Alevi Outsider Art

The ghost of Jean-Michel Basquiat must be alive and well in the streets of Istanbul, painting signs for local shops.

Nalbur means "hardware store" in Turkish. Man, check out that Opel logo!

Eventually I followed the arrows and actually found the "Nalbur" in one of the side streets. It was a pretty ordinary store, except from the awesome examples of naive art on its walls.

The store was owned and run by a couple of brothers who were Alevis, members of an indigenous Anatolian religion that borrows from Sufism, Shamanism and Eastern Christianity. Alevism has a special emphasis on mankind's mystical link with nature, and we can see this connection reflected with a charming simplicity in these walls. The figures, in their multitude, sort of "become one" with the mountains and the trees.

More details from the tree/people figures. Notice the delightfully drawn turtle and the mushrooms.

The highlight of the walls was this portrait, which the store owner explained as "Ali's tears turning into wine." Drinking wine has a special significance in Alevi rites.

Almost as impressive was this figure, which the store owner told me was the "tree of life." The guys running the shop were very friendly and enthusiastic about the photos I took, so I made a silent resolution about buying all of my future hardware needs from their shop.

A Walk from Kadikoy to Moda

The district of Moda/Kadikoy, once (and still) home to many of Istanbul's non-Turkish minorities, boasts some of the most splendid neo-classical architecture in the City. Here we go with a brief, wordless survey.











While most of the houses have given way to large apartment blocks, some, like those you've seen above, still have families living inside. Yet others, abandoned and decaying, lie barricaded behind such "protective walls" recently erected by the municipality. They are all shiny and bright now, but in due time such ugly barriers will be wholly encrusted with layers of graffiti, posters and mud.

The particular tag here, of "%52", belongs to a local group of anarchist activists.

A New Street Artist in Town

An up and coming graffiti artist with a unique style has recently been leaving his marks around Kadikoy...

As Kadikoy becomes home to more of Istanbul's young/creative people, street art like this looks set to increase.

Unlikely Bedfellows

Meet the Yeniden Anadolu ve Rumeli Müdafaa-i-Hukuk (Association for Defense of National Rights of Anatolia and Rumelia Again) magazine, one of the many "national" publications out and about in Turkey.

This movement, which has grown up considerably in the last five years against the ruling party of Machiavellian conservatives, defends an unusual combination of Atatürk's principles, xenophobic nationalism and authoritarian leftism. Self-titled as a "monthly Kemalist publication," this issue blasts Turkey's Wahhabi-wannabes for looking up to the U.S. Hypocritical and ironic, ain't it? All is well until...

...you flip the cover and see a full-page, glossy color advert from Ülker, a Turkish food products conglomerate that is widely known to support religious conservatives. (They also recently bought Godiva.) Secular Kemalists supported by ads from Turkish wingnuts? Turkish wingnuts buying Godiva? Just two of the baffling contradictions that makes our brains hurt every day.

Return to the Great Salt Lake

The bleak, unearthly landscapes of the great Anatolian Salt Lake (Tuz Gölü) stretch before us, to infinity.

En route to Cappadocia, me and my family stopped over at the Salt Lake for a brief rest.

The weather being warm, my sister immediately walked into the water. I'm saying "walked in," because the lake is never more than a few meters at its deepest point. It is possible to walk inside for miles and the water doesn't even come up to your knees. I immediately followed her, although I had to strip off my pants and shoes to enter the water. This left me in an uncomfortable, Borat-like situation which I quickly avoided by running as far away from the shore as possible.

Our brief "expedition" was rewarded by a rock encrusted with huge, pink salt crystals...

...and feet stinking with tar-like, alkali mud, which lies immediately beneath the crust of salt that covers the lake bottom. At some times, the experience was comparable to walking on a great big birthday cake.

Co-incidentally, this had not been the first time I'd walked on the Great Salt Lake. Here, on a photograph taken exactly ten years ago, me, my brother and our friend Necdet are trekking across the gleaming, mirror-like surface. Unearthly.

Akmar!

Behold the entrance of the Akmar arcade in Kadikoy, on the Asian shores of Istanbul!

Located in a center of schools, university prep-courses, cafes and bars built on (naturally) the houses left vacant by Istanbul's Greeks, Akmar has something of a legendary reputation in Istanbul.

It was in Akmar that the heavy metal craze first hit Istanbul, during the early nineties. I was too young to know about it back then, but Akmar was (and still is) full of record shops and clothes stores selling metal paraphernalia.

Its legend grew in intensity when in 1999, when self-termed "Satanists" murdered a young girl and the resulting Satanist hysteria branded Akmar as a "gathering ground" for junkies, devil-worshipers and wayward punks. There were even rumors of orgies and sacrifices taking place in its depths.

Of course, Akmar was never such a place. Most of its stores were (and are) innocent bookstores that sold schoolbooks and old magazines. The most threatening thing to be found there were probably some Turkish gothic lolitas.

(Well, not completely. I think there was some drug dealing going on down there in certain times. Still, that's a far cry from the Satanic blood dungeon newspapers portrayed Akmar to be.)

Now recovered from its hysterical labels of the past, Akmar is a more quiet place. Most of the heavy metal record shops moved away, and the school-book shops dominate it almost entirely. But there are still those of us who remember...

Millipede Special

Millepede time! Here are some millipedes I encountered last month while trekking over the hills of Smyrna (Izmir.) This black, shiny variety was a familiar species...

...while I'd never seen these yellow ones before. Weird! Recall that this was not my first encounter with unusual millipedes, however.

Apparently, millipedes can only be identified with precision after microscopic dissections of their male genitals, so I'm completely lost over their exact identities.

Extremely Provocative Graffiti - The Aftermath

Remember those extremely provocative graffiti I'd seen on a Peran street? Well, here's how they looked like when I checked out a mere two weeks later. Dogma-bashing vandalism had been challenged by counter-vandalism in the shape of these frustrated marker scribbles. It used to say "I'm gay and I'm dominant" here...

...while it used to say "I wear the hijab and I love anal sex" here. The offended censors have crossed out "hijab" and "sex", but apparently the word "anal" causes no problems for these unknown defacers.

This battle between slogan writers and cross-outs continued for over a week before the Pera (Beyoglu) municipality took heavy-handed action. Here, a blanket of paint covers the "I live in Tarlabashi and I want to stay here" slogan.

The municipality painted out not only the offending slogans, but an extremely large "gallery" of pretty and meticulously-done street art. If those cats could speak...

...they would tell you that the street which looked like this... (Sofia took this photo.)

...now looks like this.

But fear not, for in each death there is new life. Only a day after the paint-out, new graffiti began appearing in the same street, mourning the tragedy. Is there no tomorrow? I don't agree. I'm sure the talented street artists of Istanbul will get the place dancing with new works in no time.

The Thirteen Churches of Besiktas

Let's take a stroll through the Old Town quarter of Besiktas, on the European coast of Istanbul. Besiktas is also the name of a famous Turkish soccer team, whose emblem is the majestic black eagle you can see here.

During the last century of the Ottoman Empire, Besiktas housed officials who worked in the Dolmabahce palace nearby. With them there was also the usual Ottoman mix of cosmopolitan Greeks, Armenians and Jews. Here are some houses from a random back street in the district, clearly showing influences of Greek neoclassicism.

Loads of churches still exist in Besiktas, more than thirteen according to one source. This is the Pananagia Greek Orthodox church...

...and its door, which remains closed for most of the year.

This is the Surp Asvadzadzin Armenian Catholic Church, again with closed doors.

I looked for a way to get inside to take more photos, but this was the closest I could get.

Although a little deserted and melancholic, the streets of Besiktas nevertheless hide a lot of historical surprises such as these. Perhaps I will tour there again in the future, and try to find the rest of the thirteen churces... of Besiktas!

Unintentional Accuracy

Two sculpted beauties from the "French Street", (Formerly known as "Algerian Street,) in Pera, Istanbul.

These statues' garish color schemes ironically make them some of the most accurate imitations of the antiquity I've seen. It is a little known fact that almost all marble sculptures and buildings were all brilliantly colored.

Orthodox Easter in Istanbul

Xristos Anesti! This midnight, scenes like this will once again brighten the Hagia Triada in Istanbul, as thousands of Politis Greeks and Hellenic visitors will gather to celebrate Pasxa, the Greek Orthodox Easter.

These candles are lit from the "holy flame" that is passed out exactly at midnight.

The place gets quite crowded as thousands of visitors try to get a better view of the holy flame.

Compare the scene above with this serene view of the same church in a weekday. Not a soul is to be seen.

Although Easter celebrations take in many places in Istanbul, the ceremony at Hagia Triada is the most popular one every year. Here is the church where it all goes down!