A Turkish friend recently invited me to attend a mevlit, one of the important Turkish death rituals, to be held for her mother. Her mum had been failing for months, going from being a chirpy chatty woman to a small silent figure swaddled in a now too large bed, who no longer spoke but always…
Tucked away on the shores of the Bosphorus, next to the far more fashionable and better known suburb of Emirgan, is Boyacikoy, which means ‘Village of the Dyers’. The suburb is so named because in the eighteenth century a large family of dyers from Kırklareli in Thrace, north west of Istanbul, were resettled here by…
Karakoy, once home to itinerant sailors, has been attracting a lot of attention in recent years. The section east of Galata Bridge already boasts an eclectic collection of cafes, bars and galleries. However I prefer the everyday working area to the west of the bridge. In the wonderful rabbit warren of backstreets bounded by the…
“Being Australian and living in Istanbul, one of the hardest things to cope with at first was the difficulty of finding a pool to go swimming in Istanbul regularly. Prior to 1980 life in Istanbul was much like life in Sydney. People spent their summer days swimming at beaches along the Sea of Marmara and…
Tucked away on the slopes up behind the port of Harem on the Asian side of Istanbul, almost hidden by heavy containers and giant cranes, is the little visited Haydarpasa Cemetery. Dating back to 1855 when the Turkish Government gave the site to the British Government, it contains about six thousand graves of victims of…
My family wasn’t religious, so when I was a little girl in primary school I was always slightly jealous of the other children at Easter. I’d see them emerge from scripture classes clutching Easter bonnets festooned with strips of paper, straw baskets filled with fluffy yellow cotton wool chickens and colourful pictures of the saints….
Behind the mundane route of the Istanbul Metrobus system lies another world. Find out more in this extract from my story “Metrobus Dreams”. “At Uzunçayır, I envisage the long fields to which the name refers. Fully grown sheep and brilliantly white newborn lambs dot meadows covered with long blades of grass swaying gently in the…
The complete version of “Antique Street Kadikoy” is available in the 2nd edition ofInside Out In Istanbul: Making Sense of the City. For as long as I can remember, Tellalzade Sokak in Kadikoy on the Asian side of Istanbul, has never been referred to by its registered name. Streets in Turkey are called after a…
In a recent interview with world famous Turkish photographer Ara Guler 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…
How I came across Mehmed Sokullu Camii 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…