Ultimate luxury

My love and I stand on the balcony of the house he grew up in. We look out over the village. It’s been snowing, everything is white, and the sun that has made the snow sparkle all day, is slowly disappearing behind the hills. It’s cold. Then I notice that only a few houses have a smoking chimney. It could …

The empty hands of Tekel-workers

A crate is thrown into an iron barrel and the fire flares up. But it doesn’t get really warm: the ice cold wind blows along the plastic sheeting that it is hoped will offer some protection against the weather. The group of men from Batman, in the south-east of Turkey, have been living on the street in the city centre …

Bitter journalism tears

Indignation all around: alleged military coup plotters wanted to use journalists in their plans to overthrow the government. Daily newspaper Taraf recently revealed yet another coup plan, and it contains two lists: one of 137 names of journalists who would be asked to cooperate with the coup plotters to help create a chaotic atmosphere in the country, which would ‘justify’ …

Snow

Pictures, people want me to take pictures of Istanbul in the snow. It’s been snowing rather heavily for a few days now, and I guess the people who request pictures imagine the most beautiful views: mosques covered with snow, the old city turned white, narrow streets with snow flakes coming down.

But that version of Istanbul in winter doesn’t exist. At …

Hrant Dink – three years after the murder

I was in an eye hospital for on an assignment when I heard the news: Hrant Dink had been killed. There were TV screens in the hospital, and I couldn’t stop watching, wishing my Turkish was better, wishing I could understand what exactly was going on. But the biggest news, that Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink had been shot

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Sure about the facts?

A journalist, says Fatih Özyar, doesn’t just write an article about something he isn’t sure about. True, that’s how it should be. But is that really what happened?

Özyar writes for the biggest daily newspaper in Turkey, Hürriyet. He is the correspondent for Hürriyet in the Netherlands. A few days ago he reported that a journalist from the Netherlands, Armand Sag, …

These kids will read

There they are in Radikal newspaper: three boys aged seven, nine and eleven. The arms of the kaymakam, a local governor, is wrapped around them as he says: ‘These kids will read’.

The kids have been in the news for days now. It started with the news that a five year old boy, Bedrettin, was found beaten  almost to death: he …

Self-censorship

The government is doing nice things for journalists: the discounts for press card holders have been extended. Most of the public transport is already free all over the country, but now my colleagues and I can also get discounts (up to 50%!) with some privately owned long-distance bus companies, and for flights with national carrier Turkish Airlines. And, this is …

The Roma of Selendi

There is a debate going on about how it started: did the Roma man light up a cigarette in a teahouse, where it is forbidden to smoke, or did the tea house owner refuse to serve the man tea? The testimonies about how the tea house fight started differ, but the outcome was clear: the windows of the teahouse didn’t …