In 1972, Yorgo Güller, a Greek Christian from Istanbul, visited leafy Burgazada, one of the Princes’ Islands just off the city’s coast, looking for love. Almost forty years later, he is still...
The June 12 election triumph of Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development Party not only signaled a political change. It also heralded the start of evictions within the central, working-class...
From Kazakhstan’s southern city of Shymkent, Bifatima Dauletova walked hundreds of miles across the steppe about a decade ago, finally stopping at a “holy hill” in the village of Ungurtas. Or so...
The Abkhaz capital of Sukhumi these days amply illustrates French novelist Marcel Proust's maxim that houses are a “fleeting” receptacle for memories. But local authorities are out to prove Proust...
Architects in 2009 described Istanbul’s downtown neighborhood of Tarlabaşı as an unsafe place for children -- a district whose destruction and reconstruction would be in the interest of its...
The central Istanbul neighborhood of Tarlabaşı has long been labeled a no-go area, a safe haven for shady business, even a “terrorist’s nest” for the banned Kurdistan Workers’ Party. An ambitious...
For half a century, Hasankeyf, a Bronze-Age-era town on the banks of the river Tigris, has faced the threat of being submerged by construction of the proposed Ilisu Dam, part of a controversial 23...
First came the floods, which in May 2010 killed three people and left thousands homeless. Then came the flood of complaints about compensation. More than a year after central Azerbaijan’s Kura and...
Forget ferro-alloys or scrap metal. Used cars have now become Georgia’s top export, raking in tens of millions of dollars for state coffers, even while raising uncomfortable questions about the...
At the age of 14, Kifayat Mammadova was married and already an expectant mother. A year and a half later, her marriage had failed, her child had died, and she was on the road to Baku from her...