Beth Shalom

Possibly the best architecture I've ever seen in a Synagogue, this is the Beth Shalom in Athens. On Friday, 23rd of March, 1944, German troops surrounded the Synagogue and assembled all Athenian Jews they could find, between 700 or 1000 people. Some of them came to the Synagogue on their own accord, so that they wouldn't be separated from their families. Within fifteen days, they were bound for Auschwitz. Today, the Synagogue is only open on weekends, attended by a few old people who still live there.

Radar Live

Seeing that other blogs such as the City on Earth have covered it, I felt obliged to post about the recent Radar Live festival that took place in the Black-Sea coast village of Kilyos. This was by far the largest of the recent series of Turkish camp-in music festivals, with a line-up including Marilyn Manson, Juliette Lewis and a shitload of other artists I've never heard of. Here is a shot from the hour-and-a-half long drive from the City to the festival, as we pass through Byzantine aqueducts that still carry water.

My friend Derya was waiting patiently at the entrance for a free ticket, while I dished out the equivalent of €45 for two days of concerts. Damn.

Captive audience: Entranced with the artists, she did not notice the impending shutter... of Memo Pervert Style!

I don't know how our children will be able to forgive the current trend of enormous, bug-eyed glasses. My friend Ayşe and distant relative Gözde are waiting for their boyfriends to replenish their beers.

... One of the visions that greeted electronica fans at the festival's techno stage / chill out lounge next to the beach. These are my friends Burcu and Inci.

While all of this was going on, this daddy-longlegs spider (family Pholcidae, possibly Pholcus phalangioides) was happily sitting on its web in the men's room, completely oblivious to the carnage of music and hominid sexuality around it.

Who will take them home? For those who didn't sleep over in the festival's tent city, the hours-long trip back home was particularly arduous. I still find it preferrable to a night in the tents.

Onwards with day two! This monday's Marilyn Manson concert was the climax of the four-day-long event, and attendance was in record levels. To complicate things further, the take-off site of the festival shuttle was blocked to all traffic due to a meeting organized to remember the victims of the Sivas massacre in 1993.

This sad event took place when religious fundamentalists burned thirty seven poets, singers, writers and artists alive during a cultural festival in the eastern Anatolian city of Sivas. Fourteen years on, no one's getting burned alive and many young people have sadly forgotten this tragedy. I took this picture as the festival crowd was made to walk about two miles through abandoned streets to an alternative pickup point. I also wanted to slap some young punks who kept complaining about "that stupid protest" that "ruined their day."

Young Mansonites: Three fans are waiting for the bus to arrive. Are they discussing who's more hardcore?

Young Mansonites: A pubescent couple whining about the heat and the Sivas protests. If they only knew...

Young Mansonites: Fashion and alt-culture spreads in waves, like a stone tossed into a pond. The early-2000's wave of gothic platform boots has only hit Turkey recently.

Oops, the water is too cold to swim! No problem, I'll just kick around and flail my arms up and down like a baby! My friend Sila took these photos.

The rest of the festival was fun, but exhausting. Especially those who tried to "sleep over" in flimsy tents found themselves exposed to extremes of heat, cold, hunger and drugs for four days. This guy was probably in the deepest sleep (or coma) of his life.

What will... become of us? Tired party people at the last day of the festival. The events ended in a chaos of organization, no one new where to go, or how. Still, except for the poignant co-incidence with the Sivas events, I really had a nice time.

A Turtle in Athens

Say hi to Turtle-friend! I saw him in a park in Athens. Your opinion of Mr. Turtle-friend might change substantially if you knew he packed a penis as long as himself.

Drunk in a Snowstorm

After hours in the winters of Ankara: My friends Neco, Ali and I are heading for an indeterminate destination under a whipping snowstorm.

Barely resisting the cold, Neco offers his last beer to Ali. With all the bars closing down early in weekdays, the only chilling alternative is to drink in the streets... no matter what it takes!

As a consequence of all the drinks, we end up drawing a giant snow phallus in front of a villa which we think is owned by members of the AKP, the local conservative party. All of these photos date back to 2005.

Young Passengers

Young couples on the boat crossing from Üsküdar to Besiktas.

A Melolonthid Beetle

This small beetle flew in from my window last week. I think it belongs to the family Melolonthinae (May beetles, June beetles, etc.) but even that is not certain. Can anyone identify him? Readers?

A Hip Bar in Athens

Here is a view from Booze, a bar I knew as "that artsy-fartsy place in Athens" for more than four months before realizing that it had a name. Perhaps you can see why.

All night long, DJs play very nice songs...

...while the drinking goes on outside as well as inside.

A Greek School from Kadiköy

The Greek Community School in Kadikoy, a relic of the cosmopolitan society that thrived in the last years of the Ottoman Empire.


This fantastic example of neoclassical architecture still preserves separate entryways for boys and girls. The school is still operational, but everyone studies together now.

Surp Takavor

The squiggly dome of the Surp Takavor Armenian Church in Kadıköy looks like something out of Jim Woodring's drawings.

Striped Buildings of Death

Is it just me, or is this red-and-dirty yellow striping an unspoken rule among horribly unplanned buildings in Turkey?

Turkish Hippies

I saw these hippies singing and dancing in a corner of Taksim's Istiklal Avenue at around two AM...

...later on, they were joined by this gigantic dude who must have been something like two meters tall.

Mating Rituals

Yeah! If I spend the whole night scribbling spastic goblins on this wall, I just might attract...

...the attention of these fashion chicks! Both shots are from "fashion parties"organized by Istanbul Street Style.

Crap Buddha

I saw this molten-looking Buddha at a Chinese/Japanese restaurant in Ankara, perhaps placed there with the hopes of providing a more authentic atmosphere. Personally, all it provided me was an overwhelming desire to throw up all over it.

A Greek Church in Istanbul

This small and peaceful Greek church still rings its bells on the hills of Sariyer.

Convergent Evolution in Worm-Like Reptiles

Although it looks like an overgrown worm, this creature, a Typhlops vermicularis, is a snake, albeit a highly simplified one. It is very abundant on the Mediterranean coast of Turkey, especially in spring. I found this one at Olympos, a campers' and stoners' paradise near Antalya.

A fatter Typhlops? NOT! This Blanus strauchi, although superficially similar to a blindsnake, actually belongs to a wholly different group of squamate reptiles. Unlike a blindsnake it has a more rigid body, but looser-fitting skin. This enables it to move backward as easily it moves forward, earning it the Greek name "Amphisbaena", which means something like "both ways."

Taxonomically distant but visually similar, these two worm-like reptiles beautifully illustrate convergent evolution in action.

Mystery Elephant

I don't know who would build a neon-orange concrete statue of an elephant on the side of a road, or why.

Can't Get Enough Froglets

What is this? A booger with legs? NO! It's one of the new batch of Bufo viridis froglets I've been raising. He's the first one to complete his metamorphosis.

Here's a better view of the little bugger. His tail hasn't been fully absorbed yet, but he can't wait to get on to land.

Here, he is trying to climb on top of my copy of Eric Hobsbawm's Age of Empire.

Blimbifroglet versus the history of the 19th century! Who will win? WHO?!

I will teach you the meaning of SMALL! The absurd size of my little friend is better understood with this shot of him on an A4 paper. I set him free in the moist, shady corner of my garden a few minutes after this photo was taken. I hope you are safe and happy frog!

At the British Museum

The dazzling public library inside London's British Museum.

A Beetle Larva

A shiny beetle larva I found near Bodrum, of an unknown species. Beetles owe their stupendous diversity partly to the widely-different habits of their larvae. This decreases competition between adults and juvenniles, greatly increasing their survival rate.

The Old and the New

A trendy design and architecture studio sits above a mom-and-pop hardware store in the hips district of Nisantasi.

The Guns of 1908

This big British-made, muzzle-loading, rifled cannon fired the first salutes of the 1908 Young Turk revolution in Thessaloniki, when it was still an Ottoman city. From the Naval Museum in Besiktas.

An Armenian Orphanage in Istanbul

Covered in litter, rudely blocked by parking cars and completely obscured by flashy signs and billboards, the gateway of the Kalfayan Armenian Orphanage stands as a poignant reminder of Turkey's neglected non-Muslim minorities.