Lifestyle & Commentary

Having lived in Istanbul going on a decade, I have seen a lot of people come and go. It becomes almost like clockwork. Every...

“Silence is the worst. Whenever a thick cloud of silence descends, the yapping voices inside me become all the more audible, rising to the...

Editor's Note: Jasmine Baladi is one of the organizations at this year's We Are All Refugees event. Jasmine Baladi is a Syrian run, non-profit organization...

If we were to take our students’ grammatical grasp of English as a direct indication of their level of intelligence, and were to recognize...

Up until last year I was a happy man, a contented man, living in that commercial hub cum residential suburb of Bakırköy. Bakırköy’s unique...

Taksim Square is a place that is planned into almost every trip to Istanbul, one way or another. The name “Taksim” means “division”, from...

As a young Turkish woman who hasn’t lived abroad yet, the scope of my writing is largely about living in Turkey. In my essays,...

Perhaps there is no word more loaded and simultaneously mythologized yet scorned than the term “gypsy”. From Fleetwood Mac to Cher to Lady Gaga...

The Winter of 2018 experienced a 'train crisis' in Turkey as a large group of travel enthusiasts found themselves refreshing the website of the national...

Wherever you go, there you are.  And wherever you are, there is someone who wants to be somewhere else.  After living in the United...

The first time I came across the signature 'Yabancı' was when I stepped out of my house to do the privileged walk during the...

If you or a loved one are thinking of quitting smoking this summer, and you've got a basic handle on Turkish (or want to...

During my first few months in Istanbul I wasn’t exactly bowled over by the place. I thought it was pushy, crowded, ugly and disorganised....

It's with great sadness today that we've learned of the passing of long-time friend and contributor Barış Mumyakmaz. A graduate of Galatasaray University and the...

It was bound to happen sooner or later. But it happened much sooner than the citizens of Istanbul were ready for. And it happened in...

Istanbul Airport has a rhythm of its own part symphony, part storm. The first few times I flew out of IST, I underestimated that...

Being Australian and living in Istanbul, one of the hardest things to cope with at first was the difficulty of finding a pool to...

The gas mask is definitely too tight. When the three soldiers fly over Istanbul aboard the camouflage helicopter, the condensation almost stops Cem from...

Before I left for Istanbul, I had many friends promise that they would come and visit me. Unfortunately - since life gets in the...

In Turkish, the word ‘korkma’ means ‘don’t be scared.’ How I learned this makes for an interesting story—one which strengthened my belief that people,...

Turkey is one of the few countries in the world where the rate of HIV/AIDS cases has been increasing in the past decade. Despite...

Moving to Istanbul was an exciting thought. I get to live in a new country, surrounded by people of a different culture. Oh, the...

It started with my husband spotting a rat on his way to work. "Don't get scared, but I saw a mouse on the ground floor...

There is nothing more sacred to an expat than the taste of food from home, although this is the kind of truth we only...