Strength Born of Unity
essays ·
Körnerpark and the Ilsenhof cooperative in Neukölln still give people of modest means a beautiful place, held by good design and by a civic…
essays
27 essays · page 2 / 3
To Be Free, You Have to Set Free
essays ·
David Bowie takes my hand in Berlin, at Hansa Studios, where he became anonymous and free, and where Heroes is said to have helped loosen the Wall.
Istanbul, City of Stories
essays ·
Telling a northern group how two hundred years marked Istanbul, I remember Sirkeci, Galata Tower and Taksim, and that this city of stories is still…
Everything Returns to Its Source
essays ·
In Kalkan a taxi driver brings my lost wallet home, and I see how life bends back towards my father's house.
A New Life
essays ·
I weigh anchor from salaried life, finish a master's thesis fifteen years late, and begin at Medipol as the manager of my own days.
In Praise of Spring, or Night Meeting*
essays ·
After a hard winter, spring comes for the thirty-seventh time, with jasmine on the table and Atilla Ilhan's poem, and the question of how to meet it.
The Circle of Fate
essays ·
A song from my mother's kitchen radio brings back a lucky childhood, and the thought that today is not as dark as it feels.
Beyoğlu Is Not What It Was. Are We Still Ourselves?
essays ·
Mihayil still asks if Tarabya and Büyükada are not beautiful. I swallowed, and could not tell him they are not.
Mother, Where Is My Youth?
essays ·
As the ferry draws in to Beşiktaş, I find my first youth buried under a caged shore: a tea garden, a vanished petrol station, a warehouse turned…
Reporting from the Front, or Not
essays ·
At the 2016 Venice Architecture Biennale, Darzana, the Türkiye Pavilion, was a hybrid ship that answered the theme once I stood in front of it.