It would have been too cruel, of course, to take Istanbul off the World Heritage List in the year that the city is European Capital of Culture. UNESCO decided not to transfer Istanbul to the World Heritage in Danger List. Just like last year, and the year before. And it doesn’t look like the yearly decision-making meeting of UNESCO is …
It was 50 years ago today, May 27th, that the first military coup took place in Turkey. President Celal Bayar, Prime Minister Adnan Menderes and others were arrested, put on trial and sentenced to death. In September 1961 Menderes and two of his ministers were hanged. Bayar’s sentence was commuted to life imprisonment.
The trials against the politicians took place in …
Ever seen a caricature of Atatürk? I did! Earlier today, a whole lot of them. Frankly, I didn’t totally understand them all. To do that, I would have to know many more details about the times in which Atatürk lived, and all the relevant persons and discussions at the time. Because the caricatures I saw dated back to the period …
I’ve had some emails this week about the House Committee on Foreign Affairs voting on the ‘Armenian Genocide Bill’. Both groups pro and anti informed me about their stance and some asked me to write letters to the Committee to support their point of view.
Now the resolution is accepted. I always thought I was against it mainly because politicians shouldn’t …
She lived a long life, the adopted daughter of Atatürk, Sabiha Gökçen. Istanbuls second airport is named after her – I was there this week, recently a brand new and huge terminal was opened. Of course there is a reason why the airport was named after her: Sabiha, born in 1913 and deceased in 2001, is very well known in …
I went to the Netherlands for a week, and even though I always intend to keep reading the Turkish papers online, I never really manage to do it: when you’re out of the country, somehow the news doesn’t get through your skull very well. Now that I am back, I’m catching up on the news and again I realize why …
A concert of Zülfü Livaneli is guaranteed to give you goose bumps. Zülfü Livaneli? Outside Turkey he is not very well known, but in Turkey he has been popular for decades. He is a singer/composer, novelist, and you could call him an activist for humanity too. All these sides of his personality came together in last night’s concert in Harbiye …
Babayan and Sinassos: two names of towns you will not find any more on any map of Turkey. Or it would have to be an old map, from the Ottoman times. You would find Babayan and Sinassos in the middle of what is now Turkey, in the province of Nevsehir. Lots of Greeks once lived there. After the founding of …
Never have I read a more vivid account of the horrors of war than in ‘Birds without wings’. The book is about an Ottoman village in the first decades of the last century, when the Ottoman empire was falling apart, the First World War was fought and Turkey became a republic. The historic events are described through the …
An enthusiastic mail from the news agency I work for: your news story on the film about Armenians was published in nine newspapers, among them nation-wide ones! Of course, it’s always nice when my articles reach a lot of people, but this time I couldn’t help having mixed feelings. I recalled a discussion I had some time ago …
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