Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1930-06-30
EMPTY PALACES
BOTHER TURKEY
Some Rent for $40 a Month,
With Few Takers, as Use
for Them Is Sought.
BY PRISCILLA RING,
ASSOCIATED Press Correspondent


1STANBUL, June 3O-wanted by the
Turkish Republic suggestions on how
TO make republican use Of fiye imperial
palaces.
When Mustapha Renal began his
creation of a new TurRey he solved the
problem Of the Sultans by the simple
process of exiting the last shadowy oc-
cupant of the Ottoman throne. But
after eight years he has not solved the
problem of what to do with the Sultans'
dwellings.
Minor Summer palaces of princes,
princesseS and pashas are being rented
to the Turkish equivalents of Tom, Dick
and Harry, for $40 a month, with few
takers even at that price, or are being
utilized as tobacco factories or orphan
ages. But over five of the six sultanic
palaces in Istanbul, question marks
hover.
Only Ones Fate Fixed.
Only one of the six has found def
mite new destiny. The oldest and most
famous the Seraglio built by Sultan Mo-
manned, conqueror of Constantinople,
in 1862, has been transferred into a
museum.
The residence of the last caliph, the
enormous. rococo pile of Dolma-Bagtche
(Stuffed Garden), so huge that its mar
BILE quay stretches for 1900 feet along
the BoSporus, has been put into Spo
radio use as a Summer residence for
Mustapha Renal. But now that the
ghaZi has built himself a Summer cap
ttal at Yalova, he is not likely to use
the place again as dwelling.
IStanbul's dance addictS-and they
number thousands-have suggested that
Dolma-Bagtche would make an ideal
dance hall. They argue that there is
no other building in town big enough
to accommodate Istanbul's increasing
hordes of fox-trotterS who at present
endure the brushes at Turkish charity
balls in no very charitable mood The
government has given no answer to this
dance hall project.
One Was a Casino.
Yildiz Palace, towering in a superb
park above the Bosporus and favorite
residence of Sultan Abdul Hamid the
Red, bloSSomed briefly under republican
skies as a gambling casino during the
governments abortive attempt to con-
vert the BoSporus into another Riviera
with this Monte Carlo as a starter. The
alarming rate of which Turkish citizens
rather than the hoped-for tourists lost
at the roulette tables made the govern
ment speedily regret its venture
The Italian manager went bankrupt
and the shutters of Yildiz are closed
again while the government debates the
possibility of turning it into a college
for girls, the first Turkish rival to the
American College for Women further up
the BoSporus.
Turkeys newly inaugurated tourist
policy includes the scheme of turning
other palaces into hotels, but the falling
on IN the number of visitors this year
has temporarily Swallowed this project.
II the tourist trade and Turkeys
finances in general pick up, hotels may
still be made of the beautiful marble
palace of Beylerbey where Empress
Eugene once lodged as magnificent
guest of the Ottoman Empire and where
gruesome Abdul Hamid died; of the
palace of Tcheregan, reduced to a mar
bic skeleton by the fire of 1910. but a
skeleton whose every bone speaks of
splendor; and of the smaller charming
Bosporus palace of Gueuk-Sou (Sky
Water which stands at the mouth of
the Sweet Waters of Asia.