An overwhelming success, Anadolu’nun kayip sarkilari, ‘Lost songs of Anatolia’, premiered last night at the Istanbul Film Festival. A marvelous and touching journey through Anatolia, based on old traditional songs from different cultures with roots on this soil. Village women singing from their hearts the songs they learned from their ancestors, little girls and boys listening and picking …
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 …
The call to prayer that blares out over the city from dozens of minarets, the shrieking of big flocks of seagulls, the horns of the ferries over the Bosporus: these sounds are inextricably bound up with Istanbul. I would like to add a sound: a deep and massive singing, a monotonous but sometimes also melodious cheering. Tonight it was there …
Tulips, narcissuses and violets
I would like to write something about flowers in Istanbul. About how I walked in a cemetery where spring had burst forth and the graves were loaded with tulips and narcissuses. About a competition held by the Istanbul municipality, in which a hundred residents can win 300 liras by giving lots of love, care and attention to a tulip …
Sulukule is a neighbourhood in Istanbul. Or, you could say, a town in Istanbul. Located against the old city walls bordering the old historical centre of the city, it has been home to Roma for hundreds of years. For a long time nobody cared to maintain the sometimes beautiful old wooden houses, and now Sulukule is not so beautiful anymore. …
“We stay on the street, with our purple needle!” On first encounter, it’s a somewhat weird slogan that is resounding through Istanbul’s biggest shopping street, Istiklal Caddesi, every Friday night. The purple needle (‘mor iğne’ in Turkish), explains Tuğba Tekerek of the action group Mor Iğne, has for years been a symbol used by the Turkish women’s movement against sexual …
One thing I remember from the time I lived for two months in the Istanbul mahalle (neigbourhood) Kuzguncuk, is when my doorbell rang a few times and a man appeared to ask if ‘that car is yours and if so could you remove it?’. The man was maybe working for one of the film crews which quite often were on …
A friend from Holland came to visit me this weekend. We were having dinner at Kanaat Lokantasi and after dinner of course we wanted tea. I ordered it ‘açık’. Friend asked what sort of tea I ordered. Well, normal Turkish tea, but then ‘açık’, meaning light. That’s the nice thing about a
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Life in Üsküdar is slower than around Taksim on the European side of town, where most foreigners live. Friendlier too, I think. Now that I hop around on one healthy foot and the other one broken – (three weeks ago, I ran to catch the last boat to Üsküdar and stepped into a hole in the pavement) – people in …
It’s not easy to live in a smokers’ country as a non-smoker. Like tonight, on the boat from Kabataş back to home in Üsküdar. The weather is still nice, so I decided to sit outside to get some fresh air. I should have known better: in Turkey, people don’t sit outside for fresh air, but to smoke. So there I
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