Pamuk's Istanbul....

...osmanlı imparatorluğu'nun yıkım duygusu, yoksulluk ve şehri kaplayan yıkıntıların verdiği hüzün, bütün hayatım boyunca, istanbul'u belirleyen şeyler oldu...
-Orhan Pamuk, istanbul: hatıralar ve şehir

TRANSLATION:
...the sense of degradation, poverty and city-in-ruins associated melancholy of the ottoman empire, were what described Istanbul for my whole life...*

What Nobel Laureate Orhan Pamuk was trying to convey in his autobiographical book, Istanbul: Memories and the City, was a people coping with the reality of a fallen imperial city that was still trying to move on and westernize. A city sort of stuck in the middle, trying to shed that old cloak of the empire while embracing the "modern" western movement (much to the author's lamentation). Still 100 years after the empire's collapse and the sultans now just paintings on a museum wall, the remnants change from an archaic empire to a modern republik are still evident. You can still see old Ottoman mansions, with centuries old stone work and architecture, rotting in overgrown unkempt garden and see that juxtaposed with a ten story "modern" apartment building. You can still see the boarded up old apartment building, with it's character still showing through the dirt and the grime, as your walking just blocks from Istiklal Avenue. This was Pamuk's lament of his city. The melancholy of still seeing what you once were in ruins.

*my interpretation of the situation