For well over a year now, Yabangee has been happily focusing on their various pursuits as members of the ATÖLYE community. In that time – which has seemingly flown by – the site has grown substantially in scope, having taken on more content, contributors, and community events. Much of these efforts are the result of long hours tinkering away in our home away from home, where we’ve had privilege to meet and get to know so many of the remarkable members of this creative space. Along the way, we’ve conducted over two dozen interviews in our ATÖLYE Spotlight series, learning about a wealth of impressive projects and finding inspiration in the personal stories shared.
As we celebrate the conclusion of our second successful season of Expat Spotlight and take some time to reflect in the calm of summer, we’ve finally committed to a suggestion frequently received, and come together for an internal chat with our two directors, Tarik Yassien and Tuğrul Alizade.
Could you tell us a little bit about yourself and your background? What brought you to Istanbul?
Tuğrul: I’m originally from Azerbaijan but have been living in Istanbul for nearly ten years now. I came here for my education and studied at Yıldız Teknik University. I love the city, so I continued to live here, mostly involved in event organization and relocation services.
Tarik: I’m from the States – obligated to say I was originally born in Queens, New York, but mostly grew up in North Carolina. I moved here in hopes of connecting with my Turkish roots over seven years ago, after completing my studies at UNC Chapel Hill. I spent the first few years here as an English teacher, and have never quite been sure what to do with my liberal arts degree, so I’m still here exploring and am also very much still in love with the city.
How did Yabangee come about? What have the various stages been like?
Tarik: So it was originally Yabangee – Istanbul for Expats by Expats, a project started in 2012 by a friend of mine, Tom Bacon, who moved back home to the UK in late 2013. I took over after that, dropping the ‘expat’ branding, and we’ve spent the last few years trying to grow the team of contributors, continue to offer useful content, and emphasize events as a means to build a sense of community. Up until the last year or so, it has honestly sort of been a side project that was just enjoyable to work on.
Tuğrul: The focus has always and will always be to help foreigners living in Turkey, especially Istanbul, and making it more accessible for them in English. Hopefully it gets them to a point where they feel assimilated, or at least connected with the city and comfortable here. In the last year and a half or so, a more concentrated effort has been taken in treating it as a serious pursuit, with a much stronger push in terms of content and many more events being offered, with a few which are much larger in scope. We’ve also brought on an editor, Selcen, who has really helped in this regard.
Could you tell us a bit about your team? What are your roles and how do you manage to get so many of us involved?
Tuğrul: On the day to day stuff, I mostly deal with event organization and any sort of bureaucratic or residency inquiries we receive. Tarik deals with the basic admin and our general outreach to the public. Selcen works with our contributors and takes on the bulk of the editing, basically anything you see on the website. We’re also lucky to have Tas who has taken on a more involved role in regards to social media.
As far as the contributors go, we’ve got over 80 active contributors in Istanbul at the moment. As you can imagine, everyone’s involved to varying degrees. In general, it’s very writing and photography focused, but people are welcome to be more involved.
To date, we’ve had over 200 people contribute to the site. Everyone’s been extremely supportive of the project and worked to help us grow. It’s definitely humbling, but also a great motivator.
Tarik: As to why they join? Well, probably for a lot of reasons. At a fundamental level, storytellers – whether they be writers, photographers, or other – want to share their experiences with others. We have a positive, admittedly niche, audience that embraces this type of content and we’re really lucky and thankful for that. Our tone isn’t too formal, we don’t have deadlines, people can generally participate to whatever extent they want to, they choose the topics, we provide feedback if they ask for it, they can self-promote within their content, and so forth. It’s extremely open and relaxed, so I’m not sure anyone really perceives it as “work”.
Beyond that basic point, I’d like to believe that people join, realize we’re a team, and stay involved because we’re a real community. For those that want to be more involved, we have the more structured approach like monthly meetings, article pitches, feedback, etc. That said, the real spirit of the team lies in the fact that we also have dinner parties, we meet for concept events like scavenger hunts or brunches, we have workshops, we play games, we have private parties, we crowdsource internally for ideas and inspiration, and basically we just get together to hang out and have fun. There’s the obvious bonuses like free press passes to concerts, including your work in your CV or portfolio, and so forth… but I’m convinced that people take part because it’s an uplifting and enjoyable group to belong to.
What brought you to ATÖLYE and how does it fit into your objectives?
Tarik: I’ll always be grateful to ATÖLYE for being so welcoming to both the team and me personally. Before moving here, we were all operating remotely, meetings were typically in my living room, and it just felt very amateurish – which really did negatively impact our output. While Yabangee’s organizational skills can often still feel amateurish [laughter], it’s extremely empowering to be surrounded by the community at ATÖLYE, both as a source of motivation since there are people putting in hard work seven days a week, and as a resource we can consult on anything ranging from strategic development to video editing to whatever else. The spirit of the place has a certain solidarity which just makes it easier to keep pushing forward and try new things. Having a place to meet regularly and bring our team together, in a professional but comfortable environment, has also been tremendous. I always emphasize this, but I also am just so, so relieved they have proper coffee on tap that tastes fantastic.
Tuğrul: They’ve really embraced the collaborator role in our Expat Spotlight series, which we can confidently say has been a big success and is one of our most consistent event series. They’ve put their weight behind everything from PR to logistics, offering full support in whatever capacity we ask, while still allowing us all the freedom we could want. Plus, perhaps more for Selcen than for any of us, they provide a secure, productive space to come to everyday and creative people to work alongside. Bomontiada in itself is also just a great, inviting space and we’re really lucky to work someplace so fun and vibrant.
Could you tell us a bit more about your various events and what goes on behind the scenes?
Tuğrul: Events are a big part of what we currently do at Yabangee and an even larger component in our vision for the future. We have several that happen fairly regularly in addition to Expat Spotlight, such as our Trivia Nights, LGBTQA nights, Get-Together Nights, Sunday Series, Potluck Picnics, and a few others. Every year we also host Halloween, which is a really huge one for us and I think many would say is the best one in the city, as well as events like Oktoberfest and St. Patrick’s Day.
Behind the scenes can actually be pretty demanding. You have to find the types of events that people want to attend, build promo around them, and market them effectively so that people actually turn up. In addition, you have to find a reputable venue that’s willing to collaborate, ideally give you prime real estate with a Friday or Saturday night, and want to properly foster a relationship for future events. Many of our events require decorations, game prep, networking with sponsors, bringing in DJs, etc. That being said, if people turn up and have a good time, it’s worth it.
Moving forward, we’d like to organize festivals that cater to a larger audience, and allow local businesses to take a more active role. Also, you can expect that we’ll be helping put together more cultural events and travel-based concepts in the near future, as well as fundraisers for various worthwhile causes.
What are some of the various challenges you face with Yabangee?
Tarik: I think the most distressing issue is simply that we have a smaller audience to really work with, as much of our target demographic has left the country or is finding it difficult to build a life here due to current circumstances. Trying to maintain website traffic, event turnout, and so forth with diminishing numbers is of course challenging. We remain optimistic for the future though.
Aside from that, we put a lot of effort into maintaining an editorial tone that we hope respects everyone, and often has to balance sincere cultural observations from outsiders with the knowledge that much of our audience is in fact local Turks who are going to approach our content from a different perspective. Sometimes something that seems innocuous to us can of course strike the wrong chord with someone else. At the end of the day, we do the best we can, and try to acknowledge our overall role as guests here and behave accordingly.
Finally, on a personal level, we really want to break that “yabancıs hanging out with yabancıs” stigma that many foreigners sort of embody or get pegged with when they move abroad. We’re a big team, with both a lot of internationals and locals. Our events are also promoted in Turkish and invites locals to join us. We want to be as inclusive as possible, and as Tuğrul said, help foreigners find a sense of belonging here. At first, I think our name can lead people to think otherwise, so we’re always working to tear down these assumptions.
What’s next on the horizon for Yabangee? Any final thoughts?
Tuğrul: As I mentioned – events, events, events! This year’s Halloween and Oktoberfest are going to be bigger and better than ever. We’ve got a few surprise events coming up that are really outside our normal scope as well, so hopefully we won’t be the only ones excited about it. We’re also open to collaborating with venues or organizations, so if anybody wants to do so, please do get in touch.
Tarik: We’ll also hopefully be adding some useful sections to the site in the coming months, but since roll outs always take longer than expected, I suppose we should wait a bit longer to formally announce it. I’d just like to end with a sincere and major thank you to everyone on the team who has helped us grow and find some meaning in the ‘bul, to our friends who put up with our incessant event invites and are still kind enough to support us in all sorts of ways, and of course to everyone who makes up our audience and has turned this into a real community. I don’t think we have an interview on Yabangee that ends with ‘thank yous’, but we’ve also never interviewed ourselves internally like this, so that’s OK right?
To continue to keep up with Yabangee, you’re on the right website. You can also follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
ATÖLYE Spotlight is our series on the inspiring community members of Istanbul’s most creative space.
All images courtesy of the interviewees.
