Advice & Info

If you are in a relationship with a Turkish partner, one of the first things you may notice is not just how much he...

If you want to know how to improve your Turkish, I have one word for you: Bureaucracy. Forget expensive courses and fancy textbooks. Just...

As you walk down the streets of Istanbul, the air swirls with color and unfamiliar smells. Occasionally, you stop and peer into shop windows,...

How does an offhand comment from a fellow cyclist spark a fire that becomes a worldwide phenomenon? To find out, I talked with Sema...

I've found myself having the same conversation with various people over the past few months. It generally goes like this: "It's just different for native...

So you’re thinking about getting married in Turkey. If you’re a foreigner, you probably have quite a few questions about the process. I’m a...

After several years of learning Turkish, I can still find myself stumped in the midst of fast-paced conversations. This confusion occurs especially when an idiom...

To be a true yabancı, there are certain skills you have to master... 1. Become a teaholic. Drinking copious amounts of black tea is an...

Coming around a bend on the Anatolian side between the two bridges is the aptly named Çengelköy. The neighborhood, whose name means hook village in Turkish, is...

When I first came to Istanbul in October of 2014, I was completely bewildered by the recycling system. I found almost nothing on the...

There's a maxim of which every new parent should be reminded, and it's something about how nobody else is as interested in your baby...

If you have been living in Turkey long enough, surely you speak enough survival Turkish to get by in everyday life. However, every now...

If you have a nine to five job and a lot of responsibilities to handle, you might prefer to stay in after work or...

Everybody’s doing it. Or so I’d been told. Acutely aware of the boundaries imposed by my inherent shyness, clumsiness and geriatric bedtime, I’ve never...

My first introduction to Istanbul came via embellished story, when my father regaled me as a pre-teen with tales of his freewheelin' hippie misadventures traveling...

Every few months, Yabangee opens the door for university students who want to get involved in Istanbul’s social and cultural scene. Our volunteer roles...

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

Istanbul is huge and, a bit intimidating. Finding your "in" can take time. As a foreigner, you'll quickly see that breaking into Turkish friend...

We all know how devastating moving to a new country can be. You wonder how you will settle in, what the people will be...

Istanbul is Turkey’s most populated city with about 16 million inhabitants. Given its size and population, a great deal of work has been put...

"Home is where your heart is," they say, but what if your heart is divided across continents? Mine certainly feels that way. I belong...

Have you ever heard of the word yabancı, which also lends its name to this platform? If you've ever visited Istanbul, you’ve probably heard...

I have never really been a "film guy" in the traditional sense, but growing up in a small town where there wasn’t much else...

A feeling that was about to disappear in the chaos of life suddenly hit me so hard that I had to sit down and...