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Qualified Appreciations at Hagia Sophia
I’m an atheist anarcho-Buddhist, and I didn’t want to go stand in line to look at the Hagia Sophia, one of the oldest and largest monuments to monotheism and feuding totalitarian religious dogma in...
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Ruinous Sex Cult(ure) in Aphrodisias
If you visit Turkey, it’s definitely worth strolling the nicely overgrowing ruins of Aphrodisias, a place originally erected in honor of a local cult’s goddess of fertility who has come to be known...
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Kayaking Bafa Gölü in Southwestern Turkey
Lake Bafa used to be part of the Aegean Sea, but time and nature gradually closed it off. Now it’s a very, very large and brackish lake, nature preserve, camping spot, and popular destination for...
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Kardeşimsin (You Are My Brother), Michael Brown
Kardeşimsin Mike (“You are my brother, Mike”): Street stencil in Galata, Istanbul expressing solidarity with Michael Brown, who was killed by police offer Darren Wilson in Ferguson, Missouri on August...
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Native Americana in Turkey and Beyond
At the Dandalos Otel (hotel) in Karacasu, near the ruins of Aphrodisias in southwest Turkey, I was surprised to come across this 8-foot-high translucent image of an historical Native American chief....
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Wishes to Medusa at the Basilica Cistern
The Basilica Cistern (Yerebatan Sarnıcı) is spooky, but would be a lot spookier if it weren’t overrun with tour groups, or if it was still full of the corpses they once stored here, before turning it...
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1500-Year-Old Byzantine Hole in the Ceiling
This photo, of a portal in the ceiling of one of the dim walkways that connect the first level to the second at the Hagia Sophia in Istanbul, strikes me as a great visual metaphor for what all of the...
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Scenes from Alicati, Turkey
Alicati is a town on the “Turkish Riviera,” and it’s a favored getaway for wealthy Europeans, especially Greeks. It’s almost certainly lovelier to me during the quiet off-season. Shoe polisher and...
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Fikret Muallâ: “Colors that evoke dreams”
Fikret Muallâ’s statue in Moda, Kadikoy, in Istanbul. (c) Boots Natanama Avant-garde painter Fikret Muallâ (1904-1967) was born in Istanbul, but lived most of his life in France. Muallâ was a soul...
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Snow Day in Istanbul
“Corruption is like a ball of snow, once it’s set a rolling it must increase.” — Charles Caleb Colton Unlike corruption, snow is growing rarer in Istanbul, but it doesn’t appear to interrupt the usual...
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