The little park that was no more.

A week or so ago, I woke up. As I do most days. However, this time, rather than to the wailing call to prayer, brawling felines, chamber music or my cleaner coming through the door, the dulcet tones of heavy machinery filled the air.

Crashing sounds followed by more things breaking, falling apart, and then crashing again.

Occupational Health and Safety are probably best defined in Istanbul as two nouns, an adjective and a conjunction. Town Planning could also be adequately interpreted in simplified terms. Someone got approval to initiate something but no-one can actually explain or be bothered to enlighten you about what they intend to do in the once-functional space that now resembles a disused quarry.

Welcome to my neighbourhood park in Cihangir, or as we clever Turkic-comprehending people might articulate, Cihangir Parkı. Home to well over the legally acceptable limit of cats, truant children and people who never pick up their dog's faeces, the park was previously the crowning glory in a neighbourhood of which other Istanbul residents were clearly jealous, in a metropolis where verdant foliage appears as frequently as drag queens at a brick-laying convention.

My thoughts are this: What in Allah's good name are they doing to the park, the only green space within spitting distance and beyond?

I've scoured the newspapers for information, hoping to discover the the park will be refurbished, refurnished with playground, lacquered benches and maybe one of those little metal contraptions that dispense plastic bags for all the selfish dog owners of Cihangir who think it's fine to allow their animals to defaecate in the park so that it might slowly putrefy and let the rest of us suffer and the park look and smell more like a sewer than an area where residents should be able to relax without smelling foul heaps of dog dung. I'd like to see one of those installed, pronto.

To no avail. The only iota of news suggests that the multi-story car park upon which the park lies is riddled with concrete cancer and presently unable to withstand an earthquake. At this I rudely chortled. Man, the day an earthquake hits this town we're all going for a long, fatal slide into the Bosporus.

So people with moustaches and yellow trucks moved the gate, or more correctly flung it about three metres from where it stood. All trees have been uprooted, and in my opinion, ransacked for firewood. Fencing from the basketball courts sits huddled and unloved on smashed concrete slabs. It looks miserable.

The people with moustaches and yellow trucks have moved on, probably to wreak havoc elsewhere and sell firewood to poorer inhabitants of Istanbul, and the Cihangir Park gate sleeps uncomfortably in its shallow grave. For two weeks now, nothing.

In another country someone would trip over the wreckage of the gate, sue the municipality and then get a massive stack of cash. Back home you'd make sure you were really intoxicated before you stumbled over it ensuring your negligence case would be rewarded even more generously.

In the neighbourhood life goes on. Dog owners continue to allow their pets to soil the grass and people care even less about it than they did(n't) before. And maybe they're right.

My cynical self even thinks the whole thing was done so that the park might appear a suitable backdrop to the burnt-out car that has stood next to the park entrance for the past three months.