A few days ago, as President Tinubu was making news for all the wrong reasons in Ankara, on the heels of his state visit to the Republic of Turkey, I found myself less than five hours away from him. But since dis-life-no-balance, there was no guard of honor mounted on my behalf, no entourage, and no official delegation. I traveled solo, relying on Google Maps and Google Translate to find my way around. Yet it was not all bad. While controversy, or perhaps accident, was courting power, I was quietly immersing myself in ancient history, walking through the ruins and remnants of empires in Istanbul, a city that has witnessed the rise and collapse of civilizations far more formidable than any modern state.
My day began at Hagia Sophia, originally built in 537 AD as the largest Christian cathedral in the world. For nearly nine hundred and sixteen years, it stood as the spiritual heart of Eastern Christianity and a monumental expression of the Byzantine Empire. On May 29, 1453, Sultan Mehmed II, later known as Mehmed the Conqueror, breached the walls of Constantinople, bringing the Byzantine Empire to an end and inaugurating one of the most decisive civilizational shifts in history. Hagia Sophia was converted into a mosque, its minarets rising alongside its immense dome, yet the structure never lost its original architectural soul. It remains a physical reminder that power may change hands, but history leaves marks that cannot be erased.
For centuries, Constantinople was simply known as “the City.” Greeks traveling there would say they were going eis tin polin, meaning to the city. Over time, this phrase slipped naturally into everyday speech and was absorbed into Turkish as Istanbul.
Across the street from Hagia Sophia stands Topkapi Palace, an expansive complex that stretches outward rather than upward, unfolding across courtyards, terraces, and pavilions. Built by Sultan Mehmed II after the conquest, it served as both the residence and administrative headquarters of the Ottoman sultans for nearly four hundred years. Topkapi was not merely a royal dwelling. It was a machinery of empire, where law, religion, military authority, and bureaucracy converged to impose order across vast and diverse territories.
A short drive from both landmarks brought me to the Bosporus, a narrow ribbon of water connecting the Black Sea to the Sea of Marmara, separating yet binding Europe and Asia. Along its shores, minarets face church domes, palaces overlook fortresses, and continents appear to converse across a span of water scarcely a mile wide. Istanbul is neither fully European nor fully Asian. It is, and has always been, both. Constantinople was the hinge of history, the city where Rome endured long after Rome fell, where Christianity matured, and where empires collided without destroying the city’s cosmopolitan character.
As I moved through these spaces, I found myself reflecting less on architecture and more on power, how it is acquired, sustained, and ultimately lost.
Rome, after all, did not begin as an empire. It began as a republic, a system anchored in shared authority, civic participation, debate, and law. Yet as Rome expanded, its republican institutions proved incapable of governing an empire that stretched across continents. Endless debate slowed decision making. Rival elites paralyzed governance. Civil wars made liberty appear dangerous rather than noble. Gradually and almost inevitably, Romans made a fateful calculation.
They chose order over abstraction.
This is the uncomfortable truth of political history. When insecurity rises, people are willing to surrender freedom in exchange for stability. Most people give up rights when life becomes unstable, when violence feels imminent, and when the future appears uncertain.
Empires promise what republics struggle to deliver in moments of crisis, namely predictability, security, and clear authority. Republics, by contrast, offer debate, delay, and compromise. In times of fear, order almost always defeats process.
This ancient lesson echoes uncomfortably in modern Nigeria. Today, some Nigerians openly yearn for a return to military rule, fully aware of its history of repression, curtailed freedoms, and suspended constitutions. This longing is not born out of affection for authoritarianism, but out of exhaustion with insecurity, chaos, and institutional failure that have turned freedom into a fragile luxury. When democracy cannot protect lives or property, its moral arguments lose urgency. People stop asking who governs them and begin to ask whether anyone can govern at all.
Rome did not slide into empire because it forgot liberty. It did so because liberty could not compete with stability at imperial scale. Augustus did not seize power against the will of the people. He was invited to restore order. What followed were centuries of imperial peace, purchased at the irreversible cost of republican freedom.
History leaves little ambiguity about where this path leads. Rome became an empire. Constantinople became an imperial capital twice, first Christian and later Muslim. The Ottoman Empire rose, ruled, and eventually fell. So did every great power that mistook dominance for permanence.
In the end, no empire reigns forever. Power is always temporary, and supremacy always expires. The ruins of Rome, the transformed halls of Hagia Sophia, and the silent courtyards of Topkapi all whisper the same warning. Authority is borrowed, never owned.
Perhaps President Tinubu and his team should walk the streets of Istanbul before returning to Nigeria, not as tourists, but as students of history. This city has humbled emperors, survived ideologies, and outlived certainties. It stands as a quiet reminder that no matter how powerful a leader may feel today, history always has the final vote
From Constantinople with love.
Osmund Agbo is a medical doctor and author. His works include Black Grit, White Knuckles: The Philosophy of Black Renaissance and the fiction title The Velvet Court: Courtesan Chronicles. His latest works, Pray, Let the Shaman Die and Ma’am, I Do Not Come to You for Love, have just been released. He can be reached at [email protected].
