7 May, 2012, Green Prophet

Turkey’s government argues that much of the land has already been illegally developed and sold, especially in the outskirts of major cities like Istanbul (pictured).

Two weeks ago, Turkish President Abdullah Gül approved a law that opened a parcel of land in Turkey formerly classified as forests — known as “2B” land — to construction. Today, according to Dünya newspaper, a six-month period of bidding opened for the land, which is estimated to be worth approximately $15 billion in sum.

Whether occupied or not, all 2B land will be up for sale and development.

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May 2012, TimeOut Istanbul (print edition only)

Turkey’s Association for Artists of Fantasy and Science Fiction (FABİSAD) was officially founded last October. The decade-old dream of a few writers and graphic artists, FABİSAD was formed to promote these genres by creating a national award for outstanding work in them, and organizing seminars, book drives, and festivals.

Three members — founding authors Doğu Yücel and Barış Müstecaplıoğlu, and graphic designer Emre Soyak — sat down with TimeOut to discuss FABİSAD and science fiction/fantasy in Turkey today.

Talk about your lives in the outside world. What are your day jobs?

Doğu Yücel: I earn money as a music writer; I’m the editor in chief of the most popular music magazine in Turkey, BlueJean Magazine.

Emre Soyak: I’m a graphic designer in a company that provides broadcasting graphics to major TV channels. Most of my work is actually being broadcasted as we speak. I’ve designed the interface for several sports channels.

Barış Müstecaplıoğlu: I’m a Human Resources manager at Atatürk Airport in Istanbul. It’s a great job for a writer, because I meet many people who tell me their life stories. Continue reading “INTERVIEW: A Conversation With Members of Turkey’s First Sci-Fi & Fantasy Artists’ Collective” →

2 May, 2012, IstanbulBeat

Two cries, as throaty and resonant as bullfrog songs, often echo around the streets near Orhan Pamuk’s Museum of Innocence: “Eskiciiii!” and “hurdacııı!”

They are the self-annunciations of junk or used-item dealers — hurdacı and eskici in Turkish — who prowl the gentrified neighborhood of Çukurcuma pushing wooden carts over cobblestones, on the lookout for discarded goods they can pick up and try to sell.

The rundown neighborhood where Pamuk bought the museum building more than a decade ago has since become one of Istanbul’s must-see tourist destinations. Most of the businesses on the museum’s street are now antique shops, selling bits of Istanbul nostalgia that wouldn’t look out of place in the Museum of Innocence itself.

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3 Apr., 2012, Bianet

While the AKP has certainly become more outspoken about its intent to assert influence over Turkey’s academic institutions, it has been doing so behind the scenes for several years now.

Two years ago, a scientist named Onur Hamzaoğlu began finding arsenic, mercury and lead in the women and children who live in Turkey’s Kocaeli Province, the country’s second biggest industrial zone.

Hamzaoğlu, the head of the public health department at the local university, encountered these heavy metals in infants’ feces and mothers’ breast milk in the course of a three-year research project that began in 2009 and will end later this year.

When he told a journalist about his findings in early 2011, however, Hamzaoğlu triggered a government campaign aimed at discrediting him and his research.

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2 Apr., 2012, Green Prophet

Virgin wilderness on Turkey’s western coast is threatened by the construction of new wind infrastructure. 

An organic farmer near İzmir in western Turkey awoke a few weeks ago to the sound of poles and transmission lines being installed on a hill near his farm. The lines will connect new wind energy projects in Çeşme to the city of İzmir, but pose a serious threat to future farming activity in the region, according to the farmer. The twist: this organic farmer is also the manager of one of Turkey’s first wind energy project developers.

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April 2012, TimeOut Istanbul (print edition only)

With the announcement last autumn that Turkey will be the market focus of the 2013 London Book Fair, it seems Turkey’s contemporary authors are finally beginning to get the recognition they deserve. Hakan Günday is one such rising star on Turkey’s literary scene. You won’t find English translations of Günday’s work in bookstores yet, but he’s nevertheless made an international name for himself as one of Turkey’s most up-and-coming young writers. The author of seven critically acclaimed novels since 2000, Günday is the only Turkish author invited to the London Book Fair this month. TimeOut Istanbul caught up with him before he left.

You were born in Rhodes, completed your primary education and some of your university years in Brussels, and went to Ankara for high school and most of your higher education. Is one of these places more home to you than the others?

Once you begin to travel as a child, the first place that becomes close to you seems to be your home. When you move for the second time, you quickly understand that you don’t have a home — that home, in fact, doesn’t exist if you keep traveling. My father was a diplomat, so we traveled a lot and I became really used to presenting myself in front of forty other little children with the hand of the teacher on my shoulder, saying, “This is your new friend.” It was difficult at first, and then I became a professional at it.

Continue reading “INTERVIEW: A Conversation with Hakan Günday” →

27 Mar., 2012, Green Prophet

Fresh produce stands like this one are popular all over Turkey. But these colorful displays contain a toxic blend of pesticides, according to a new Greenpeace report (in German).

Of 76 different fruits and vegetables recently evaluated, Turkish peppers contained the most excessive and dangerous amounts of pesticide chemicals, according to Food Without Pesticides, a new 26-page guide to European food released this week by Greenpeace Germany.

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8 Mar., 2012, Green Prophet

German wind turbine manufacturer Nordex will construct eleven 2.5 MW turbines for the Tektuğ Elektrik Group’s first wind project.

This autumn, on a mountain ridge in southeastern Turkey’s Adiyaman province, construction will begin on the 27.5 MW “Sincik” wind energy farm, Nordex announced today. It will be the flagship wind energy project of the Tektuğ Elektrik Group, a Turkish firm specializing in renewable energy.

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March 2012, TimeOut Istanbul (print edition only)

REVIEW: A Memento for Istanbul, by Ahmet Ümit, trans. by Rakesh Jobanputra (Dec. 2011)

Emperors who lived centuries ago rarely help modern-day policemen solve their crimes.

But in Ahmet Ümit’s latest mystery novel, a string of bizarre killings force three police detectives to scour the history of their city for solutions. All the victims are found near historical locations in Istanbul’s old city, beginning with the site of an ancient temple erected for King Byzas, the city’s first monarch. Every subsequent monument is also associated with a major figure from Istanbul’s past, each more recent than the last.

As the death toll rises — and it does so precipitously, with seven murders in seven days — history figures more and more vitally in the tale.

Continue reading “Murders Pile Up As History Comes Alive In Ümit’s Latest Mystery” →

27 Feb., 2012, Green Prophet

Streets become highways, trees make way for the mall in a new plan for Taksim Square in Istanbul.

Today, Istanbul’s Taksim Square is a bustling hub of activity, with majestic Gezi Park providing some natural solace — even when the trees are brown in winter, as in the above photo. But a new plan would eliminate most of the greenery in this photo and cut off Taksim from the rest of the city. That’s the argument of the Taksim Platform, a group of concerned citizens, urban planners, lawyers, and academics who have so far collected more than 13,500 signatures against the project. See what the new square would look like after the jump.

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