Postcards from the park, 5
The range of activities taking place at Gezi Park keeps on widening. It wasn't long before a mini chess competition, captured by Hamoon Nasiri, was under way.
View ArticleMusic is the key
There has a been a philharmonic orchestra performance, ballet, a schoolgirl choir and of course the sounds of banging pots and pans. The latest addition to the list of Gezi Park protest performances...
View ArticleMusic is the key (cont.)
‘You’re all there, the piano’s there, who’s going to keep me here?’ the great classical pianist Gülsin Onay tweeted from London yesterday. By midnight she was at the keys of (presumably) David...
View ArticleBalbals on the march
After earning a certain notoriety for repeating nature programmes and cookery chat shows when things got too hot to handle, it was inevitable that when we wanted to find out how things were round our...
View ArticleWill the show go on?
The Gezi Park resistance, which started in Istanbul on May 31 and pretty soon spread to every corner of Turkey, has had an impact not only on the issues at the heart of the protests themselves, but on...
View ArticleThe Long View
On July 4 Jonathan Freeland returned to 6th-century Constantinople in his BBC Radio 4 series, The Long View, to explore the context of recent events in Istanbul. The parallels are uncanny, down to...
View ArticleSagalassos opens to visitors
Marc Waelkens is back in Sagalassos. From this weekend the Belgian archeologist who was profiled in Cornucopia 48 for his quarter-century working on this wonderful, remote, classical site 110km north...
View ArticleThe first protest fest
Tens of thousands will descend on the docks of Kadıköy on Sunday evening for the First Gasman Festival (Gazdanadam Festivalı), inspired by the dramatic use of pepper gas in Taksim Square and elsewhere...
View ArticleAnd there’s jazz, too
Save some energy this blissfully cool Istanbul July for some truly great jazz. Head up the Golden Horn for the Quartette Humaine on Tuesday. Horrid location, but fab saxophone (it should have been in...
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Extinguishing the Olympic flame
Today was the day of the great Bosphorus swim. Some 2,000 people lined up to do battle with the currents, and there was a good strong poyraz (north wind) to help them on their way. A Cornucopia...
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Heartbreak bostan
YEDİKULE YEDİKULE YEDİKULE! Before reading this, fling open your window, fill your lungs with air and bellow 'Yedikule' three times very fast. For anyone in earshot who ever called Istanbul home, it...
View ArticleWhen the fog lifted…
With so much gloom around, it is good to remember that terrific things have also happened in the last year or so. And top of our list at the moment is the restoration of the poet Tevfik Fikret's...
View ArticleOne park, two parties
Monday night saw dozens of members of Taksim Solidarity – that wicked band of senior militants (men and women, grey-haired academics and the like) – being wrestled into a police bus (rather more than...
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All aboard the Orient Express
1001 Faces of Orientalism exhibits for just one more month (ending on August 11) at the Sakıp Sabancı Museum and this compelling foray into 19th-century Europe’s fascination with the Orient should not...
View ArticleP-P-Pick up a penguen
As T24, the independent online newspaper, reported this morning, Turkish journalists took to İstiklal Caddesi yesterday with that most seditious of slogans: 'Penguins are beautiful in the arctic!' – a...
View ArticleGoing out with a bang
The publishers of NTVTarih, the Turkish equivalent of the BBC History Magazine, pulled the plug on the magazine hours before the July issue was due to print two weeks ago. The staff promised to make...
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The Big Swim
As two boats packed with swimmers pulled away from Kuruçeşme Park last Sunday, plenty of advice was being swapped about how best to swim the Bosphorus. You see the currents off Arnavutköy – stay...
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The brushstrokes of history
Earlier this week, I wrote about the temporary exhibition on at the Sakıp Sabancı Museum, 1001 Faces of Orientalism, that should not be missed (it ends on August 11), but the Museum has just informed...
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History in the painting
Earlier this week, I wrote about the temporary exhibition at the Sakıp Sabancı Museum (SSM), 1001 Faces of Orientalism, that should not be missed (it ends on August 11), but the Museum has just...
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Turkish cinema news
After the disappointing presence (or lack) of Turkish cinema at Cannes Film Festival this year, it is good to hear that Turkish films are getting recognition at other international film festivals. The...
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