It was quite a shock, I have to say: my neighbourhood in the Istanbul suburb of Üsküdar is an area in danger of demolition and ‘forced eviction’. I learned about it when visiting an exhibition on urbanisation in Istanbul which showed a map of all areas that were in some stage of radical change, so to speak. There …
Some Roma even cried with happiness during their meeting with Prime Minister Erdogan this weekend. It was the first time ever a Turkish Prime Minister addressed a large group of Roma directly and vowed to solve the problems they face: discrimination, and a lack of education and good housing. The 12,000 Roma who attended came from all over Turkey, and …
There is a debate going on about how it started: did the Roma man light up a cigarette in a teahouse, where it is forbidden to smoke, or did the tea house owner refuse to serve the man tea? The testimonies about how the tea house fight started differ, but the outcome was clear: the windows of the teahouse didn’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 …
The trouble in north western China is a big news item in Turkey. Of course it is bound to be, since the Uighurs are a Turkish people, just like Turkmens, like Uzbeks, Kazaks and Azeris, to name just a few. It struck me that the newspaper Hürriyet predicted the trouble a few days before it started: President Gül had just …
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 …
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. …
Three weeks ago, Festos Okey died. A man from Nigeria, asylum seeker in Turkey and shot at Beyoglu police station in Istanbul. How he died is being investigated now. The police say he was taken into custody after they found drugs on him as they checked his identity, and that Festos tried to snatch a gun from a policeman when …
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