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.

Making soup for Syria

When faced with almost 1 million needy people, a bowl of soup – even a large vat – doesn't go a very long way.

But Barbara Massaad refuses to let the daunting scale of the ongoing Syrian refugee crisis in Lebanon deter her from doing her small part to help – one bowl of soup at a time...

I first heard of the "Soup for Syria" project on Twitter and contacted Beirut-based Slow Food member and author Barbara Massaad about her plans to use a soup cookbook as a fundraising tool to help fight the growing food insecurity among Syrian refugees in Lebanon. Though her project can only affect the lives of a small number of the now 9 million people displaced (internally and externally) by the Syrian crisis, her determination to do something was inspiring to hear in the face of so much hopelessness about the situation.

With Lebanon overwhelmed by refugees and now seeking to limit their number, and a potential drought threatening to worsen the already disastrous state of food production in Syria itself, anything and everything that can be done to alleviate food insecurity for refugees and those who remain in Syria matters.

Read the rest of my article, "'Soup For Syria' Dips Into Refugees' Culinary Lore," on Zester Daily.

Lost in the city

Sosin and her family moved from rural Turkey to Istanbul, the country's largest city, and for four years she did not leave the house, not even to buy food for her children.

"I was afraid to be lost. I never saw any place outside the house. We would be starving with the children until evening when my husband would come home," she told researchers...

The plight of poor women who have moved to Istanbul from rural Anatolia was among the many sad, fascinating, and empowering stories I encountered while covering the recent 12th Association for Women’s Rights in Development (AWID) International Forum in Istanbul.

After attending an activist-led talk on "The impact on women's rights of economic underdevelopment and forced migration in the Kurdish region of Turkey," I delved into the topic of Turkey's female migrants, publishing a piece for Women's eNews that was also picked up by United Press International (UPI) and the Thomson Reuters Foundation legal news service TrustLaw.

Read my story for Women's eNews : "Kurdish Female Migrants Meet Isolation in Istanbul"

Women and a new economy

Uprisings across the Arab world, financial crises in Europe, and the growing threat of environmental disasters have shaken confidence in the global economic system, calling into question its ability to generate long-term prosperity and stability.

Over the weekend, some 2,000 women from around the world – former presidents and indigenous leaders, media executives and advocates for sex workers, academics and activists – gathered in Istanbul to explore new ways to create a stronger, more equitable economy amid these societal upheavals.

I covered the 12th Association for Women’s Rights in Development (AWID) International Forum for the Inter Press Service (IPS) News Agency, writing one story about gender budgeting – a wonky-sounding topic that has very real impact on women's lives – and one wrap-up of the weekend's discussions and debates.

Over the coming weeks, I'll be following up on some of the wealth of story ideas generated by the forum, from the growing problem of time poverty to the threats facing women's rights defenders.

Read my AWID Forum coverage for IPS:

• "Economic Crisis Hits Gender Budgeting" (22 April 2012)

• "Women of the World Unite for Rights" (23 April 2012)

Happy birthday, Daily News

The Associated Press called up the Hürriyet Daily News in a panic earlier today, frantically trying to locate the "reports by the Associated Press that 20 Turks were killed in Kirkuk" that the paper had quoted Turkish Foreign Minister Selim Sarper as saying were unfounded. The person who answered the phone had to gently explain that Sarper had died in 1968 and that the "news" was actually from the date written on the front page: March, 15, 1961, the day the English-language Turkish newspaper was first published 50 years ago.

For the paper's anniversary, I was charged with reimagining that very first front page, slotting the stories into today's layout and news priorities, and rewriting (and often expanding) each article in our modern style. This package of articles, "The Daily News' First Day, Fifty Years Later," formed what we referred to as our "fake front page" today; the real one with 2011 news appeared on page 3. The online version has a nice juxtaposition of the 1961 and 2011 designs.

I also wrote an essay for today's op-ed page, "Fifty Years of Fighting Typos," about the observations I made during this process and the continuing challenges of editing an English-language newspaper in a foreign country.