The Turks gave the world two images this week, one of destruction and the other of – well, let’s call it an act of creativity.

The first one I don’t need to talk about. You all saw it: Russian ambassador Andrej Karlov’s assassination. Come on, it was on the front page of every newspaper – oh, sorry, nobody reads newspapers anymore – on the front page of every news website around the world. You probably saw the video too, the shocking footage of the Turkish anti-terror policeman standing behind the Russian ambassador, who was speaking at an art exhibition in Ankara, before the troubled cop shot eight or ten bullets into him.

Here in Istanbul, we got all the coverage we needed of that story this past week. So let’s move on, shall we?

Here’s another big image (you can see it above) that I took myself this past week. This picture didn’t make it – as far as I know – onto any of the major news websites. And damned if I know why. Oh, wait: of course I know why it hasn’t My picture doesn’t bleed, so it doesn’t lead.

Anyway, as you can see in the picture, Istanbul’s (reportedly) $1.5 billion Eurasia Tunnel (Avraysa Tüneli) opened, after several years of construction. For just 15 TL folks, you can now drive from Europe to Asia, hundreds of feet below the Bosphorus. That’s pretty big news, don’t you think?

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It got me thinking, at any rate, about how most Western media outlets report on this part of the world. To often, the sound of bombs and bullets tend to draw all the attention, understandably and regrettably. So I decided to report on the tunnel opening myself. But as an added pleasure, I thought it would be an interesting exercise to tell the story in the manner of the Big Press. Think of it as a kind of guide.

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Having lived in the great city these past seven years, I’ve had the great pleasure of reading and listening to news stories about Turkey as told by my mighty counterparts. In fairness, most of their stories are timely, prescient, and raise most of the right questions.

Yet, there’s a certain narrative approach that, while seemingly enticing to first-time readers, becomes tedious to those of us who reside in this part of the world.

Let us begin, imagining this is a video report.

CUE MYSTERIOUS-SOUNDING ARABIC MUSIC. (Yes, my Turkish students and friends always cringe when we watch Western news reports. “Why are they playing this Arabic crap? Don’t they know we’re Turks, not Arabs?” Ummm … Because it sounds “exotic, like the mystery of the East unlocking its secrets?” I don’t know. But if it is to be a story on Istanbul, then mysterious-sounding Arabic music it must evidently be. Play it, Samih!

MONTAGE IMAGES OF THE GREAT MOSQUES, THE BOSPHORUS, FERRYBOATS CROSSING THE BOSPHORUS, WOMEN WEARING HEADSCARVES, AND IDEALLY, AN OLD MAN PLAYING THE SAZ. (This causes a mixed reaction among the Turks. Some are justly proud of their long, storied history. But as for others: “Why do they always show this ‘old shit?’ Don’t they know that Turkey has great skyscrapers and bridges and trains and airports just like New York?” Easy now, I say, we are merely trying to set a mood.

CUE, BRITISH-SOUNDING NARRATOR, SPEAKING IN BREATHY TONES. (British voices just evidently make better sounding narrators. We all think of Sir Richard Attenborough.

“Istanbul. The city that sits on two continents. Ancient Constantinople. Home of the Byzantine, the Roman and the Ottoman empires. A vast city of (13, 15, 20) million people. A city where the old world meets the new, where East meets West, where the Muslim world meets Christendom. And home of the the Bosphorus, the strait that separates – and brings together all these disparate elements.”

I’ve seen, and read, dozens of stories about Istanbul over the years. Trust me, nearly all of them begin with this thread. I’ve even written a few of them myself. Something about Istanbul just demands the big, sweeping gestures, the allusions to antiquity, the majestic tone.

Let’s return to our narrator, with this week’s story.

“In recent years, Turkey has been troubled by a war on several fronts. The civil war in neighboring Syria, which has spilled millions of refugees (“spillover is the key word in many stories here these days) over the border. Ongoing skirmishes with Kurdish separatists (or “terrorists,” as they are reported here). The threat of ISIS.

CUE MONTAGES OF CRUMBLED, BOMBED-OUT BUILDINGS IN SYRIA, HUDDLED, DIRTY-LOOKING REFUGEES ON THE

This past July, the streets of Istanbul filled with tanks, and F16 fighters streaked across the sky, as part of a failed military coup by a clandestine organization led by a retired religious cleric living in exile in the United States. More than 200 people were killed during the failed coup attempt.

Suicide bomb attacks have rocked the country, including two bombs that went off near Beşiktaş football stadium just two weeks ago, killing more than 30 people and ınjuring another 150.

STREETS, FIGHTING IN EAST TURKEY, AS WELL AS MORE RECENT IMAGES OF SUICIDE BOMBING ATTACKS)

And then, this past week, a Russian ambassador was assassinated in the capital city of Ankara by a young anti-terror policeman, who claimed he was avenging the loss of lives in Syria. For many here, it was yet another bloody chapter in a country that continues to reel with violence and bloodshed.

CUE THE INFAMOUS IMAGES OF THE YOUNG POLICEMAN MURDERING THE RUSSIAN AMBASSADOR, AS WELL AS THE MEMORIAL FOOTAGE FOR THE SLAIN AMBASSADOR.

But amidst these tales of tragedy, there emerged an image of hope. This past week saw the opening of the Eurasia Tunnel. This ambitious project is aimed at more than relieving the traffic of Istanbul’s traffic-choked streets (CUE IMAGES OF TRAFFIC). It is also hoped by many to be yet another step toward injecting this very ancient city with a very modern edge.

Note: The word “ambitious” is always used when referencing a project here. Bridges are “ambitious,” as are new airports, metros and highways. As if they could not be simply “functional” or “necessary.”) And of course any story about Istanbul begs the overuse of the words “ancient” and “modern.”

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Enough. I think you get the picture. Let’s soldier on and round out the story, minus the cliches. As if there were no Sir Richard Attenboroughs around, and the two of us were just having coffee:

OK – so this past Tuesday, I was walking through my neighborhood. Moody, Orientalist music was not playing in my head, and I was not thinking about the ancient or modern aspects of Istanbul. The women walking by were not covered and there was nothing playfully exotic or mysterious in the air. It was Tuesday, it was cold and raining, and I was heading to work.

I was walking because it’s true, the streets were in fact traffic-choked but there’s no need for images of traffic since we all know what traffic looks like, except unless you’re from Orick or some place and might not understand the concept of many cars in one place causing a general slow-down of life. But then, if you’re from Orick you probably are not aware of any other pace of life. God bless ya.

Anyway, at the end of the street there’s a highway overpass, recently finished. I walked across it, intending to get the metro at the shopping mall on the other side.

There were two or three soldiers up on the overpass. They had heavy, cold-weather gear on and they packing automatic rifles.

Nearby, some media-types had set up cameras.

Obviously, I wondered what was going on. Remember this was the day after the assassination of the Russian ambassador. But as we all know, the city and country has been fighting wars on many fronts these past few years, and we’ve been told that we have to learn to live with terror. Presumably that also includes soldiers in your neighborhood carrying automatic rifles.

“What’s going on?” I asked, pretending to be naive foreigner. That’s a pretty easy role to play, of course.

“The tunnel is opening,” a man said. He was friendly enough. “Where are you from?” he asked.

I told him, and we had a nice little chat about the tunnel, how it took several years to finish and cost a reported $1.5 billion, and how it was going to make the traffic situation better, etc. I asked if I could take a picture. “Of course,” he said, stepping back.

I remembered now reading about this in the news. President Recep Tayyıp Erdoğan himself was scheduled to attend the opening ceremony. That explained the presence of the soldiers on the overpass. They were taking no chances.

Just to be on the safe side, I made sure to get a visual OK from the soldiers. You’d just hate to have some sort of miscommunication. I could see the headline: STUPID AMERICAN MISTAKEN FOR TERRORIST IN ISTANBUL, SHOT SEVEN TIMES. And the follow-up story, with the cued-up Arabic music, the peaens to the city’s storied past, and the breathy Brit reading my obit.

Fortunately, I was able to take the picture with no international incidents. I agree it’s not a very good picture, but then how exciting can a picture of a tunnel be, my friend? Later that afternoon, the traffic really backed up along the highway, as the police and ambulances on hand made way for the president’s motorcade.

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Some may wonder – why bother with this story?

“I don’t care about the tunnel,” as even my lovely wife said, coming home tired from another day of work. She’s got a point, as always. We don’t drive here, so we probably will never even use it. If we want to cross continents, we can just take the ferry boat or the metro like always. Who needs tunnels anyway?

Still, it is a milestone of its kind. How many other tunnels link continents, bring worlds together? And to paraphrase the last words of the Russian ambassador, just before he was cut down by assassin’s bullets:

“It is very easy to destroy things. The harder thing is to build them.”

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James Tressler, a former Lost Coast resident, is a writer and teacher living in Istanbul.