There it was, on a huge rock in the middle of a village: oruç tut sıhhat bul, meaning ‘Get healthy by fasting’. It seems the connection between fasting during Ramadan and getting healthy is being made more and more often.
In the first place, it is of course crap to say that fasting during Ramadan makes you healthier. On the contrary: …
A blessing in polygamy disguise
So, is Prime Minister Erdogan against adultery and polygamy or not? As far as I know, Erdogan hasn’t reacted yet to the debate that is going on. The subject: an advisor he appointed earlier this year, Ali Yuksel, who has three wives and intends to marry a fourth. It’s not possible to officially marry more than …
Another legal victory for parents who don’t want their kid to attend compulsory religious classes: an Istanbul court ruled that a child of atheist parents can skip the class. It’s not the first time. In 2007 the European Court for Human Rights ruled that a child with Alevi parents, (Alevism is an Islamic sect), cannot be obliged to follow the …
A modern, non-Islamic Turkish woman usually doesn’t go shopping at Tekbir. Tekbir? That is the fashion brand of one of the most famous designers in Turkey, Mustafa Karaduman. He designs clothes for the upcoming devout Islamic middle class of Turkey – for example the wife of president Gül wears Tekbir. It offers modern clothes, stylish, but decent, very …
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 …
The man who suddenly starts talking to me is angry. ‘This is not how it’s supposed to be done’, he says, ‘this is not how it’s supposed to be done’.
We are standing in a so called ‘Kurban Kesim Yeri’, an open air space designated by Istanbul municipality to butcher animals for the Feast of Sacrifice. Mainly cows are slaughtered, but …
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 …
And once again the governing AKP shows it doesn’t like alcohol: a well known municipal fish restaurant on the Anatolian side of the Bosporus has decided to no longer serve alcohol. The municipality of that part of town has a new AKP mayor, and he made the decision that is all over the newspapers at the moment. It’s the second …
When I came out of the post office, I saw a woman standing in a corner, hiding herself a bit. I looked again, and saw she was eating some kind of muesli bar. I guess she didn’t want anybody to see she was eating during Ramadan. She was wearing a headscarf. Maybe she was trying to fast but just couldn’t …
Two weeks ago, Arzu Erbas, a Dutch woman of Turkish descent, was killed in Amsterdam. Amsterdam local newspaper Het Parool quickly found out that the killer was probably a man of Turkish descent as well, and it could be the case that it was the father who was forbidden by court order to see his child and was several …
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