Kim Hewett and I met in Newtown, a suburb in Sydney, Australia where we both lived for many years. We danced around each other for a long time but both of us had significant others and the timing was never right. However a few weeks after I returned from my first trip to Europe and…
Once upon a time, before the advent of television and cinema, Karagoz and Hacivat were superstars of the Turkish entertainment industry. If you’re an aficionado of Turkish miniseries I know you’re imaging handsome moustachioed men with dark flashing eyes strutting their stuff on screen. However Karagoz and Hacivat are puppets, and are the main players…
Turkey has long produced exquisite and practical objet d’art made from paper, stone and glass. Careful attention to detail and a focus on maintaining tradition, means many items are still being made using production methods dating back hundreds of years. Beautiful on their own merit, they conjure up images of distant lands where order, method…
Istanbul always rewards you if you take the time to stop and look around. So it was that on an outing in Istanbul to research another article when I discovered Ali Uskudari’s work. I wasn’t in a museum. The photos accompanying this post are reproductions of his work in tile, on the walls of Bağlarbaşı…
I walked into the National Palaces Painting Museum in Istanbul hoping to see a particular painting by Hasan Vecih Bereketoğlu and left having discovered a wealth of early modern Turkish and foreign artists I never knew existed. The museum is housed in the former residences of the Crown Princes and entry is included in the…
Istanbul has long been known for its historical collections of art and antiques, such as the overwhelming wealth of jewels in Topkapı Sarayı and the priceless Hereke silk carpets in Dolmabahçe Palace whose gigantic crystal chandeliers reflect the waves of the Bosphorus from outside. Elsewhere the hills of the city are dotted with the former…
Turkey has a long tradition of using black comedy or satire, known as Turkish kara mizah, to express opinions not readily sanctioned by those in power. Generally it is concerned with serious topics such as murder, death, illness, politics and war. As with most forms of satire it operates on two levels. The obvious message…
In a recent interview with world famous Turkish photographer Ara Güler in Today’s Zaman (Nov 14, 2014) he said,“The Istanbul that I lived in wasn’t Istanbul. Actually, I didn’t see Istanbul either. Istanbul was already over. And Pera is over, too. When the Russian invasion happened in 1917, the White Russians came here, that Asmalı…
I am intrigued by the way Turks look at life, particularly when they view it using their own unique take on Western advertising. Turks have a passion for the foreign. Foreign music whose lyrics they don’t understand, foreign words they misspell and foreign names they misuse, they just don’t seem able to get enough. So let’s…
One of the things I love about Turkey is the way objects are displayed. It was clear to me the first time I came to Turkey back in 1990 that when it comes to display Turkish style, Turks believe there is no such thing as too much when it comes to showing off what they…