Turkish evisa – for tourist purposes Most people, when they come to Turkey for a short holiday, will need an e-visa. The rules are based on your nationality so once you know need one, go to the official Turkish government website and enter your details. Here’s the link. Have your passport handy, and make sure…
Even if you don’t know the name of the actor with the elastic face who played the bumbling character of Şaban (Turkish for bumpkin or clot), the simple villager from a poor background, in numerous films in Turkey during the 1970s and 1980s, the face is instantly recognisable. It belongs to Kemal Sunal. Born in…
Although he left the world stage for the last time more than twenty years ago, Zeki Muren will always have a special place in the hearts of Turkish music fans. Born in 1931, he auditioned for Turkish Radio when he was only twenty. Even then he knew a huge range of musical standards off by heart…
Located on the Asian side of Istanbul, the neighbourhood of Salacak runs along the edge of the Bosphorus from Uskudar all the way to Harem. Frequented by courting couples and curious tourists drawn by the myth of Kız Kulesi, Leander or the Maiden’s tower built fifty metres from the shore, the area’s name has a much…
I’m a member of a Facebook group for travel writers and I recently asked for suggestions of blogs about Turkey and neighbouring countries. Surprisingly, at least to me, there were few suggestions. Naturally, I decided to compile my own. Listed below, in no particular order, are some but by no means all, the blogs about…
As a long-time resident of Istanbul, readers often ask me to recommend ‘must sees’ when they’re planning their first trip to this wonderful city. While I love to seek out lesser known sights I always tell people to see the main sights first. Sultanahmet, home to the old city, offers a huge range of fascinating…
Living in Istanbul which has a population of around 16 million people, it sometimes feels like everybody is out and about at the same time, making it impossible to get anywhere quickly. The streets throng with too many bodies cramming the small broken pavements, making me long for greener pastures. Any of my friends can…
Trees as well as flowers have long been associated with Istanbul and the most famous of these is the Erguvan or Judas Tree. From the Latin, cercis siliquastrum, the name is derived from the Greek and is a combination of two words, cercis meaning tree and siliquastrum meaning fruit. Istanbullu have long called it the Erguvan…
Born on the 15th of January 1902, in Salonica, where his father was serving as an Ottoman government official, Nazim Hikmet Ran, commonly known as Nazim Hikmet, was a Turkish poet, playwright, novelist, screenwriter, director and memoirist. Best known for his intellectual pursuits and considered a romantic communist and revolutionary, he was very active throughout…
I recently went to Romania for a holiday and was surprised to find a lot of the words were familiar to me. The Latin I studied at school came in handy because Romanian is a Romance language but more surprisingly, I recognised a lot of Turkish words too. Looking into the history of Romania and…