Armenian church gets a real place in Diyarbakir

I do remember the church from before the restoration. I remember feeling sad about an Armenian church in the middle of the old city of Diyarbakir being totally dilapidated. The people once attending mass there were murdered in 1915, the witnesses of their former presence in the city destroyed. So it was really good to see the church of Surp …

Tarlabaşı bubble

‘We have been dancing here’, says Fransesco Lupo. He shakes his head, desillusion in his eyes. ‘It was a lie. We were in a bubble that had nothing to do with reality.’

We are in Tarlabaşı, a neighbourhood in Istanbul, right southwest of the central Taksim Square. Tarlabaşı is in the middle of a ‘renewal’ process. That means: the old, …

The queen and the pioneer

President Gül paid an official visit to the Netherlands this week, to commemorate 400 years of diplomatic ties between the two countries. The Queen and the President both disappointed and surprised me.

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You could say the visit was a bit overshadowed by our national clown and racist politician, Geert Wilders. He was against the visit to begin with, because of Gül …

Zehra

Some time ago I was in a bar in Istanbul with some Dutch people and some Turks. One of the Turkish women started to talk about some family affair, in which supernatural powers played a big role. Call me unfriendly, but I just can’t let that pass easily, especially after two, three glasses of wine. At some point, I just …

The disconnected

The overhead projector casts three texts onto the wall: one in Turkish, one in Dutch, one in English. Hanneke van der Heijden, Turkish-Dutch translator, explains the background behind translating the book Tutunamayanlar, a cult book of Turkish literature by author Aguz Atay. The book is written in several different styles of Turkish, and,

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A kiss on the cheek

The gay men in the film Zenne Dancer kiss on the cheek, not on the mouth. The only time they go further than that is when they need photographs of gay sex, to convince a military committee they are actually gay and for that reason get exempt from doing their military service (which is not a procedure invented for the …

The foundations Cornelis laid

The bottom line is: Turkey and the Netherlands are friends. Officially since 400 years ago, but in practice even much longer. No temporary political wind can change that. According to Jan-Paul Dirkse, the Dutch ambassador to Turkey, all you need to do is look at the map: ‘Then you see that we are in the same sphere. It makes it …

Entelköy

Sometimes, I just go travelling in Turkey without a specific goal, just to see where I end up. As I did this week. And where did I find myself a few days later? In the village of Entelköy! Never heard of it? You will: the movie ‘Entelköy’ will be released this year, or the beginning of next year – also …

Arabesk, the blues of Istanbul

Those of you who know Arabesk, Arabic-style music created in Turkey, will be shocked by the title of this blog post. Defining Arabesk as the blues of Istanbul! Ridiculous! Arabesk is a genre by itself, with its own history and development, you can’t call that the blues of Istanbul! I know, dear readers. Still, the title perfectly explains what this …

Symbol of love and peace

Banned officially in 1925, but still very much alive in Turkey, is the Mevlevi Order, a spiritual Islamic sect. Most people know them from the ‘whirling dervishes’, a ceremony performed by the followers of the order (called ‘dervishes’) as a way to connect with God. Up until now I never really got into it very deeply, probably because they are hardly ever …