Famous as Turkey’s cultural capital, Istanbul has long been acknowledged as a great city. It’s packed with exquisite mosques, sumptuous palaces and a rich heritage extensively covered in hundreds of guidebooks, travel websites and blogs, yet few of them mention the fact women played a role in making it great. Like Pierre Loti Cafe, which…
With the Games of the XXXII Olympiad originally scheduled for 2020 taking place in Tokyo this year despite much controversy, I decided to write a post about Halet Çambel, the first female Turkish athlete ever to compete in the Olympic Games. This remarkable woman represented Turkey in fencing, helped decipher Hittite hieroglyphics and founded Turkey’s…
I’m excited to share my interview with Jane Gundogan. She’s an author and in her own words, “also a part-time comedian (in her own mind), half-assed blogger and a totally committed vinophile”. Most importantly, she’s the person behind Salep and Ginger, a novel set in Turkey (see my review here). When not attempting to write…
Without going into quite as much detail as Jane Gundogan does in Salep and Ginger, let’s just say I can relate all too well to her heroine Ginger discovering the man of her life was also the main man of another woman’s life. In my case there was more than one other woman, but that’s…
With a few notable exceptions such as Orhan Pamuk and Elif Şafak, many portrayals of Turkey and particularly the life of women here are projected through the lens of Western perceptions of the Middle East – dangerous, mono-cultural, male-dominated and archaic. However Turkey is not an Arabic country, and Turkish people are extremely diverse. They…
Fifteen years ago I was living in Kayseri with my now husband, in the Anatolian heart of Turkey, teaching English at what was then the sixth best government university in the country. Every year, students organized a Spring Festival, to celebrate the end of winter and the completion of the academic calendar. We went to…
Visitors to Turkey often stumble across colourful wedding celebrations in small towns and villages. They are great fun to attend. But what about the legally required civil ceremony part of Turkish weddings, do you know what goes on there? Find out in this extract from my memoir Istanbul Dreams: Waiting for the Tulips to Bloom.”…
Türkan Şoray, Turkey’s own Sophia Loren, was born on the 28th of June 1945 in Eyüp, Istanbul, to parents, Halit, a railway-officer and mother Meliha, a housewife. Along with her younger sister Nazan, Türkan had a normal upbringing until she went to a film set with her friend and neighbour Emel Yildiz (now a champion…
I’ve lived in Turkey for a long time and been lucky enough to participate in lots of traditional activities. One of my favourite things to do is to join in on a kına gecesi, or henna night. This is the night Turkish women get together before the wedding to celebrate and commemorate the upcoming nuptials….
When I started writing about Turkey, it was with the idea of sharing my thoughts and experiences. When I moved to Istanbul, I hoped to give people an idea of what everyday life is like for an expat here. Many of my posts have made people laugh, and a few have made them think, leading…