An Alawite woman prays in a shrine in Samandag, Turkey on July 13. Alawites, who in Turkey are sometimes called Arab Alevis, compose a small minority in the country. Alawites in Samandag said that the support of Turkey's ruling Sunni Justice and Development Party (AKP) for Syrian rebels seeking to topple the Alawite-dominated Assad regime in Syria has marginalized Alawites in the country.
Justin Vela is a freelance reporter based in Istanbul.
Residents in the Caucasus breakaway region of Nagorno Karabakh voted in elections for the de-facto president on July 20.
EurasiaNet.org contributing photojournalist Anahit Hayrapetyan, who lives in Yerevan, is originally from a village in Nagorno Karabakh. She returned to her native region to document the de-facto presidential election. This is a collection of Polaroid portraits taken of Nagorno Karabakh residents before and on election day.
More than 30 artists from across Central Asia and from as far away as France and Turkey gathered on the southern shore of Kyrgyzstan’s Lake Issyk-Kul earlier this month to share some creative juices. Besides painting and sculpture, they produced installations and performances, and undertook joint photography shoots.
Organized by the Bishkek-based NGO B-Art Center, the weeklong “Nomadic Art Camp” culminated in a July 13 exhibition at the National Art Museum in Bishkek and a jam session at the Hyatt Hotel featuring local and foreign musicians (including yours truly, Kide from the Jeans Community).
Shaarbek Amankul, head of B-Art Center, told EurasiaNet.org that he has organized the Nomadic Art Camp annually since 2009. The main idea, Amankul said, is to recognize Central Asia’s cultural heritage as a source of inspiration for contemporary art.
“Bio-cultural Heritage and Diversity” was the theme this year. Participants explored how to fuse traditional Central Asian materials, such as felt and wood, with modern ideas.
For example, Tajik artist Daler Mikhtodzhov combined his interests in the region’s ecology and spirituality in a performance, Stairway to Heaven. In the YouTube video, he appears reading suras – Koranic verses – inside a wooden cage. But the cage is not just a trap: It’s actually a ladder, the rungs wrapped in yesterday’s newspapers. Later, a male performer covered in black oil contemplates escape.
Organizers plan to take the exhibits on a road trip around Kyrgyzstan and distribute a catalogue internationally.
Konstantin Parshin is a freelance writer based in Tajikistan.
Thousands of men filled every nook and cranny of the Haji Yacoub Mosque in Dushanbe, Tajikistan's capital, for the first day of Ramadan on July 20. This year, the holy month began on a Friday, Muslims' main day of prayer.
David Trilling is EurasiaNet's Central Asia editor.
Iuza Beradze, a 71-year-old veteran folk singer, jokes as his wife helps him fasten the traditional Imeretian dress in the village of Kitskhi, Georgia. Beradze, who lost his son during the war in Abkhazia in the early 1990s, says that only singing and humor helped him survive all these years.
Temo Bardzimashvili is a freelance photojournalist based in Tbilisi.
A girl speaks on her mobile phone at the top of the steps near the the Ezgulik decorated archway leading into Mustaqillik Maydoni (Independence Square) in Tashkent, Uzbekistan.
Joanna Lillis is a freelance writer who specializes in Central Asia.
Didn’t know NATO was in the personal-protection business? Neither did NATO.
Istanbul vendors selling watches, knives and batteries from folding tables are offering a product bound to surprise the NATO officials who regularly visit the city: pressurized canisters of “American Style NATO Super-Paralisant.”
Also known as pepper spray, the 40-milliliter bottles of “CS-Gas Silliarde” claim to be made in Germany. But the G.I. Joe-look is 100-percent American.
It’s unclear how much demand there is for the spray in a city where the crime rate is relatively low.
One merchant in an underpass in the Eminönü neighborhood said he first saw the product – which he sells at the competitive price of 6 Turkish lira (roughly $3.50) – about two years ago. He laughed when told the slogan on the carton, which reads “Body Protect Aerosol Type,” could be misunderstood as a different type of defense: We were thinking deodorant.
But don’t be alarmed: NATO isn't arming the Turkish population. A spokesman in Brussels confirmed to EurasiaNet.org that the spray is “not a NATO product.”
Worshippers wait outside the Russian Orthodox Church in Bishkek for the acclaimed Tikhvin Icon of Our Lady to arrive from Russia. Believed to work miracles, the icon is visiting Kyrgyzstan for the first time, traveling across the country from July 9 to 13.
David Trilling is EurasiaNet's Central Asia editor.
A demonstrator hoists a banner with images of Vladimir Lenin, Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels and the late Turkish communist leader Hikmet Kıvılcımlı to mark May 1, International Workers' Day.
Tens of thousands of people, including communists, Kemalists and members of labor unions, thronged central Istanbul's Taksim Square to celebrate the national holiday.
Istanbul's annual May Day rallies have been peaceful in recent years, though many in the crowd today remembered clashes 35 years ago that left at least 34 dead.
David Trilling is EurasiaNet's Central Asia editor.
Girls milk cows at Kyrgyzstan's Song-Kul lake, where they migrate with their families every year to take advantage of the lush jailoo, or summer pasture. The lake sits at 3000 meters (almost 10,000 feet).
David Trilling is EurasiaNet's Central Asia editor.
