Shaking up street food in Istanbul

Dürüm is the specialty at Basta Street Food Bar, but you won’t find a smoky grill inside this tiny Kadıköy storefront. With its bright turquoise counter, tile-patterned floor, and steel-topped, light-wood stools, Basta looks more like a hip café than a traditional kebab joint.

“One customer came in, sat at the counter, took one look at what we were doing in the kitchen and walked right out,” laughs Kaan Sakarya. The former chef of the highly rated Nicole restaurant in Istanbul, Sakarya opened Basta in April along with colleague Derin Arıbaş. Their aim: applying their fine-dining training to gourmet fast food – specifically dürüm, grilled meat wrapped up inside lavaş flatbread....

With Turkey's economic woes causing many establishments to shut their doors, it's always good news to hear about new places opening up, especially when their offerings are as satisfying as Basta's innovative dürum. I interviewed the restaurant's enthusiastic young chefs and left with a satisfied appetite and a bit more optimism about Istanbul's future.

Read my the rest of my story, "Basta Street Food Bar: Gourmet to the People," on Culinary Backstreets.

The buzz from Copenhagen

A vast meadow called the Amager Fælled stretches out toward the ocean below the AC Hotel Bella Sky in central Copenhagen, affording patrons of the hotel’s 23rd-floor bar a soothing view. Those who can tear their eyes away from its marshy ponds and grassy expanses, dappled with heather, creeping willow, and blackberry bushes, might spot some orange boxes on the rooftop of the neighboring convention center—urban beehives, the source of the locally made honey that flavors the amber ale served in the hotel’s Sky Bar.

The honey and the beer are the fruits of the innovative project Bybi, named after the Danish word for “city bee.” Its mission: to use urban beekeeping to create a greener Copenhagen, connect residents with the city around them, and bring together and employ people from diverse backgrounds, including refugees and the formerly homeless...

Read the rest of my article about Bybi, "A Sweet Gig: Danish Beekeeping Program Employs Refugees," on TakePart.

Farewell to a favorite Istanbul restaurant

Influenced by the organic, locally grown California cuisine of Alice Waters, young chef Didem Şenol brought a fresh approach to Turkish cooking when she opened Lokanta Maya in 2010, eschewing rigid food combinations and letting high-quality ingredients shine.

Since writing up my first meal at Lokanta Maya in a restaurant review for Istanbul Eats, I'd enjoyed many delicious evenings there with friends, celebrating birthdays, entertaining out-of-town guests, or simply treating ourselves to top-notch food and good Turkish wine in a pleasing setting.

Sadly, the troubles that have enveloped Turkey this year have not been good for business, and at the end of July, Maya joined the growing list of places in Istanbul closing their doors. A small silver lining was the chance to speak with the ever-gracious and thoughtful Şenol about her decision to close the restaurant, her culinary philosophy, and the changing urban fabric around us.

Read my interview with Didem Şenol, "Farewell Lokanta Maya: Istanbul and Local Culinary Pioneer Hit Hard Times," on Culinary Backstreets (the successor site to Istanbul Eats).

A photographic journey to Turkey

It was a provocative idea for Istanbul-based curator Özge Ersoy to pose to a group of young photographers. “We’re not saying people should stop producing images,” she explained, “but that how and why they produce images should be questioned.”

Encountering new ideas and challenging their own preconceptions was exactly what had brought the six image-makers to Turkey as part of the latest Jameel Journey. This series of collaborative initiatives aims to broaden the horizons of young artists from the Gulf region through work and travel in other countries…

In May, I joined these six young artists as they met with Ersoy and her colleague Bikem Ekberzade at Istanbul gallery Collectorspace, an early stop on their 11-day journey exploring issues of migration and identity through photography. I also interviewed Imogen Ware, managing director of the U.K.-based charity Crossway Foundation, which organised the trip in partnership with Art Jameel.

My piece on this innovative artistic exchange appears in the July/August issue of Selections, a Beirut-based magazine focused on art, culture, design, and style. Read the rest of my article, "Migration and Identity in Focus," on Selections' website.

New exhibit seeks to start filling some of Anatolian history's 'Empty Fields'

More than a century ago, botanist John Manissadjian roamed the countryside of what is now northern Turkey, collecting — and sometimes identifying for the first time — thousands of species of flowers and other plants, as well as butterflies and moths. These finds formed the core of the natural science museum he established at Anatolia College, a school for Greek and Armenian students in the Ottoman Empire.

“Manissadjian’s labour of love was such a sophisticated collection, started in the last decade of the 19th century,” says Vasıf Kortun, director of research and programmes at Istanbul-based cultural institution SALT.

Sadly, within just a few decades, the museum and its collection were doomed to disappear, dispersed, along with Anatolia College’s students and professors, following the mass expulsion of Armenians from Ottoman lands in 1915.

Now, curator Marianna Hovhannisyan is working with SALT to bring some of Manissadjian’s scholarship back into focus in a new exhibition...

The challenging, deeply researched exhibitions at Istanbul cultural institution SALT are nearly always worth seeing. I previewed SALT's latest show, "Empty Fields," on view at SALT Galata in Karaköy until 5 June, for the March/April issue of Selections magazine, speaking to the exhibition curator as well as the institution's research director.

Read the rest of my exhibit preview, "Filling the Empty Fields," on Selections' website.

Uncertain future for one of world's oldest urban farms

Driving into Istanbul from Atatürk Airport, the crumbling fortifications along the Marmara Sea demarcate where the historic, pre-sprawl city begins. But though they may evoke oohs and ahhs out the window, few visitors venture back to explore the 1,500-year-old city walls on foot.

My first time walking the 6.5-kilometer length of the walls was full of surprises: homing pigeons for sale in a parking lot, spectacular (if precarious) views, a livestock market for Kurban Bayramı (Eid al-Adha) sacrifice animals. Most striking of all were the gardens: lush plots of fruits and vegetables squeezed between the walls and the modern highway that now loops outside it. Years later, urban redevelopment has transformed or rendered inaccessible many areas along the walls, but some of the market gardens (called bostan in Turkish) remain, a last vestige of an ancient urban agricultural tradition.

I've written previously about the Yedikule bostan by the city walls for The Atlantic's City Lab, and about other examples of urban agriculture in Istanbul for Culinary Backstreets and Zester Daily. A new threat to the Yedikule bostan early this year prompted me to take a deeper look at the gardens' past, present, and future.

Read my new article, "In Istanbul's Ancient Gardens, A Battle for Future Harvests," in Yale Environment 360

Turkey's 'hidden' coast: The Black Sea

My first hints that there was something different going on in Turkey's Black Sea region came in Istanbul – watching environmental films that depicted the rugged beauty of its remote mountains and their hardy, sometimes eccentric inhabitants, and reveling in a wealth of unfamiliar flavors at the (sadly now shuttered) "Laz meyhane" Mohti, where hamsi popped up in everything from corn bread to omelets served in the raucous music- and smoke-filled restaurant.

Visiting the region for the first time last spring, I spent a week reporting on environmental threats from dams, mines, and other development, meanwhile picking up intriguing tidbits – the distinctive regional architecture, the melting pot of languages and cultures -- that left me wanting to return.

The two travel lists I wrote for Matador Network this month offer just a taste of what the region has to offer – if its natural beauty and rich cultural diversity can be preserved:

• 9 Historic Places in Turkey Where You’ll Feel Like You’ve Stepped Back in Time

• 11 Things People in Turkey's Black Sea Region Always Have to Explain to Visitors

Solidarity amid strife in Turkey

It wasn’t long after the blasts tore through the crowd that the urgent cries began going out on Twitter and Facebook: “O-, O+ and A- blood needed at Numune, Hacettepe and İbni Sina hospitals!”

Next came the photographs of papers tacked to walls: lists of the names of the injured, shared online to get the word out to their family and friends.

As night fell after Turkey’s deadliest-ever terrorist attack, a dual suicide bombing targeting a peace rally organised by trade unions in the capital city of Ankara, the calls for help continued...

The killing of 103 people in the Ankara bombings of 10 October sent many in Turkey, myself included, into deep mourning. One of the few things bringing some comfort was seeing the solidarity and resilience of people coming together to protest the deaths and help those wounded in the attack and the families of those who perished.

This is a difficult moment, however, for Turkey's grassroots, which while revitalized in some ways by the Gezi Park protests of 2013 and subsequent civic organizing, is also under an increasing amount of pressure from the country's government and security forces. I wrote about some of these tensions for Equal Times, a Brussels-based news site that also published the story in Spanish and French.

Read the rest of my article, "The Renewal and Repression of Turkey's Civil Society Grassroots," on Equal Times.

From tourism to turmoil

Early November is typically a tranquil time on Lesbos, a Greek island in the Aegean Sea with some 80,000 year-round inhabitants. Residents shut the doors of their hotels, restaurants, and other businesses that predominantly serve the summer tourism market and head out to their olive groves for the annual harvest.

This year, though, there are “no vacancy” signs in English and Arabic posted on hotel doors in the main port of Mytilene and lines snaking outside travel agencies. The latter are doing a brisk business not in holiday excursions, but in ferry tickets to Athens, the next stop for the tens of thousands of refugees and migrants who have landed on the island this year en route to mainland Europe.

“It’s usually very quiet in winter, but a lot of businesses are still working even now, restaurants, mini-markets, car-rental agencies, so there’s a bit more life in the villages,” says Lesbos resident Aphrodite Vati Mariola. The beachfront hotel her family has operated since 1989 is not among them, however – they closed two weeks early after bookings went stagnant in early September, when both refugee arrivals and media coverage of the crisis increased....

Conflict in Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, and other country is taking a devastating toll on human life and driving millions of people to leave their homes. This refugee flow is also having an impact economically and socially as in nearby countries such as Greece and Turkey as they struggle to cope with the influx. Late last month, I traveled to Lesbos to volunteer and bring back information about the conditions for refugees on this "hotspot" Greek island. I was also asked by the travel website Skift to write about how the refugee crisis is impacting the economy of this once-popular tourism destination.

Read the rest of my article, "Greek Islands Known for Tourism Continue to Feel Impact of Refugee Crisis," on Skift's website.

A city's buried secrets

Ufuk Kocabaş spent his summers swimming, snorkeling and eventually diving around nearby Marmara Island, where his grandfather and other forebears plied the sea as sailors. At age 14, he stumbled upon his first shipwreck, littered with pieces of amphora — an ancient type of storage and transport container — and got an early lesson in proper archaeological practice.

“I took some amphora fragments [from the ship] to my sister who was studying at university,” recalls Kocabaş, now head of the Istanbul University Conservation Department. “She told me I shouldn’t have taken them from the site, that I should have left them where they were. At the time, I thought this was stupid. It’s my amphora!”

After chiding him, Kocabaş’s sister helped him identify the type of amphora he found. It dated to the seventh century, and they passed the information they’d ascertained about the shipwreck to a museum. “It was an amazing experience,” Kocabaş says. “I started to read about shipwrecks then, and haven’t stopped since.”

...

Last summer, I had the privilege to peek into Istanbul's far-distant past with Kocabaş, who helped lead the archaeological excavation that uncovered perhaps the world’s largest collection of Byzantine shipwrecks, and evidence that the city's history dates back nearly 6,000 years farther than previously believed.

My story about the work of Kocabaş' Yenikapı Shipwrecks Project, and other fascinating urban archaeological digs from Rio to Rome, was published as the September 2015 cover story of Discover, my first piece for the renowned science magazine.

Read my article, "Underground Transit Projects Reveal Secrets Buried Beneath Cities," in Discover.

(Olive) oil vs. coal

For seven weeks in the fall of 2014, the villagers of Yirca kept watch over their olive groves day and night, warming themselves around a fire and taking turns sleeping in a small shelter. Sentinels with binoculars were stationed under the pines on a nearby hill with a sweeping view across the broad, flat valley. They were scanning for any sign of movement by the Kolin Group, the company that was seeking to expropriate this land to build and operate a 510-megawatt, coal-fired power plant.

"If the scouts saw anything, they'd get on their phones and call down, 'The bulldozers are coming!' and the people would rush to block the road leading to the groves," says Mustafa Akin. The avuncular former teacher now serves as muhtar—the elected village head—of Yirca, a tiny settlement of 400 in western Turkey, 50 miles inland from the Aegean Sea.

For a time, despite several confrontations with Kolin Group workers, the villagers' vigil was largely successful. But one night in early November, the bulldozers came back, this time accompanied by two busloads of private security guards and a "rapid expropriation" order from the government. Arguments broke out, and then scuffles. Four people were hauled off in handcuffs; others say they were beaten by the guards. Before the sun rose, 6,000 olive trees had been ripped out of the ground....

What happened that night in Yırca shocked people around Turkey, especially coming as it did just a few months after an appalling industrial disaster killed 301 coal miners in nearby Soma. But it is hardly the only place in the country where corporate interests -- particularly those related to the energy and construction sectors -- are running roughshod over nature and rural communities. Earlier this year, I traveled to Yırca to see how the villagers were faring following the loss of their olive trees, and to try and put their story into the context of the larger battles playing out across Turkey.

This reporting appeared as a feature piece in the September/October 2015 issue of Sierra magazine. For a visual snapshot of life in Yırca, visit my personal blog, where I've posted some photos from my trip.

Read my article, "The Olive and the Power Plant," online, or see it as it appeared in Sierra's September/October 2015 issue (pdf).

Renewed worries about human rights in Turkey

Still reeling from a deadly terror attack in a majority Kurdish town near the Syrian border, Turkey’s Kurds say they are targeted once again – this time by the counterterrorism measures their own government has taken in response.

Since the 20 July killing of 31 Kurdish and Turkish activists in the town of Suruç by a suicide bomber linked to Islamic State, Turkey has rounded up hundreds of people and blocked dozens of websites and Twitter accounts.

“More than 1,300 people have been detained and almost 900 of them are our members and activists; it is a kind of psychological war on us,” says Nazmı Gür, a former deputy from the eastern city of Van for the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP)....

The jubilation among members of Turkey's Kurdish minority following the HDP's historic election victory in June quickly turned to fear, anger, and worry for the future as reinvigorated anti-terror efforts not even two months later appeared to many to be aimed less at defeating ISIS than at putting the Kurds back in their place.

I wrote about the current climate in Turkey, and what it might mean from a human-rights perspective, for Equal Times, a Brussels-based news site that also published the story in Spanish and French.

Read my article, "Rights at Risk in Turkey's Anti-Terror Crackdown," on Equal Times.

Environmental battles along Turkey's Black Sea coast

Turkey's little-visited Black Sea coast has become a hotbed of resistance to dams and other environmentally damaging hydropower projects, part of an ambitious national development and privatization agenda that includes the building of coal plants, nuclear plants, and nearly 2,000 new dams, as well as many new mining and other industrial operations.

The Black Sea region’s lush forests and small mountain villages provide a striking backdrop for the fierce battle being waged there, a fight pitting farmers, fishermen, and beekeepers against the powerful government and corporate interests seemingly intent on bulldozing the landscape and damming its life-giving waterways in the name of “progress” and profit.

“We were born hearing the voice of this river and we will die with it” is a commonly expressed sentiment among Black Sea villagers, whose honey harvests, hazelnut crops, and vegetable gardens all depend upon the region’s rivers. Though the threat of dams looms the largest, gold mining and other extractive industries also put people’s health, homes, and livelihoods at risk.

Local activists who have rallied against such threats often end up facing new ones: lawsuits filed against them by hydropower companies, many with close ties to Turkey's ruling political party; intimidation and even violence from police and other security forces seeking to break up protests; vilification as traitors, communists, or even terrorists by government authorities; and pressure from local officials and religious leaders not to speak out against such projects, and to take below-market buyouts for homes in the path of construction.

With a grant from Mongabay's Special Reporting Initiatives, I traveled this spring across the eastern Black Sea, from the port city of Trabzon to the mountain towns of Artvin, Murgul, and Yusufeli, taking in the gorgeous – but in many cases already blighted – scenery and talking to local residents and activists about the threats they and their homes face.

Read my first two articles from this reporting trip on the Mongabay website:

• New solidarity in struggle to protect Turkey's 'life spaces'

• Turkish government bears down on rural resistance to mining and hydro projects

Restaurant Day: From Helsinki to the world

It's pretty much an urban food-lover's dream: a four-times yearly "holiday" that turns an entire city into a festival of pop-up restaurants, with amateur (and some professional) chefs setting up shop in parks and on sidewalks, and opening their homes to strangers, to cook and serve favorite dishes, from Korean bibimbap to French macarons.

Started in Helsinki, Finland, four years ago, the event known as "Restaurant Day" has spread around the globe, though sadly for this Istanbul-based American, it has yet to get much traction in either Turkey or the United States. Mouth watering all the while, I interviewed a co-founder of the event and numerous participants about how Restaurant Day creates community through food -- and ended up digging in to its broader impacts on urban citizenship as well.

Read my articles for The Atlantic's CityLab and for Zester Daily about Restaurant Day:

• Restaurant Day Has Become a Big Deal, Just Not in the U.S.

• These Pop-Up Eateries Are Worth A Global Trip

Attention, eaters! This year's Restaurant Day events will be held Feb. 15, May 16, Aug. 16, and Nov. 21.

A full deck of 'Istanbul Secrets'

The "secret" to a good night out in Istanbul? Just pick a card, any card...

The latest guide to the city's eating and drinking scene is a pocket-sized deck of 52 cards, each featuring one of Istanbul's best restaurants, cafes, or bars.

Released this week along with an app version, "Istanbul Secrets" was produced by the Melbourne, Australia-based travel company Deck of Secrets, which enlisted Istanbul experts Serra Tükel of Guruology, Simon Johnson of THAT Magazine, and Başak Miller of NEW-IST, along with myself, to write up some of our favorite haunts.

Afiyet olsun.

Urban planning from the ground (or sea) up

Anyone who's spent any time in Istanbul has probably observed how few public spaces (especially green ones) this congested city has, and how eagerly people make use of unlikely recreational areas – whether picnicking on a traffic median or fishing from a half-built pier.

Istanbul-based architects Can Sucuoğlu and Elif Ensari noticed the same phenomenon in the coastal city of İzmir, where they saw people flock to the shoreline despite its lack of urban amenities, pacing endlessly or sitting on the pavement just to be close to the sea.

The ingenious solution they devised – a kind of floating parklet – was showcased recently at the 2nd Istanbul Design Biennial, along with a kindred-spirit project in Istanbul's Kadıköy neighborhood to create street furniture from recycled materials. Both initiatives, as I wrote for The Atlantic's CityLab site, seemed to offer an alternative to the massive, top-down "urban transformation" projects that have been so disruptive and controversial: "human-scale, easily replicable urban improvements that are responsive to local residents’ needs."

Read my article, "Why DIY Public Spaces Are Starting to Take Off in Turkey," on CityLab.

Rethinking (and reviving) the Mediterranean diet

It’s not what most people think of when they envision the famously light, healthy “Mediterranean diet.” But hearty dishes like smoked game meats; the mélange of cabbage, fish, eggs, cheese, olive oil, pepper, garlic and sweet wine dubbed monokythron (literally, “one-pot”); and the fermented fish sauce garum were once common fare in the region whose traditional dietary patterns are now seen by many as a global model for better eating.

Evidence that the Mediterranean diet as we now know it was not predominant in the region during the long Byzantine era (roughly the years 330 to 1453) has been gathered by Dr. Ilias Anagnostakis from the National Hellenic Research Foundation in Athens. His findings have sparked controversy in his home country, he says...

Read the rest of my article, “‘Traditional’” Mediterranean Diet Isn’t What You Think,” on Zester Daily.

Find out more about the Consulate General of Greece in Istanbul's ongoing lecture series “Food, Spirits and Gastronomic Traditions in the Eastern Mediterranean” (scroll down for English).

Two-wheeled revolution?

When you think of bike-friendly cities, Abu Dhabi doesn't come readily to mind. Neither, frankly, does Istanbul. But the Abu Dhabi-based newspaper The National is trying to give cycling culture a bit of a kickstart in the United Arab Emirates, promoting a ‪#‎CycleToWorkUAE‬ day on 13 January 2015.

As part of the paper's coverage ahead of the event, one of its opinion editors asked me to write a piece about efforts to develop a cycling culture in Turkey -- which, despite appearances, have come a long way in the past decade, though there is still much work to be done to make the streets safe for cyclists, not to mention pedestrians and runners like myself.

I tip my hat to the intrepid cyclists in both countries, especially those in Turkey who generously shared their experiences and opinions with me.

Read my article, "Istanbul Is Slowly But Surely Getting On Its Bike," on The National's website.

Adventures in Turkish cooking

Travel throughout southeastern Turkey in the height of summer and you’re likely to see rooftops, courtyards and gardens blanketed with color — row after row of peppers, eggplant and other vegetables drying in the sun.

Later rehydrated to be stuffed or stewed, dried vegetables are an essential ingredient in the traditional Turkish kitchen, but one that can be difficult to replicate for urban dwellers without a balcony or even a sunny window to call their own.

How to reconnect residents of Turkey’s large cities with the rich culinary culture of their rural roots is just one of the questions being posed by a new Istanbul-based group seeking to re-envision and rebrand Turkish cuisine, in much the same way as the New Nordic culinary movement has both celebrated and changed Scandinavian cooking...

Read the rest of my article about the innovative Gastronomika collective on Zester Daily: "Reinventing Turkish Traditions For A New Generation"

Cities of possibility

Istanbul’s position at the crossroads of two continents is looking like an increasingly precarious perch these days, with violent conflicts erupting in Syria and Iraq to the south and Russia and Ukraine to the north. Domestically, electoral victories in 2014 by the country’s longtime ruling party demoralized those energized by last year’s mass anti-government protests. But neither strife nor political stagnation seems to prevent forward-looking initiatives from cropping up all around Istanbul...

Amid challenging and often depressing times, it was revitalizing to seek out some positive, inspiring initiatives for the 2014 GOOD City Index. As it did with last year's inaugural list, the quarterly, U.S.-based magazine GOOD again seeks to celebrate the "cities around the world that best capture the elusive quality of possibility" -- not the ones where everything is necessarily working right, but ones with a heartbeat of "creativity, hustle, and civic engagement."

Istanbul, which the editors ranked at #6 on this year's index, certainly qualifies. Though the energy of last year's Gezi Park demonstrations has long faded, around the city, activists of all stripes are buckling down to attend to the task of trying to build a better future.

Read the rest of my entry in the 2014 GOOD City Index: "Istanbul, Turkey: Now the real work begins"