Fethullah Gülen

This week, Fethullah Gülen was elected most important intellectual in the world in an internetpoll organized by the US magazine “Foreign Policy” together with the British magazine “Prospect”. Who? Fethullah Gülen. He’s a Turk, but he lives in the USA. He leads the Gülen Movement, an Islamic path that preaches a modern interpretation of Islam and …

License to swim

I packed my towel and swimsuit. I checked the swimming time for women. So what could stand between me and my first ‘training’ for this event next month which I really want to take part in? Only the entrance fee to the brand new municipal swimming pool, I thought. So there I was, telling the guy at …

Tuzla deaths

A total of 98 deaths in the last seven years: the shipbuilding business is booming in Turkey, but to achieve this growth the safety of the workers has been neglected. Turkey’s biggest shipbuilding area is Tuzla, south of Istanbul. Workers went on strike last Monday to demand safer working conditions, but when I went to take a look, I saw …

Not a rubbish bin

You want to adjust a bit in a society that is not yours. Also waste wise. But I just can’t do it, throwing waste on the street. I try sometimes, really. For example when I have an empty water bottle in my hand. I’m walking, or waiting for a bus or a boat. I’m about to throw the empty …

Holland will help Turkey set up refugee centres

KAYSERI – Holland will help Turkey with the setting up of six refugee centres and the training of personnel for the centres. There’s 1.2 million euro’s available for the project, coming from EU funds. Dutch State Secretary of Justice Nebahat Albayrak finalised the details of previous agreements this week during a working visit to Turkey. Turkey chose Holland as a …

Holland and Turkey make judicial deal

KAYSERI – Holland and Turkey have made concrete agreements to solve problems in cooperation on legal issues. From now on, there will not always be strict interpretation of national laws. Every legal case will be examined individually. That’s the outcome of a meeting between Dutch Justice Minister Hirsch Ballin and his Turkish counterpart Mehmet Ali Şahin, during the Minister’s visit …

Noise

What a game really! One moment it seemed Turkey would be out of the tournament, next thing they turn a 0-2 score in favour of Czech Republic into a 3-2 victory, and that in about fifteen minutes! Istanbul will be celebrating a wonderful match tonight. At the moment, everything that is able to make noise, makes noise, even the ferries join …

‘Stomach problems’

Doctors warn against ‘relax pills for students’, as they might do more harm than good. Newspapers have been publishing sample exams for weeks. Private schools drill their students for the last time. What’s going on? Tomorrow the university entrance exams take place. About one and a half million students compete for one of the approximately 200 thousand places at universities …

Learn to write and win a fridge

That’s the basic theme of a campaign by the ministry of education to fight illiteracy. Especially for women, of course. Turkey has a population of around 70 million and about 5 million of them are illiterate. In order to make more women in particular attend literacy classes, the ministry has come up with a plan in cooperation with a bank: …

High Turkish

I started level 5 of my Turkish lessons. There are six levels and each one takes two months to complete. So in about four months I will be speaking Turkish! I’m so much looking forward to it, really. Truth is, of course, learning a language is so much more frustrating than I ever thought. When Turks see the book we

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