Bags of coal and crates of bread
Coal. These days it’s mainly coal that municipalities hand out to the poor, who don’t have a gas connection and cannot afford to use an electric heater, and who also find coal too expensive. Luckily there is the AKP holding some stock – it’s mainly AKP municipalities where the poor receive these gifts. Prime Minister Erdogan tries his best to …
At the time of writing, one euro is worth 2,14 ytl. I am never too interested in matters of finance, but a friend pointed out to me that the value of the euro is rising quickly. True: not so long ago it was, I guess, something like 1,70 ytl. So when I get 70 ytl from the ATM , now …
The bright light bulbs lighting the fish market make the little hamsi fish shiny as if they were made of pure silver. The levreks are placed in neat rows, their bright red gills turned inside out to show their freshness. The fishmonger praises the quality of his produce, shouting out Kalite Kalite Kalite Kalite Kaliteeee! Somebody …
‘We are all Turks! We are all Muslims!’. I still see it scrawled on a wall somewhere in Istanbul. Yeah, sure, I thought, Armenians, Christians, Jews, Arabs, Kurds, never heard of them, in this country we are all just Turks and all Muslims… But then again, how can you really criticise such graffiti in a country where this week even …
I’m in the middle of writing an article about Turkish women who grew up in the Netherlands but who decided as adults to move to Turkey. Well, decided…, that’s not the right word in some cases. A few women moved to Turkey for a year and planned to return to the Netherlands after that year. ‘That’s three years ago now’, …
You can ridicule it as an election gimmick, but that would be too easy. Opposition party CHP has published a report on the Kurdish question, which makes far-reaching proposals, like recognising the Kurdish identity, giving people the right to an education in their mother tongue and even to give some sort of amnesty to PKK fighters. Of …
It snowed. Most of it has melted away again, but in the fields around the village of Ortahisar, the snow still sparkles. Even in the middle of the night. I look up and see the moon is full. I turn around on the back seat of the car I’m in to take a better look. Then we turn a corner …
The skin and the tail attached to it
After two hours, all that is left of the cow on the spot where it came to its sacred end, is its skin and tail. Folded into a neat package, the tail nicely draped over it.
I don’t know much about butchering, (nothing actually), but what I saw today was definitely craftsmanship. I somehow expected a big, muscular man to come …
Waitresses are beaten up, one woman is pulled out of the restaurant by her hair and dragged into a police car. She is held captive for six hours and raped. Police brutality? No, a gang that dressed up as police officers and parked in front of the restaurant in a car with police lights. The first thing the ‘police’ did …
In the morning, she prepares breakfast for the family. Then she takes the young children to school. After that she cleans up the breakfast table, starts cleaning the house and when that’s finished, she knits for a while, till it’s time to start making dinner. Just a small glimpse into the life of a so called ‘ev kizi’, a house …
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