With your head up high

Sarai Sierra is dead. She was on a trip to Istanbul, her first trip outside her own country, the US. A 33 year old woman, a wife, and a mother of two boys. She loved photography and that’s why she came to the city. She went missing on 21 January, and on Saturday her body was found on the historic …

An identity that endangers their life

‘Could it be the work of one individual?’ That is the question that occupied my thoughts in recent days. Four elderly Armenian women have been brutally attacked in Istanbul. And whatever the outcome of the police investigation – if any – there is one thing I am sure of: it is not the work of an individual.

The facts: in early …

New Gezi Park

You know the Burger King at the corner of Taksim Square and Istiklal Boulevard? Of course you do; visit Istanbul once and you know where to find it. When I pass that spot and look up, I always wish they would tear down that whole building. It’s ugly, and what’s more, it blocks the view of the beautiful church behind …

How to handle caps in Istanbul?

I had visitors this week: my Dutch friend Janet and her 11 year old daughter Eefke. When we walked down the road from my house to down-town Üsküdar for the first time, we saw a big plastic bottle hanging on a fence. I had some blue bottle caps in my bag, and I put them in the bottle. The rest …

How to manage your money in Istanbul

Loads of small change in your pocket, paying with notes in bigger shops and never, never paying with a 50 lira note in a taxi? Congrats, that’s the way to do it in Istanbul!

If you’ve passed the dealing-with-money-in-Istanbul test, you are probably not in the city for the first time. So often I see tourists messing things up. The first …

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, …

Newroz, or: a day in the park

Let me start with a picture of how I spent most of Sunday afternoon, when Newroz (the coming of spring) was celebrated in Diyarbakir: here it is. All quiet, no police to be seen, only in the air were two helicopters keeping an eye on the crowd. Around me, there were families having a picnic (some …

Taksim belongs to all of us!

Now and then, I publish a guest blog post on my site. Usually from Turkish journalists, but this one is from my Dutch colleague and friend Marc …

Bosporus fish, or: fishermen as easy target

An utterly sad low in the trouble over fishing the Bosporus: the head of a fishermen’s cooperative was shot because he opposed the way some of his colleagues scrape the Bosporus fishing grounds with their nets, contributing to certain fish becoming extinct. The man lost his left eye. It’s about time the government takes responsibility.

If you didn’t know any better, …

‘A campus should not be a trade zone’

(This blog post was written by my intern Zehra Kaya, who studies at the Journalism Academy in the Netherlands. She is currently studying for one semester at Yeditepe University in Istanbul.)

Thanks to banners saying ‘Occupied area’ it’s hard to miss the Starbucks on the huge campus. The branch of the coffee giant has been occupied by students since last week. …