Istanbul Sunday Pigeon Market

One of the things I really like about lingering in places longer than absolutely necessary to see all the big tourist sites is that I can generally be open to a lot more aimless wandering. Instead of rushing from church to market to church, I also have plenty of time to stop and see the small bits of life in between.

In Istanbul, this was nowhere truer than when I stumbled upon the weekly pigeon market in Edirnekapi. Originally walking with the old city walls, from a dead end I spotted a crowd tucked into a parking lot just beside the old fortifications.

My crowd was in fact the weekly Istanbul Pigeon Market, where doters come to buy/sell/trade pigeons to keep as pets or train and sell at sometimes impressive profits. A couple of people told me they had come from as far away as Ankara just to visit the market.

Later, asking for more information when I was with an Itanbullu who spoke English, I was told that many of these pigeons are trained to home in on their cages from vast distances. More devious trainers will even sell these trained birds to the unwary, knowing that at the first chance of freedom the animals will return to the vendor’s cage for a quick and easy profit.

Caveat emptor, eh?