More and more factories closing down? That has nothing to do with any crisis, these people are just not such good businessmen. A global economic crisis? No, it’s not, the crisis will bypass Turkey. Unemployment rising too much? Okay, it’s 13 percent now, but that’s mainly because more elderly people started to look for a job and not because unemployment …
Fourty kuruş (20 euro cents) for a loaf of bread: that’s not much. Especially when it’s healthy bread, like that produced at the factories of Halk Ekmek – People’s Bread. This long-standing government initiative to provide healthy bread for poorer people is becoming more …
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 woman in line before me in the small grocery shop at the corner of my street buys a loaf of bread, a few eggs, a bottle of water and a few tomatoes. She plays with the coins in her hand and finds she doesn’t have enough money to pay the bill of less then 5 ytl (that’s about 2.75 …
Lots of criticism this week of the Labour Minister, who suggested that the Tuzla shipyards be closed or replaced in a bid to solve the safety problems endemic there. The immediate reason behind his ‘plan’ are three more deaths this week in Tuzla. What happened? A life boat needed to be tested. Officially the test …
This week, Fethullah Gülen was elected most important intellectual in the world in an internetpoll organized by the US magazine “Foreign Policy” together with the British magazine “Prospect”. Who? Fethullah Gülen. He’s a Turk, but he lives in the USA. He leads the Gülen Movement, an Islamic path that preaches a modern interpretation of Islam and …
A total of 98 deaths in the last seven years: the shipbuilding business is booming in Turkey, but to achieve this growth the safety of the workers has been neglected. Turkey’s biggest shipbuilding area is Tuzla, south of Istanbul. Workers went on strike last Monday to demand safer working conditions, but when I went to take a look, I saw …
Next to the truck a boy is polishing lemons with a cloth. Then he puts them in a plastic bag. For his mother I suppose. A bit further on an elderly man bites into a lemon. Whether his face grimaces or not, I can’t see very well from a distance, but actually I don’t think so. These few lemons …
Turkish women need to give birth to at least three children. So says Prime Minister Erdogan. He said it once, nicely planned to coincide with International Womens’ Day, and that turned out not to be a slip of the tongue because he repeated his advice. Three children, because that’s the only way to maintain Turkish population levels. I have …
Today, the Istanbul International Film Festival opens. Tomorrow at 4 p.m. the festival would really start for me: I have a ticket for ‘Kaotik Ana’. It’s on top of a whole pile of tickets I bought beforehand. Finally finally finally I’m going to a film festival in Istanbul. I let a few other festivals pass by, like …
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