and Selamiçeşme Özgürlük Park which means Freedom Park in English. Özgürlük Park is a short walk from Minibus Street where the buses from Kadikoy stop, and even closer from the Göztepe Marmaray station.
In its 120 hectares you’ll find two kid’s playgrounds, a walking/running track, bicycle path, football field, tennis and basketball courts. The picnic tables shaded by a grove of trees are in high demand on summer days and are a popular location to hold outdoor children’s birthday parties on the weekends.
There’s also Fua, a café that’s next to a pretty ornamental pond, a kid’s ride on train and a small amphitheatre that hosts open-air cinema, theatre and concerts in the warmer months. Every Wednesday there’s an organic market inside the park. The park is open 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
History of Goztepe Istanbul
Although a street nearer to my place is where I see tourists, technically Tütüncü Mehmet Efendi Sokak is the main street in Goztepe Istanbul. Tutuncu Mehmet Efendi Sokak, called Istasyon Caddesi by most people, runs from Fahrettin Kerim Gökay Caddesi, more commonly known as Minibus street, down to Cadde, that’s Bağdat Caddesi when you see it on a map.
Tütüncü Mehmet Halis Efendi was one of the first industrialists of the Ottoman Empire and the founder of Goztepe Istanbul. Mehmet was born in a village in Erzincan province but after the Ottoman-Russian War of 1877-1878, he and his brother Yusuf Efendi came to Istanbul and began selling tobacco on the streets. With the encouragement of a wealthy individual named Tahsin Bey, the brothers invested in 40 animal loads of tobacco from Xanthi, Greece. Yusuf managed the small shop they opened in Küçükpazar while Mehmet continued to bring in stock, earning the nickname Tütüncü Mehmet Efendi, Tobacco Mehmet Efendi.
Next they opened a factory in Cibali on the Golden Horn, and supplied tobacco to the Turkish army. This made Mehmet and his brother some of the wealthiest men in the city. Mehmet was granted the title serduhani, chief tobacconist, but when the state decided to increase their revenues by opening tobacco factories in Crete and Lebanon, the brothers had to sell their Cibali factory. It’s now part of the Kadir Has University campus.
Mehmet Efendi used the money from the sale, some 95,000 gold coins, to purchase approximately 1,000 acres of land in present day Goztepe Istanbul. He divided the land into parcels and sold them to members of the Ottoman court who built summer houses on them.
One of the streets in Goztepe is named after Nadir Ağa, the last and allegedly most powerful eunuch of the Ottoman Empire. When he was a young boy Nadir Ağa was kidnapped from his village in Sudan, castrated and sold to slave dealers. He arrive in Istanbul via Mecca, and rose through the ranks of the Ottoman court. He worked for Abdülhamid until the sultan was deposed, and then after his release from the palace raised Crimean cows on land he owned in Goztepe and surrounding neighbourhoods. He was the first person to bottle milk in Turkey. Nadir Ağa died in 1957.
Nadir Ağa quite likely prayed at the Tütüncü Mehmet Efendi Mosque built by Mehmet Efendi in 1902. While the former stayed on in Istanbul, Tütüncü Mehmet Halis Efendi spent his final years of his life on Büyükada, one of the nine Princes’s Islands in the Sea of Marmara. On his death Mehmet Efendi was laid to rest in front of the mihrab of the mosque, as per his wishes. His son Kemal Efendi was the mosque’s first imam.
Historical buildings on Tütüncü Mehmet Efendi Sokak
Once upon a time Tutuncu Mehmet Efendi Sokak was lined with köşk, wooden mansions where the wealthy repaired to escape the heat of the city in the summer months. Today you’ll only see three on this street because the rest have been demolished and replaced with high rise apartments.
The first köşk you come to if you walk down from the Petrol Ofis on Minibus Street is Göztepe Sevgi Özel Eğitim Anaokulu, a privately run kindergarten. It’s on the left hand side of the street, after you cross over the railway lines. Unfortunately I haven’t been able to learn the history of the building.
The next one is a bit further along and directly across the road from the Bim supermarket. At the moment there are huge walls in the middle of the street due to the construction of a new metro line. Nonetheless you can still get a good look at the Mabeyinci Faik Bey Köşk. It was built for Mabeyinci Faik Bey as a wooden, unpainted, two-and-a-half-story building. At one time it was abandoned but now it’s been restored and houses a branch of İş Bank, Turkey’s first national bank. The İş Bank Museum, over in Eminonu, is definitely worth visiting.
The last köşk, Zülüflü İsmail Paşa Köşk, also on the same side of the street, was built between 1900 and 1905 and survived a fire in 1926. The owner, İsmail Paşa, was one of the two sons of Ali Bey, one of Sultan Abdulhamid II’s chamberlains. İsmail was nicknamed Zülüflü because of his thick hair. It’s a grand building, no wonder as the palace architects worked on some of the rooms. Today it houses a private school offering various courses to adults.
Then there’s the original Goztepe Istanbul train station. It opened in 1876 as Erenköy Station, consisting of a small two-story wooden building, on the Istanbul Haydarpaşa – Ankara railway line. The station was renamed Göztepe in 1898.
As it turned out the climb to reach the station was too steep for trains to tackle when it rained or snowed, so in 1915 the Chemins de Fer Ottomans d’Anatolie/Ottoman Anatolian Railways (CFOA) Company lowered the level of the railway line by 11 metres. This necessitated the construction of a bridge for traffic to cross over the lines and a new, larger Turkish Neoclassical style station was erected.
The station has since become an art gallery, selling one off pieces of hand-made jewellery at very reasonable prices, ceramics and gorgeous hand worked textiles. One room is dedicated to railway paraphernalia and looks out over the track now used by the Marmaray rail system.
Shopping in Goztepe Istanbul
Other than these few historical buildings, most of Goztepe Istanbul main street contains a range of typical modern Turkish shops including a number selling gold, gold jewellery and foreign currency. This is the street where I go to buy new glasses, olive oil soap from the spice shop and Chinese egg noodles from the Özlem Şaküteri inside the Göztepe Sabit Pazarı, a local market place. Inside you’ll find displays of colourful turşu, pickles, farm fresh eggs, a shop selling seafood meze and more.
Sabit Pazarı is a few shops along from Tarihi Göztepe Fırını where I get my bread, rolls and simits. I always pay for askıda ekmek too. It translates as ‘put a loaf on the hanger’ and is the Turkish way of paying it forward. They also make lokma to order for people who practice the tradition of hayrına lokma dökmek when someone has died.
There are also hairdressers, drycleaners, clothes shops, a branch of the famous historic Cafer Erol sweetshop, and even a shop that only sells men’s underwear.
Where to eat in Goztepe Istanbul
There are dozens of small food outlets along Minibus Street, Istasyon Caddesi and surrounding streets. You can have börek, kir pidesi, traditional Turkish home cooked food, Italian pasta, French tarts, kuruyemiş (dried fruit and nuts), poke bowls, fast food and freshly grilled fish in the Sabit Pazarı, the markets I mentioned earlier.
However my absolute favourite is Ada Pide, our local pide parlour. I’ve been ordering their Ada Spesyal (think spicy jalapenos and more) and Ada Gürme (everything meat and yummy) for over 15 years now. No one else achieves such a perfectly thin crispy base, they never stint on the ingredients and vegetarians are well catered for. Now they’ve opened up a proper sit down restaurant. They’re open for lunch and dinner, seven days a week, except on the first day of Kurban Bayram.
On the Bagdat Caddesi side of Goztepe Istanbul
Goztepe 60 Yil Park
The delightful Goztepe 60 Year Park down near the water is at present a 30 minute walk from where I live. When the new metro opens up you’ll be able to catch a train from Istasyon Caddesi in Goztepe Istanbul directly to the park and arrive there in a few minutes. Thsi park is particularly delightful during the Istanbul tulip festival when the garden beds are full of glorious flowers in vibrant colours. Year round the Baroque style topiary hedge garden formed from boxwood pruned in different symmetrical forms, a flower garden mainly planted with roses, a kids’ playground and almost 1000 trees throughout the grounds make for a very attractive setting.
It is now also home to a museum dedicated to one of Turkey’s famous comic actors, Kemal Sunal.
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I hope you’ve enjoyed reading about Goztepe Istanbul. If by chance you’re one of the Chinese or Taiwanese tourists visiting because you’ve seen posts on Weibo, please get in touch. I’d love to meet up with the Chinese influencers who introduced you to my part of Istanbul and show them more!
Here are my helpful tips to plan your trip to Istanbul Turkey
For FLIGHTS I like to use Kiwi.com.
Don’t pay extra for an E-VISA. Here’s my post on everything to know before you take off.
eSIM are the way to stay connected wherever you travel. I recommend Truely, an eSIM provider working with local telcos. You can buy it before or after you arrive in Turkey, a convenience other esim providers no longer offer and can opt for 1 to as many days as you need, instead of being limited to 7, 15 or 30 days. Plus you can reload as you need. Truely eSIM are straightforward to install and activate but if you have any problems their responsive Whatsapp customer service is available 24/7.
Use my code: insideoutinistanbul and get 5% off when you order through the Truely website.
Even if I never claim on it, I always take out TRAVEL INSURANCE. I recommend Visitors Coverage.
I’m a big advocate of public transport, but know it’s not suitable for everyone all the time. When I need to be picked up from or get to Istanbul Airport or Sabiha Gokcen Airport, I use one of these GetYourGuide website AIRPORT TRANSFERS.
ACCOMMODATION: When I want to find a place to stay I use Booking.com.
CITY TOURS & DAY TRIPS: Once you’ve finished with Goztepe Istanbul, discover Kadikoy with my audio walking tour Stepping back through Chalcedon or venture further afield with my bespoke guidebook Istanbul 50 Unsung Places. I know you’ll love visiting the lesser-known sites I’ve included. It’s based on using public transport as much as possible so you won’t be adding too much to your carbon footprint. Then read about what you’ve seen and experienced in my three essay collections and memoir about moving to Istanbul permanently.
Browse the GetYourGuide website or Viator to find even more ways to experience Istanbul and Turkey with food tours, visits to the old city, evening Bosphorus cruises and more!
However you travel, stay safe and have fun! Iyi yolculuklar.
