New York has Fifth Avenue, Beverly Hills has Rodeo Drive. And for many years, Istanbullus – the ones with money – have had Bağdat Caddesi.

On this long, broad avenue on the city’s Asian side, you could purchase a new Ferrari or Alfa Romeo, a suit from Burberry’s, a handbag from Louis Vuitton or the iPhone 7. Afterward, of course, you’d lunch at Midpoint, or one of the other joints serving overpriced Turkish and foreign dishes.

Recently however, there’s been a new arrival on the scene: Hard times.

One by one, shops have began closing their doors over the past year or so. On almost every block, there’s at least one ghostly, boarded-up space. In some cases, whole buildings have been demolished. Many of them were perhaps smaller shops, but during a cursory walk the other afternoon, I noted that the Gap was gone, as was the United Colors of Benetton, and numerous other smaller places. The handsome brownstone Burberry’s building is currently masked in a layer of mesh (perhaps they’re just renovating).

And even the shops that are still around seem to be struggling. Sure, I reckoned it was a Tuesday morning – the weekends doubtless are a different story – still, the Boyner, the Marks and Spencer, and a few other places I walked through displayed only bored-looking employees, girls filing their nails and guys pretending to rearrange the folds on unpurchased trousers languishing on the shelves.

“It’s the rents,” declares one of my old colleagues, an Englishman who’s weathered many seasons by the Bosphorus. “Mate – How can you expect these places to keep their doors open when the rents have become unbelievable?”

“Absolutely,” I say. With disconsolate sighs, we order a couple more pints of Efes beer, and move on to the latest Arsenal news.

“It’s the war in Syria, the bombings, terrorism,” posits another friend. “You see the same thing down south. All the hotels were empty this past summer. Nobody wants to come to Turkey, and it’s beginning to hit hard.”

This friend and I go way back on Facebook, and have been “liking” each other’s posts since the good old pre-war days of 2010. I think we met at a bar in Kadikoy, but can’t recall exactly, since we haven’t seen each other face to face ever since.

Of course, the wisdom of drinking buddies and Facebook pals is age-old and unassailable, going back to the days when Bacchus himself posted (and later deleted) his first late-night drunken ramble, in which he laid all of humanity’s troubles on “the drama queen up on Olympus.” Can you blame Bacchus? He’d been out with Dionysus earlier in the evening discussing, over many bottles of wine, the prospects for the upcoming nude oil wrestling season.

“It’s competition,” lays another Turkish friend, with equal conviction. “Seriously, bro,” he says. “Just count the number of shopping malls that have popped up – that keep popping up. Why would you go to Bağdat Caddesi and pay Bağdat Caddesi prices when you can get the same shit down the street at the Nautilus (shopping center) for half the attitude and half the price?”

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The recent spate of closures along Bağdat Caddesi is part of a wider, disturbing pattern. Across the Bosphorus, the tourist centers in Beyoglu and Sultanahmet are also hard-hit. Take a walk along Istiklal Caddesi and you’ll find similarly closed-up shops, thanks in large part to police crackdowns and fears of bombings.

Also, it’s true most of the hotels down south on the coast were empty this past summer. But that was in large part because of the spat between President Erdoğan and his Russian counterpart, Vladmir Putin, which resulted in a mutual boycott. The two leaders seem to be anxious to patch up their differences – for the benefit of trade, no doubt – Putin made a personal visit here in recent days to discuss the revival of an alternative oil pipeline that will pass from Russia through Turkey to Greece.

Others cite darker, more insidious causes.

“It’s all because of the coup attempt,” says a Turkish friend, nodding assuredly. “Tourists don’t want to come to Turkey, and here in Turkey there are people are being arrested, their assets, their properties, seized —”

Of course, you read about the failed military coup, the events of this past July. It’s now been all but confirmed that the take-over attempt was the work of Fethullah Gulen, the retired cleric residing in Pennsylvania, a former friend turned enemy of Erdoğan. Or at least it was Gulen sympathizers in the military, the government and academia (and don’t forget the media) seems to be the consensus.

The past few months have seen a massive purge – thousands of firings, dismissals, arrests, from the the military, to the police, universities. Homes have been raided of people suspected in giving money to the Gulen movement. News organizations have been shut down, journalists jailed.

This massive crackdown was made possible by an ongoing state of emergency, which gives the government nearly unlimited powers.

It’s difficult to assess the long-term impact of the coup attempt on Turkey’s economy. But suffice to say, it was enough evidently to have creditors like Standard and Poor, and Moody’s, to downgrade the country’s rating to junk bond status, to the great astonishment and dismay of the country’s leaders.

Creditors cited the “recent instability and political polarization” as reasons, which prompted Prime Minister Binali Yıldırım to protest that Turkey’s level of debt-to-GDP ratio was much lower than most European Union nations. The prime minister urged foreign investors to keep betting on Turkey.

As we have seen from the recent Putin visit, such investment will likely come from points East, now and in the future. That could be good news ultimately for Bağdat Caddesi. In five or ten years’ time, we may see more and more shops here with Russian (and others) ownership. And there’s always the Arab and Persian money: after all, Bağdat Caddesi takes its name from the days from when it was part of the old Silk Road, passing through the region to that city on the banks of the Tigris, and beyond. Nature may abhor a vacuum, but we must remember that fashion makes quite a good living off it. Empires rise and fall, wars are fought, won and lost, presidents come and go. But we’ll always have people whose lives are so empty and unfulfilled that they simply must have that new shiny thing in the window, or else all is lost.

So there’s hope after all.

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I’ve been working on Bağdat Caddesi for more than six years now. Our school was one of the originals, opened at the dawn of the new millennium to offer English courses to businessmen hoping to catch on with an international company, as well as desperate housewives hoping to speak to their grandchildren in England and America.

Each morning, I catch the dolmuş from Kadikoy. It’s about a twenty-minute ride, passing through a series of pleasant neighborhoods out to the coastal road where the Marmara sea glitters in autumnal sunlight. On clear days – which is most days – you can see all the way out to the Princes Islands, and watch the great tankers, fishing boats and even the occasional warship pass (most of those are Russian).

This past week, I’ve taken the time to reflect about my years on Bağdat Caddesi. Yesterday, I took a walk up the avenue, taking note of the number of closed shops. Fortunately, the bookstore I like was still there, so I went in and browsed the new titles or a while, then walked back and had coffee at Starbucks.

I took the time because as of next week, after nearly two decades, our school will be leaving Bağdat Caddesi for good. Yes folks: we’re joining the ranks of the departed, relocating our branch to Ataşehir, a growing commercial district about twenty minutes away.

The reason? Economics, of course. Nowadays, most of our lessons are in the companies, and many of the companies are in Ataşehir and other nearby districts. These areas have grown in recent years because rising rents in the center of the city have driven many companies to relocate on the ever-growing outskirts. The rents are cheaper there – for now.

Since English is an industry itself, like every industry you have to follow the trends. You have to go where the students are (although I still firmly believe that we could hit two birds with one stone and have exclusively online courses – we could eschew rental costs entirely, and I could work from home).

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As a farewell gesture, I stopped by a small tobacco shop, just across the street from the Marks and Spencer. The shop is a owned by a soft-spoken Turkish man with a taste for Bach and Mozart. He sells mainly cigarettes and lottery tickets, and nearby you can still get your shoes shined by a friendly Georgian man who keeps his brush and polish ready for passersby. Just around the corner is the Marmaris Büfe, still going strong with one of the best kaşarlı dürüm dönerler in town. I waved to the chef as I pass, promising to stop by later for lunch.

Every time I go to the tobacco shop, the owner always has my pack of cigarettes ready, and I hand him the ten-lira note. We casually make note of the weather, of the crowds, the traffic – he’s like a pulse-o-meter of the street.

That morning a graceful oboe, a piano tinkles, as I step up to receive the pack of Larks.

“Mozart?” I enquire.

He nods, taking the money.

I tell him our school is leaving, that we’re headed to Ataşehir.

“Thanks,” I say.

He shakes my hand.

“Çok mersi,” he says.

“Mersi.” It’s a Turkish adaption of the French (“kuaför,” “mesaj” and many other words are borrowed and Turkish-ized from French). Most Turks don’t use “mersi,” you tend to hear it among the city’s more cosmopolitan elite. Hearing it once more from the shopkeeper, as I’ve heard it the past six years, it’s a little sad, its tired elegance standing in contrast to the avenue’s fallen fortunes.

But at least his shop manages – through good times and bad – to soldier on.

“Iyi şanslar,” I say. “Good luck.”

“Tesşekurler,” he smiles, this time thanking me the Turkish way.

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