The mysterious urban-graffiti artist Invader has also paid Istanbul a visit, as a guest of the local Borusan Art Gallery. Lately, some Turkish art-scene assholes have began to claim this piece as their own. What a shame.
Tuesday, 23 October 2007
Istanbul Invader
The mysterious urban-graffiti artist Invader has also paid Istanbul a visit, as a guest of the local Borusan Art Gallery. Lately, some Turkish art-scene assholes have began to claim this piece as their own. What a shame.
Monday, 22 October 2007
At Caddebostan
Bacteria apartment? Fanciful decorations on a beautiful 1960's building from Caddebostan. Comparable to Gylfada in Athens, this area is one of the most beautiful and quiet residential areas in Istanbul.
Sunday, 21 October 2007
At Nisantasi
Here are some pictures from Nişantaşı, arguably the most westernized neighborhood in all of Istanbul. Here, you see one of the Ottoman-era obelisks that mark the frontiers of the district.
It is not a large place between the obelisks, yet it is home to countless upscale apartments, restaurants, bars, pubs and galleries; all the amenities of a posh life. For example, this massive business center has a pleasant arcade with cinemas, numerous bars and bookstores in it.
If you close your eyes, you could just imagine that you are in Rome or Barcelona. But that would be a little pathetic.
Here is Taps, one of the nicest restaurant/pubs in the vicinity.
The omnipresent House Cafe, which has branches in every upscale district in Turkey, is not absent from Nisantasi either. Its spacious garden is a local favorite.
Nişantaşı is also home to the famous Teşvikye Mosque, one of the best examples of neoclassical architecture on a mosque. Nişantaşı is also home to many of Istanbul's Jewish and Armenian families, and newly-settled foreigners. 
If you ever visit Istanbul, you should make a trip to this neighborhood, albeit while keeping an eye on your wallet. If you never come this way, you can get an idea by reading the life of a local Nişantaşite on this blog, which seems to consist of an endless succession of parties, drinking, birthdays and celebration.
A Dead Crab
I found this poor dried-up crab next to a stone in Çeşme this summer...
...it almost looked like it was seeking shelter from the heat before it died. Of course, it could have also been killed by a marine bird and dropped there.
...Whatever his fate, the poor crab died only meters away from the safety of the sea. Rest in peace, friend.
Friday, 19 October 2007
A Guide to Turkish Bullshit Conspiracy Books
With nationalism in Turkey at an all-time-high in more than a century and the country ready to launch itself into war in northern Iraq, I thought it would be a nice way to examine one of the reflections of the growing tide of Turkish nationalism, on the dark, surreal world of... Turkish bullshit conspiracy books!
Turkey already had a healthy industry of bullshit conspiracy books, like many of its neighbors. (Greek friends would certainly understand what I mean here.) Over the time there grew a small-but virulent library of every sort of paranormal shit imaginable, ranging from Von Daniken to UFOs to telepathic conversations with Ra to Satanist paranoia, as you can see here.
(Drugs-Sex-Violence, SATANISM, the Devil's Triangle, by Kemal Akmaral.)
Turkish authors had also been contributing regularly to this accumulation of shit, but it was only in the last decade that their works begin to out-sell translations of foreign shit. This book, detailing Earth's physical and spiritual collision with an extra-dimensional planet called Marduk, was a brief bestseller. Most memorably, it spawned the mocking catch-phrase, "Marduk gelecek, ebenizi sikecek", which meant, jokingly, that Marduk would arrive to do something really nasty to our mothers' midwives, sometime in 2012. Still, it was plain and naive bullshit, with no discernible connections to real-life issues.
(2012 - Rendezvous with Marduk, by Burak Eldem.)
Things began to get a little weird when desperate writers tried to mix Turkish supremacism with cosmic issues. This book, supposedly about the roots of Turkish culture, actually tells how Turkish people are probably alien supermen from Sirius. (In this respect, this is an ironic parallel with Greek Omada Epsilon moonshine, which portrays Greeks as Sirian supermen.)
(The Cultural Roots of the Turks, by Engin Candan.)
"Mind Control Experiments of the CIA"... Oooh, scary stuff! Americans began to replace UFO's as the scapegoats for everything strange and wrong in the world, as the United States' misadventures in the region gained the antipathy of a lot of Turks.
(Mind Control Experiments with CIA Documentation, by Ömer Özkaya.)
Meanwhile, the bestselling impact of Dan Brown's Da Vinci Code spurred a remarkable interest in all sorts of secret organizations that (supposedly) ruled the world. As a results, you have these Turkish translations of two shit-tastic tomes on Opus Dei and the Illuminati, respectively. The Illuminati book is especially surreal in its concept, not only does it maintain that "...the Illumninati have been guiding human affairs since the time of the pyramids," but it also states, quite sincerely, that they are a reptilian race out there to conquer the world!
(Who Are the Illuminati?, by Lindsay Porter and What is Opus Dei?, by Noam Friedlander.)
Always keen to catch up with the West, Turkish authors were not late to produce their own books on mystical-cults, albeit with a local twist. This strange example simply adapts the machine-gun method by listing all sorts of secret societies, conspiracies and improbable links right there on its cover. Inside, the book is nothing but a protracted smear campaign against the Greek Patriarchate in Istanbul. The dangerous fusion of real-time vendettas with fictional fantasies was beginning to take root...
(The Gate of Hatred, by Muammer Karabulut.)
No one is immune from prosecution. Here, we see the scheming deeds of "The Masonic founders of the Turkish Repblic," (Who are also probably Jews, mind you!) revealed by a certain Emre Avşar, on a book from Nokta Publishing...
(The Masons who Founded the Republic, by Emre Avşar.)
...who does not refrain from publishing time-tested antisemitic snake-oil such as the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. The irony is, the same Nokta Publishing who tries to demonize Jews and Masons as shady, plotting cabals itself is possibly a shady, plotting cabal of Turco-Islamic extremists. Their roster includes other gems such as a book on how prayer can heal you, and a twisted creationist "Introduction to Darwinism."
(I don't even want to name this stupid book again, sorry.)
...While Protocols was never a hit among the Turkish public the way it is in certain Arab countries, closet antisemitism and a fascination with "hidden Jews" unfortunately gained a popular following. The fuse to fire this disgusting trend was this book, by a certain Soner Yalçın, who remains staunchly convinced that "...every person involved in the Turkish media is either a hidden Jew, or has Jewish ancestors..." Efendi is thus a book that goes on to deduce how almost every important figure in the last century of Turkish history is a scheming Jew, often from as limited evidence as their names, or a single diplomatic visit.
(Efendi, the Great Secret of the White Turks, by Soner Yalçın.)
Efendi eventually spawned a sequel, the aptly-named Efendi-2, which further explained how the current wave of religious wingnuts running the government were also crypto-Jewish Zionists! This horrendous oxymoron, while laughable upon close inspection, nevertheless rang true in the sick minds of many Turkish nationalists.
(Efendi-2, the Great Secret of White Muslims, by Soner Yalçın again.)
The wave of anti-Islamist antisemitism eventually reached its zenith as a man named Ergün Poyraz wrote a series of books detailing how every member of the ruling religious party was a cypto-Jew with a secret agenda to "divide the nation." Scarily, every one of these books became a bestseller. Ergün Poyraz, however, never got to enjoy his hate-mongering success as he was arrested for charges of forming an armed gang of ultra-nationalist thugs.
(The Warrior of Moses and The Rose of Moses, by Ergün Poyraz.)
While all of this was happening, another sub-genre of bullshit conspiracy books was in the making. It all began with Orkun Uçar, who, until the end of 2004, was a quiet little fantasist, writing Lovecraft and Gibson inspired tales of lost book clubs and demonic possessions. Here is one of his books from that early period. No one was ready for what happened next...
(Crimson Preacher, by Orkun Uçar.)
In 2004, teaming up with another writer named Burak Turna, Orkun wrote Metal Storm, a "what-if" story of a Turkish-American war set in the Middle East. Hot on the heels of a brief Turco-American confrontation in the Iraqi border, the book became an ultra-bestseller, made Orkun rich, and even caused concern among American diplomats. It was the point at which all of Turkey's collective anti-American hysteria burst, through one crappy pulp bestseller.
Metal Storm sold half a million of copies in a country where a batch of 1000 copies is considered "good printing." It also introduced the penis-size-like tradition of printing the number of copies published on the books' covers.
(Metal Storm, by Orkun Uçar and Gökhan Turna.)
Hot on the heels of Metal Storm came the aptly-titled Metal Storm 2- The Lost Body, where scheming Israelis steal Kemal Atatürk's body from his mausoleum in Ankara, and a "secret war" between the two countries erupts. After writing pages upon pages of awful stories like this, I wonder how Orkun Uçar can call his work "...a philosophical and scientific calculation..." with a straight face.
(Metal Storm 2 - The Lost Body, by Orkun Uçar only.)
Notice also that Orkun's partner Burak Turna's name is missing from this volume. Hmm... could it be that...
...he went on to write his own sequel to Metal Storm after arguing over the first book's spoils in a truly Turkish comedy? Seems like that's exactly what happened! This might look hilarious to you foreign viewers, but imagine: until recently there were two newspapers called "Turkey" in Turkey. This bumbling, egotistical chest-thumping copycat mentality is only too common over here.
I don't know what happens in the book, but I'd bet it's about evil Americans plotting over our precious Republic again.
(Metal Storm 2 - Deliverance, by Burak Turna only.)
Continuing solo, Orkun Uçar managed to turn out one more installment to the Metal Storm saga, this time pitting the evil Russian Mafia against the previous books' James Bond-like "hero," Gökhan Birdağ. Poor fictional Gökhan, he's been reduced to hunting down drug-dealing Mafia members when he used to blow up entire countries' capitals in the first books. Also noticed that the book's erection-like "sales counter" is advertising only a measly fifty thousand when it used to scream about six-figure digits.
(Metal Storm 3 - Crimson Wolf, by Orkun Uçar.)
The Metal Storm mania eventually burned out, but there was still blood left in Orkun Uçar's pen. Teaming up with a certain Burak Turan (NOT Burak Turna, his old partner in the Metal Storm series,) he churned out this Lovecraftian piece of horror, about an apocalyptic battle between demons, Americans and... -you guessed it- Turkey. When they said "Great Satan", I guess Orkun took it a little too seriously.
(Pitch Black, by Orkun Uçar and Burak Turan)
Meanwhile, Orkun Uçar's old partner Burak Turna (NOT Turan,) went on for a complete image makeover, dyed his hair to an intellectual blond, and forged a new genre... that of the intellectual bullshit Turkish war pulp. In his website, he said he tried to "answer Francis Fukuyama's discourse as an ambassador for the entire Eastern world," which is another way of saying he wrote a barely-believable pulp story where a war erupts over a conflict between European racists Turkish gastarbeiters.
(The Third World War, by Burak Turna again.)
What, another fascist war pulp with a badly Photoshopped cover where Turkey defeats everyone else? I wonder where I'd seen that before? Yawn...
(The Great Middle-Eastern War, by Emre Bostanoğlu.)
Finally, I want to conclude this mind-boggling tour with the gem of my collection, straight from the Turkish publishers of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a tear-jerking narrative where Mustafa Kemal Atatürk is cloned on the hundredth anniversary of his landing on Samsun, and leads Turkey on a global battle of salvation. So much for a man who once said "Peace at home, peace in the world."
This glimpse of the worst books read by the populace can reveal how the conflict between a government of religious fundamentalists and a "deep state" of kooky nationalists, as well as the entire country's cathartic inability to face its history is threatening to wipe out all breathing space for rational, free-minded people in Turkey.
Turkey already had a healthy industry of bullshit conspiracy books, like many of its neighbors. (Greek friends would certainly understand what I mean here.) Over the time there grew a small-but virulent library of every sort of paranormal shit imaginable, ranging from Von Daniken to UFOs to telepathic conversations with Ra to Satanist paranoia, as you can see here.(Drugs-Sex-Violence, SATANISM, the Devil's Triangle, by Kemal Akmaral.)
Turkish authors had also been contributing regularly to this accumulation of shit, but it was only in the last decade that their works begin to out-sell translations of foreign shit. This book, detailing Earth's physical and spiritual collision with an extra-dimensional planet called Marduk, was a brief bestseller. Most memorably, it spawned the mocking catch-phrase, "Marduk gelecek, ebenizi sikecek", which meant, jokingly, that Marduk would arrive to do something really nasty to our mothers' midwives, sometime in 2012. Still, it was plain and naive bullshit, with no discernible connections to real-life issues.(2012 - Rendezvous with Marduk, by Burak Eldem.)
Things began to get a little weird when desperate writers tried to mix Turkish supremacism with cosmic issues. This book, supposedly about the roots of Turkish culture, actually tells how Turkish people are probably alien supermen from Sirius. (In this respect, this is an ironic parallel with Greek Omada Epsilon moonshine, which portrays Greeks as Sirian supermen.)(The Cultural Roots of the Turks, by Engin Candan.)
"Mind Control Experiments of the CIA"... Oooh, scary stuff! Americans began to replace UFO's as the scapegoats for everything strange and wrong in the world, as the United States' misadventures in the region gained the antipathy of a lot of Turks.(Mind Control Experiments with CIA Documentation, by Ömer Özkaya.)
Meanwhile, the bestselling impact of Dan Brown's Da Vinci Code spurred a remarkable interest in all sorts of secret organizations that (supposedly) ruled the world. As a results, you have these Turkish translations of two shit-tastic tomes on Opus Dei and the Illuminati, respectively. The Illuminati book is especially surreal in its concept, not only does it maintain that "...the Illumninati have been guiding human affairs since the time of the pyramids," but it also states, quite sincerely, that they are a reptilian race out there to conquer the world!(Who Are the Illuminati?, by Lindsay Porter and What is Opus Dei?, by Noam Friedlander.)
Always keen to catch up with the West, Turkish authors were not late to produce their own books on mystical-cults, albeit with a local twist. This strange example simply adapts the machine-gun method by listing all sorts of secret societies, conspiracies and improbable links right there on its cover. Inside, the book is nothing but a protracted smear campaign against the Greek Patriarchate in Istanbul. The dangerous fusion of real-time vendettas with fictional fantasies was beginning to take root...(The Gate of Hatred, by Muammer Karabulut.)
No one is immune from prosecution. Here, we see the scheming deeds of "The Masonic founders of the Turkish Repblic," (Who are also probably Jews, mind you!) revealed by a certain Emre Avşar, on a book from Nokta Publishing...(The Masons who Founded the Republic, by Emre Avşar.)
...who does not refrain from publishing time-tested antisemitic snake-oil such as the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. The irony is, the same Nokta Publishing who tries to demonize Jews and Masons as shady, plotting cabals itself is possibly a shady, plotting cabal of Turco-Islamic extremists. Their roster includes other gems such as a book on how prayer can heal you, and a twisted creationist "Introduction to Darwinism."(I don't even want to name this stupid book again, sorry.)
...While Protocols was never a hit among the Turkish public the way it is in certain Arab countries, closet antisemitism and a fascination with "hidden Jews" unfortunately gained a popular following. The fuse to fire this disgusting trend was this book, by a certain Soner Yalçın, who remains staunchly convinced that "...every person involved in the Turkish media is either a hidden Jew, or has Jewish ancestors..." Efendi is thus a book that goes on to deduce how almost every important figure in the last century of Turkish history is a scheming Jew, often from as limited evidence as their names, or a single diplomatic visit.(Efendi, the Great Secret of the White Turks, by Soner Yalçın.)
Efendi eventually spawned a sequel, the aptly-named Efendi-2, which further explained how the current wave of religious wingnuts running the government were also crypto-Jewish Zionists! This horrendous oxymoron, while laughable upon close inspection, nevertheless rang true in the sick minds of many Turkish nationalists.(Efendi-2, the Great Secret of White Muslims, by Soner Yalçın again.)
The wave of anti-Islamist antisemitism eventually reached its zenith as a man named Ergün Poyraz wrote a series of books detailing how every member of the ruling religious party was a cypto-Jew with a secret agenda to "divide the nation." Scarily, every one of these books became a bestseller. Ergün Poyraz, however, never got to enjoy his hate-mongering success as he was arrested for charges of forming an armed gang of ultra-nationalist thugs.(The Warrior of Moses and The Rose of Moses, by Ergün Poyraz.)
While all of this was happening, another sub-genre of bullshit conspiracy books was in the making. It all began with Orkun Uçar, who, until the end of 2004, was a quiet little fantasist, writing Lovecraft and Gibson inspired tales of lost book clubs and demonic possessions. Here is one of his books from that early period. No one was ready for what happened next...(Crimson Preacher, by Orkun Uçar.)
In 2004, teaming up with another writer named Burak Turna, Orkun wrote Metal Storm, a "what-if" story of a Turkish-American war set in the Middle East. Hot on the heels of a brief Turco-American confrontation in the Iraqi border, the book became an ultra-bestseller, made Orkun rich, and even caused concern among American diplomats. It was the point at which all of Turkey's collective anti-American hysteria burst, through one crappy pulp bestseller.Metal Storm sold half a million of copies in a country where a batch of 1000 copies is considered "good printing." It also introduced the penis-size-like tradition of printing the number of copies published on the books' covers.
(Metal Storm, by Orkun Uçar and Gökhan Turna.)
Hot on the heels of Metal Storm came the aptly-titled Metal Storm 2- The Lost Body, where scheming Israelis steal Kemal Atatürk's body from his mausoleum in Ankara, and a "secret war" between the two countries erupts. After writing pages upon pages of awful stories like this, I wonder how Orkun Uçar can call his work "...a philosophical and scientific calculation..." with a straight face.(Metal Storm 2 - The Lost Body, by Orkun Uçar only.)
Notice also that Orkun's partner Burak Turna's name is missing from this volume. Hmm... could it be that...
...he went on to write his own sequel to Metal Storm after arguing over the first book's spoils in a truly Turkish comedy? Seems like that's exactly what happened! This might look hilarious to you foreign viewers, but imagine: until recently there were two newspapers called "Turkey" in Turkey. This bumbling, egotistical chest-thumping copycat mentality is only too common over here.I don't know what happens in the book, but I'd bet it's about evil Americans plotting over our precious Republic again.
(Metal Storm 2 - Deliverance, by Burak Turna only.)
Continuing solo, Orkun Uçar managed to turn out one more installment to the Metal Storm saga, this time pitting the evil Russian Mafia against the previous books' James Bond-like "hero," Gökhan Birdağ. Poor fictional Gökhan, he's been reduced to hunting down drug-dealing Mafia members when he used to blow up entire countries' capitals in the first books. Also noticed that the book's erection-like "sales counter" is advertising only a measly fifty thousand when it used to scream about six-figure digits.(Metal Storm 3 - Crimson Wolf, by Orkun Uçar.)
The Metal Storm mania eventually burned out, but there was still blood left in Orkun Uçar's pen. Teaming up with a certain Burak Turan (NOT Burak Turna, his old partner in the Metal Storm series,) he churned out this Lovecraftian piece of horror, about an apocalyptic battle between demons, Americans and... -you guessed it- Turkey. When they said "Great Satan", I guess Orkun took it a little too seriously.(Pitch Black, by Orkun Uçar and Burak Turan)
Meanwhile, Orkun Uçar's old partner Burak Turna (NOT Turan,) went on for a complete image makeover, dyed his hair to an intellectual blond, and forged a new genre... that of the intellectual bullshit Turkish war pulp. In his website, he said he tried to "answer Francis Fukuyama's discourse as an ambassador for the entire Eastern world," which is another way of saying he wrote a barely-believable pulp story where a war erupts over a conflict between European racists Turkish gastarbeiters.(The Third World War, by Burak Turna again.)
What, another fascist war pulp with a badly Photoshopped cover where Turkey defeats everyone else? I wonder where I'd seen that before? Yawn...(The Great Middle-Eastern War, by Emre Bostanoğlu.)
Finally, I want to conclude this mind-boggling tour with the gem of my collection, straight from the Turkish publishers of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a tear-jerking narrative where Mustafa Kemal Atatürk is cloned on the hundredth anniversary of his landing on Samsun, and leads Turkey on a global battle of salvation. So much for a man who once said "Peace at home, peace in the world."This glimpse of the worst books read by the populace can reveal how the conflict between a government of religious fundamentalists and a "deep state" of kooky nationalists, as well as the entire country's cathartic inability to face its history is threatening to wipe out all breathing space for rational, free-minded people in Turkey.
Thursday, 11 October 2007
A Haunted House
Around the early days of September, I heard a horrible, draw-out wail rising from this old house, near the Karacaahmet district on the Asian side of Istanbul.
Even though I'd passed it by hundreds of times, it had never occurred me before to take a proper look at this place. Look at the beautiful, intricate design of the doors. This was probably the property of a rich Armenian or Greek family, before they abandoned it for better futures.
The house still had old tags for gas lines. This method of heating and illumination was discontinued sometime after the sixties or the seventies, giving a possible date for the last time it was inhabited.
The garden was full of friendly cats, but no ghosts. There was also a deep, old water well that I almost fell in. I covered it up with planks and branches lest the poor cats don't.
I couldn't find anything else in the garden, but there were plenty of dark, broken windows I could poke my camera through...
...the flashes only revealed trash and desolation. Just as flashes were going off, however, a ghostly scream began to emanate from the interior of the house. Now it sounded more like...
...a dog's cry. The "ghost" was just a poor, blind old dog that had somehow crawled into the house to die. It couldn't move about as I took these photos, it just kept wailing and wailing.
I left the place with a terrible sense of sadness for the wretched creature.If ghosts had any basis in reality, however, Istanbul would be haunted by entire families of Greeks, Armenians and other non-Turkish minorities whose lives had been erased by a century-long history of national homogenization. As if their departure wasn't enough, the remainders of their houses, schools and churches are purposefully being allowed to rot away, as if the buildings somehow constitute a threat to the nation's integrity.
Molten Rabbit Chocolate Death
Kill us... kill... us... Stinky, semi-molten chocolate easter bunnies for sale in a bus station's gift store near Izmir. Turkish bakers learned to make bunny-shaped sweets from the Greeks, but they don't consume them for the same reasons.
At the Santa Maria Draperis Latin Church
The courtyard...
...and the interior of the Santa Maria Draperis Latin Church in Istiklal Avenue; arguably the most European part of Istanbul.
Exploding Plants
One of the most entertaining plants that I ever know of is the exploding cucumber, Ecballium elaterium. Found commonly throughout the Mediterranean shores, it explosively discharges a thick fluid that contains its seeds when touched. By explosive, I mean explosive; the jet of goo can sting your face just by its force. It is also distasteful, and irritating as hell when it gets to the eyes.A favorite childhood game: Opposing players sit around an Ecballium patch with long sticks in their hands and try to prod the right fruits that will go off in the face of their opponent. Remember and try it if you see these plants, it's mighty fun!
All Hail Atatürk
This gigantic monument to Mustafa Kemal Atatürk dominates a certain section of the Istanbul-Izmir highway. I have nothing against Atatürk, but I think totalitarian statues like this fly in the face of his vision of a society free from dogmas. It is also kitsch to the point of being ironic; Kemal's head on the spire almost gives the effect of being impaled on a stake.
Balls of Steel
No ball games: Tonight at the LSE (London School of Economics) campus, we saw a group of brave young men lining up with their testicles in their hands...
...a minute later they broke out into a wild run, at the end of which they spin around themselves for ten turns, all the while drinking gregariously...
...I guess this was one of England's antique pub games, or alternatively, an equally arcane initiation rite to the LSE rugby team that was holding a party that night...
...I could have just asked, of course, but it would be a bit awkward to ask the drunken guys with their balls hanging out just what they were up to.
Tuesday, 9 October 2007
A Green Fly
Nowhere is one immune to discovery and wonder. I was riding the Tube on London yesterday, when this iridescent green fly landed on my newspaper. I'd seen plenty of little flies like it before, but its bright green color was truly extraordinary.
As far as I can tell, this mysterious green visitor belongs to the Chironomids, a group of harmless flies that superficially resemble mosquitoes. I wonder what exactly it was, and why it had that wonderful color...I should really start taking a small vial and a bottle of ethanol solution everywhere I go.
For more on Chironomids, check out the Chironomid Home Page.
