In the 1930s when Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, Turkey’s first president, was trying to construct a history of Turkey that would suit its new…
No matter how little known they may be now, the beys (lords) of Turkey’s Beylik Era bestowed on Anatolia some of its most…
Before it housed the glamour and glitz that was the court of the Ottoman sultans, İstanbul was, as Constantinople, the capital of the…
All things Ottoman have rarely seemed more fashionable in Turkey. Whether it’s Ottoman motifs in fabrics, Ottoman houses finding new life as boutique…
Akşemsettin was born in Damascus in 1389, although he later moved to Amasya where he studied languages and medicine, becoming one of the first people to…
Last year I made a hare-brained dash to Şavşat in northeastern Turkey in the depths of winter. The reason? Nearby Veliköy is the…
Cappadocian thermal resort …
I remember the heat. I remember the dust. I remember the curiously impassive faces. I remember the rumble of the giant Caterpillar trucks.…
“Big Mustafa Paşa” (?) Just inland from the Sea of Marmara coast road once it passes Yenikapı is Kocamustafapaşa, the official modern name…
Taksim Meydanı (Taksim Square) is to İstanbul what Trafalgar Square is to London or Times Square to New York. It’s here that Turks…