Ortaköy square is still as alive as ever, full of cafes and strolling couples and old people and kids, men hawking trinkets and grandmothers selling cheap bracelets -- all kinds of people. A young girl strolling with her boyfriend wore a cool black hoodie as a headscarf. […]

rapprochement between the Turkish government and the PKK (here) and the position taken by various groups, parties, and actors vis-a-vis this process. This is an important process for Turkey and for the region, but is fraught with the possibilities for wrong steps and failure. To help the process along, Tuncel suggests that international powers that, she writ […]

There are 324,770 official Syrian refugees in Turkey (Turkish government estimates are 400,000). 17 out of 23 of the region’s refugee camps are in Turkey, which has decided to halt construction of any new camps. The main issues are cross-border attacks by pro-regime forces (as witnessed recently in Reyhanli where two car bombs killed at least 51 […]

Peonies  by Mary Oliver This morning the green fists of the peonies are getting ready to break my heart as the sun rises, as the sun strokes them with his old, buttery fingers and they open– pools of lace, white and pink– …   […]

This is an example of clicktivism, a term I only recently learned (again from my students). Clicktivism means feeling that you are politically active by forwarding something on Facebook or following a social media trend to express support or disapproval (like changing your picture to TC in Turkey-- or as in the US recently when 2.7 million people changed the […]

[T]he new Ottoman archive ... has just opened its doors in Istanbul's Kağıthane neighborhood on April 22. The most important [news] is that the documents have not made their way to the new building and the staff is unsure of when they will arrive. […]

There's a new face around town, an e-journal that aims to fill the sweet spot of desire for fresh, cutting-edge, edgy and real reportage about Turkey. The first issue has hit the e-stands. Get it here -- http://bulentjournal.com/ […]

With 18 million TV homes, Turkey is one of Europe’s major markets... [But t]he introduction of the cellphone at the end of the 1980s and its immediate spread was a major factor in Islamist political organizing, making it possible to set up phone trees and mobilize large numbers of people through their personal networks. […]

I thought this was very innovative and worth noting: a floating electricity-generating power plant, a “power ship” that can be parked by any shore and used to generate part of that country’s electricity needs. There is currently a Turkish “power ship”, the Fatmagül Sultan, parked off Beirut that is producing 188 MW of electricity daily, the […]

Amnesty International is urging the Turkish government to use this crucial moment to act concretely to decriminalize dissent, at a time when a new constitution is being written where such issues are being debated and when promises have been made in this respect to the PKK in return for peace. A package of reforms called the […]