It was not just that he himself had grown up a poor provincial in Istanbul -LRB- his family were sailors from the Black Sea -RRB- or that he had sold simit -LRB- Turkey 's ubiquitous singed sesame bread rings -RRB- on street corners to pay for his schoolbooks or that his mighty baritone had made him a sought-after muezzin or that he eschewed alcohol -LRB- and even tried as mayor to ban it from the touristy neighborhood of Beyoglu -RRB- .