Turkey
What Istanbul gave me
Why do novelists set their stories in cities or landscapes which seem to haunt them? Not the places of their…
How Trump inadvertently boosted Europe’s defense industry
With all the Hollywood drama and heart-pounding music of a Mission: Impossible trailer, NATO screened a short promotional film at…
What Trump and Erdogan want from each other
Donald Trump has made it clear that he’s attending this year’s Nato summit in Ankara for one reason only: ‘respect…
Putin and Erdogan are playing with fire in the Balkans and the Caucasus
As Russia and Turkey jostle for influence in Europe’s overlooked corners, regional tensions begin to resemble those in the build-up to the Great War
Iran’s tradition of martyrdom is key to understanding this conflict
One word stood out in the florid and overwrought announcement of the death of Iran’s Supreme Leader by a tearful…
Will Turkey intervene in Iran?
Even as Iran lashes out with missile and drone strikes against its wealthy Arab rivals in the Gulf, three neighbours…
The citizens of nowhere adrift in the West
Threatened with violence in her native Turkey, the writer Ece Temelkuran finds herself, like countless migrants, permanently ‘unhomed’
Why Erdogan wants to help Iran
The Iranian regime remains firmly in the crosshairs of American bombers. As President Trump mulls whether to strike, Turkey is…
Dr. Oz’s war on Armenian medical fraud
As Gangs of New York showed us, those who’ve settled in America have a tendency to bring Old World grudges over with…
A new era of nuclear weapons is here
The world is moving into a more dangerous age. According to the Peace Research Institute Oslo, last year set a…
There are glimmers of hope for Iraq’s Christians
It is 43˚C in Erbil, which a friend here describes as ‘cool’. Unlike my first visit in 2015, when Isis…
The merchant as global reporter
Joad Raymond Wren explores the role played by Europe’s polyglot traders in disseminating news before the invention of the telegraph
Why I burnt the Quran
My name is Hamit Coskun and I’ve just been convicted of a religiously aggravated public order offence. My ‘crime’? Burning…
The Kurds have finally given in to Erdogan
All wars end, one way or another. One of the longest wars in the Middle East, between Turkey and Kurdish…
Erdogan’s latest power move could backfire
Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has never been so weak – nor so strong. At home, he is facing the…
We need safeguarding from safeguarders
What does it mean, in practice, to say that reporting child abuse should be mandatory? It sounds appropriately severe, but…
Oblique and long but never boring: About Dry Grasses reviewed
About Dry Grasses is the latest film from Turkish auteur Nuri Bilge Ceylan and it had better – I thought…
Solo sisters
Gertrude Bell travelled extensively through Turkey before and after the first world war and the author plays dogged detective in her wake
All that remains
Barnaby Rogerson on how his collaboration with a great photographer has brought the ancient world very close
Feasts and fabrications
Japan’s ramen ‘tradition’ was created in 1958 to use up surplus imported flour, while Pizza Margherita’s specious royal connection helped boost Naples’s tourist trade
Diary
The wonderful Barbara Kingsolver wrote that hope is something you should not admire from a distance, but rather live inside…
Fake it till you make it
Not to sound too much like Kamala Harris during one of her peregrinations on the nature of time, but the…
