Back when I first travelled around Turkey on my own in 1990 there were no mobile phones, the internet didn’t exist and the only way to let my family know I was safe was via occasional expensive phone calls from the post office or aerogram letters that took six weeks to arrive. Needless to say,…
Like Pierre Loti Cafe, which probably wouldn’t still exist if a woman hadn’t got involved, much of the city was built by Istanbul women whose unofficial machinations made them more powerful than the sultans they married or the sons they birthed. Women who fought for their rights while helping to establish the Turkish Republic. Turkish…
Turkey’s first female Olympic competitor, archaeologist and patriot Halet Cambel (Çambel in Turkish) was 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 first open-air museum. Halet Cambel was born in Berlin in 1916. Her father Ibrahim Hakkı…
I’m excited to share my interview with Jane Gundogan. Jane Gundogan is 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) and the only…
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 Turkish weddings in small towns and villages. They are great fun to attend. But what about the legally required civil ceremony part of modern Turkish weddings, do you know what goes on there? Find out in this extract from my memoir Istanbul Dreams: Waiting for the Tulips to…
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….