Gölyaka is one of those places that has the feel of the end of the world about it. The main road is lined with mud-brick and stone houses with pretty jutting-out cumbas (bay windows) but as we drive along its wide empty space there’s no getting away from the fact...

Really, there is nothing quite like it. Think back to the excitement of those Christmas mornings of childhood, magnify that feeling by a hundred and still you wouldn’t quite be able to evoke the tension of the last 15 minutes before the break of the fast (iftar) during Ramazan in...

“Hmm, the rate isn’t good today, I’m afraid,” says the receptionist at my hotel and immediately I feel my blood start to boil.It’s a fallacy commonly rolled out by commentators who haven’t spent much time in Turkey that things will be cheaper here because it’s not part of the eurozone. That...

Tucked away in the back streets of conservative Fatih in Old İstanbul there’s a mosque that boasts a particular treasure. The Hırka-ı Şerif is a garment believed to have belonged to the Prophet Mohammed and bequeathed by him to Veysel Karani, a Muslim mystic from Yemen whom he had never...

“I just turned the egg seller away. I sent him away last week too. He looked so shocked. Everyone else is doing the same thing. He brings a whole truck over from Yalova. What is he going to do with all those eggs?” This is not a piece about the...