A Lust for Life in Lycia
Lycia is a region of Turkey in the southwest of the country, roughly between the bays of Antalya and Fethiye. It is one of the most fascinating parts of Anatolia, […]
Category Archives: Turkey
Fans for the memories
This summer I dropped in to the Sakip Sabanci Museum in Istanbul to see an exhibition which is the first of its kind in Turkey. It included a rare and […]
Cool calligraphy in Istanbul
Istanbul is the capital of the exquisitely fine art of Islamic calligraphy. In Ottoman times there were hundreds of libraries here, but the city was and still is a library […]
Tunceli – holy mountains, romantic castles and fine wines
Elazig’s history, as ancient Harput, goes back to 3000BC. Today, it’s home to a prestigious university and is a thoroughly modern town. I took a domestic flight here from Istanbul’s […]
The Great Palace of Constantinople
I’m standing between two prize fighters in the middle of Istanbul. They’re staring each other down like Sumo wrestlers preparing to clash in an earth-shattering explosion of salt and dust. […]
Tokat headscarves
There’s a lot of fuss about headscarves at the moment, in Germany as well as in Turkey and elsewhere, but they’re hardly a particularly Islamic issue. I remember in the […]
Socks with a hidden message
For me, one of the most fascinating of Turkey’s many traditional folk arts are the knitted woollen socks that you find everywhere, and whose vibrant and beautiful colours and often […]
Turkish bird-houses
‘Kusevi’ (koosh-evvy) are Turkish bird-houses that are very often built into the walls of buildings, especially mosques. I spotted one particularly ornate one in Istanbul years back and since then […]
Mother love
The ruins of Troy in Turkey’s Troad region are a bit disappointing, even worse than the Roman Wall in Northumberland and not at all like the still awesome land walls […]
St George to the rescue
The Princes Islands in the Sea of Marmara – in ancient times called the Propontis – lie close to the Asian coastline of Turkey just off Istanbul, and to the […]
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