Jennifer Hattam

2011 in review

2011-12-27T22:30:00.006+02:00

From fine dining and dance subcultures in Istanbul to camel wrestling on the Aegean and hiking through 10,000 years of history in Southeast Turkey, I covered a lot of ground with my writing this year.

Updating part of the Fodor's Turkey guidebook took me from Roman ruins to World War II battlefields, with days chock-full of chatting up hoteliers, restaurant workers, and tour guides in between.

Stories about my adventures watching camel wrestling, a traditional sport on Turkey's Aegean coast, and exploring Hasankeyf, an ancient city slated for submersion by a dam, found a home in the pages of Time Out Istanbul.

In Istanbul, I wrote about garden tours on the Princes' Islands for Time Out Istanbul, lavish Bosphorus weddings for J Magazine, local lindy-hoppers for Dance Gazette, and the Contemporary Istanbul art fair for Selections (the last two to be published soon). I also updated Istanbul restaurant listings for the Zagat guide and penned a guest review of one of my favorite dining establishments for Istanbul Eats.

On the environmental front, I continued chasing down green developments in Turkey and elsewhere for TreeHugger, worked as a local fixer for CNN's "Road to Durban: A Green City Journey" climate-change program, investigated corporate social responsibility in Turkey for Ethical Corporation, and contributed a chapter to the book "Barefoot Bloggers: Write to Save the Planet."

It wasn't all work, work, work this year, of course -- I also spent five days touring Europe with a friend's rock band, ran a 10k race on the beautiful island of Bozcaada and a 15k here in Istanbul, ate (and cooked) lots of good food, further explored Turkey's Lycian coast, and poked my head into some new corners of the ever-fascinating city I call home. Here's to more of the same in 2012.

Green blogging made easy

2011-11-28T22:28:00.000+02:00

Blogging seemed like a slightly suspicious activity in the mid-2000s, at least to some of the higher-ups at the large environmental nonprofit where I used to work. They recoiled in horror at the thought of a few writers publishing unvetted words that the cantankerous masses could comment on with abandon. Resistance proved futile, though, and today there's nary an NGO (nor company, university, or knitting group) without at least one blog.

The challenge now is one of standing out in a sea of bloggers. For those with an environmental bent, the newly released ebook "Barefoot Bloggers: Write to Save the Planet" offers a primer on engaging, effective blogging, from basics such as how to register a domain and find news to tips on generating revenue and search-engine optimization to questions of ethics and safety.

Lead author Karin Kloosterman, the editor of the Mideast environmental news site Green Prophet, tapped me to write a chapter on blogging for NGOs. Other contributors talk about building a popular mainstream green blog, making the transition from print journalism to blogging, green tech blogging, and writing for religious audiences of various faiths.

Sound intriguing? Purchase a copy online and be on your way to better blogging.

Hiking amidst history in the Southeast

2011-10-01T20:00:00.000+03:00

“Here, taste this,” our guide Hüseyin said, plucking a handful of green stems from the ground and offering them to us. The scent and flavor were sharp and unmistakable – garlic, growing wild in the rugged hills behind the town of Hasankeyf in Southeast Turkey.

We had set out on a hike as the sun rose, climbing past old cave dwellings and into the canyons. Delicate flowers shook off the morning dew and opened to the sky, leaving the green slopes studded with red blossoms in our wake. Birds circled overhead, spiraling down to round holes in the limestone cliffs where they’d built their mud-dark nests alongside vertiginous staircases and primitive drainpipes carved into the stone....

Read the rest of my article about exploring Hasankeyf in the October 2011 issue of Time Out Istanbul: jpg | pdf.

To learn more about this amazing and threatened place, visit the website of the Initiative to Keep Hasankeyf Alive and the blog Hasankeyf Values. For more photos, see my Flickr site.

Seeking sustainability in Turkey

2011-09-05T07:46:00.000+03:00

Istanbul's bustling İstiklal Caddesi is chock-a-block with free art galleries sponsored by Turkey's biggest banks. The country's wealthiest families all have charitable foundations to go along with their gigantic, multi-industry holding companies. But is there such a thing as true corporate social responsibility in Turkey?

That's the question the sustainability consultancy One Stone set out to answer for a special country briefing on Turkey in the September 2011 issue of Ethical Corporation, recruiting me to contribute my local insight as an Istanbul-based correspondent. While other articles in the package looked at the need to move beyond philanthropy, the challenges facing leading companies, and the role of NGOs, I examined how the government and current legislation affect corporate responsibility. My conclusion? Turkish authorities, while making some promising steps, are missing the big picture.

Read my contribution to Ethical Corporation's Turkey briefing: jpg | pdf

Bosphorus bliss

2011-08-03T18:33:00.000+03:00

When the time came to cut the wedding cake, all eyes were drawn to the ceiling of the ballroom as the tiered white pastry descended from its hiding place. A dancer followed, dangling upside down to pour drinks into the guests’ outstretched flutes.

Brides and grooms marrying at one of the magnificent 18th- and 19th-century palaces and mansions lining Istanbul’s Bosphorus Strait can choose to celebrate in ballrooms where Ottoman royalty once got married. But the modern festivities can even outdo those of the sultans, who dispatched turtles with candles on their backs to light outdoor parties, paraded giraffes down the street, and set off fireworks for days on end to herald a palace member’s wedded bliss...

As a journalist, I've had the opportunity to be exposed to many different worlds, those of homesteaders in Alaska, miners' families in West Virginia, and conservation biologists in eastern Turkey among them. But perhaps the most foreign experience to date was having Istanbul hoteliers regale me with stories of the lavish waterfront weddings they had hosted – champagne-serving acrobats and all.

Writing a story for J Magazine, the inflight magazine of Jazeera Airways, about Bosphorus weddings in Istanbul gave me a peek into the exotic world of helipads and honeymoon suites bigger than my apartment -- and the creativity and effortless hospitality required for the staff at the city's top luxury hotels to make the wildest matrimonial dreams come true.

Read the rest of "Bosphorus Bliss" in the August 2011 issue of J Magazine: pdf

Eating (and reviewing) in Istanbul

2011-05-31T08:19:00.000+03:00

Jokes about the 'two kinds of cheese' in Turkey – white and yellow – are common among the Roquefort-loving expat crowd, but after experiencing what Turkish cheese can taste like when served warm with almond chunks and caramelized onions, I may never complain about beyaz peynir again...

Read the rest of my review of Istanbul restaurant Lokanta Maya on the city's best website for foodies, Istanbul Eats.

Hidden gardens reveal secrets of Istanbul's islands

2011-05-05T07:15:00.000+03:00

Green spaces are now hard to come by amid the grey concrete in the metropolis that once inspired 17th-century traveller Robert Withers to write: “Nor indeed doth a Turk at any time show himself to be so truly pleased, and satisfied in his senses as he doth in the summer time, when he is in a pleasant garden.”

But though such opportunities are few and far between – for Turks and foreigners alike – in today’s Istanbul, there is still one place where the senses can be so satisfied, a place where, it was said in Ottoman times, the scent of the blossoms could make a person dizzy...

Read the rest of my article about garden tours on the Princes' Islands in the May 2011 issue of Time Out Istanbul: jpg | pdf.

Talking shop with Green Prophet

2011-03-24T08:00:00.001+02:00

The Middle East environmental news site Green Prophet recently interviewed me about my "experiences as an expat environmentalist," including what challenges I've encountered in trying to maintain a "green" lifestyle abroad, the most serious environmental problems facing Turkey, and if there's any good news here on the eco front.

You can read it here: "INTERVIEW: Treehugger Blogger Jennifer Hattam Talks To Green Prophet About Turkey"

Happy birthday, Daily News

2011-03-16T06:12:00.000+02:00

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.

Close encounters with the wrestling-camel kind

2011-03-02T06:30:00.000+02:00

As soon as I got off the bus and saw the strange parade, I knew I was in the right place: A stray dog trotted down the street after three boys leading a small horse behind a pickup truck filled with musicians, one beating a large, flat drum nestled between his legs. In front of them all strode two lumbering camels frothing at the mouth, the bells lashed to their saddles clanking like particularly tuneless wind chimes.

People are believed to have been pitting camels against each other in wrestling matches since the days of nomadic caravans. Today, the tradition lives on in winter bouts along Turkey’s Aegean coast...

Read the rest of my article about camel wrestling in the March 2011 issue of Time Out Istanbul: jpg | pdf.

A new guide to Istanbul

2011-01-09T21:58:00.000+02:00

A new travel website, Simonseeks, had its official launch last month, featuring community-written and expert guides to almost 50 locations, mostly in Europe, but also around the world, from Hong Kong to Cape Town to New York.

I spent a couple of months last fall researching and writing the expert guide to Istanbul, selecting 40 top hotels, 40 restaurants worth visiting, and 20 can't-miss sights, as well as making extensive recommendations on shopping, nightlife, and getting around, and offering my own "insider tips" and personal favorites in the city I've now called home for three years -- keeping a few special places to myself, of course.

Remembering an environmental hero

2011-01-06T22:45:00.000+02:00

In the summer of 2003, I flew into Charleston, West Virginia, rented a car and drove deep into the state's mountain "hollows," deep green valleys where the land -- and the people who lived on it -- were badly scarred by mountaintop removal mining. I met people who had been barred from visiting their family cemeteries -- now on mining company land; people with cracks in their walls and coal dust blanketing their homes due to nearby mining operations; and disabled former miners who said they would rather risk their lives underground each day than let their families and homes be subjected to the dangers of mountaintop removal.

My guide through this then-unfamiliar world was Judy Bonds, a former Pizza Hut waitress turned environmental activist who was one of the leaders of the grassroots opposition in the area to mountaintop removal mining, a campaign that was at the time largely a regional one, but today has become a national cause. I profiled her and her work for Sierra magazine, and have remained moved by my experience in West Virginia ever since.

This morning, I woke up to learn that Judy had lost her battle with cancer. A memorial will be held for her Jan. 15 at a location yet to be determined, but the online tributes are already pouring in. Rest in peace, Judy. May your fight continue.

A fearful traveler confesses all

2010-12-03T07:53:00.000+02:00

The San Francisco-based website Salon.com, which I followed avidly in my early days as a journalist, has published a personal essay I originally wrote for my blog about travel, safety, and fear as one of their "Life stories" under the title "All my little illusions of safety." (It's the top story on their homepage in the screen shot to the right.)

Though I sat down to write the story the night after a suicide bomber hit a large public square near my house in Istanbul, the essay draws on thoughts and ideas I've been toying with since 1999, some of which were scrawled on pieces of notebook paper I brought with me all the way to Turkey. It's particularly satisfying to have finally given them shape -- and to see them in (virtual) print.

'Istanbul's ugly face'

2010-09-24T23:15:00.000+03:00

Earlier this week, I was among the witnesses to an organized attack on a group of art galleries in Istanbul's Tophane neighborhood, a disheartening experience I wrote about on my personal blog, The Turkish Life, in what turned out to be one of the few (if not the only) English-language accounts of the incident. Turkish daily newspaper Milliyet subsequently contacted me to get my take on the events, and translated parts of my blog post, along with some of my spoken comments, for today's paper. (That's not me in the photo of patrons leaving one of the attacked galleries, by the way.)

It didn't make it into the article, but as I told the reporter, I love this part of the city and though I understand I'm among the people contributing to its gentrification, I sincerely hope Istanbul can find a way to continue to develop without marginalizing long-time residents. Given what's happened in Sulukule and what's underway in Tarlabaşı, it's hard to be optimistic, though.

UPDATE (Oct. 18, 2010): The German culture magazine Perlentaucher also linked to my post in an article about the incident. The article is in German, so I can't read it, but I'm sure it's brilliant as it's by my good friend Constanze Letsch, who also witnessed the Tophane events. (She said the editor found my link without any tip-off from her.)

Taking a regional view

2010-09-17T21:40:00.000+03:00

Yesterday, the "Regionscape" editor for the Hürriyet Daily News ran across a post I'd written recently for TreeHugger about a reforestation effort in Armenia, Turkey's neighbor to the east, and asked to reprint it in the paper, where it appears in today's print edition. (TreeHugger maintains the online rights to the piece.) Unfortunately, I haven't yet had a chance to travel to Armenia to see the program in action first hand, but I hope to do so soon!

Istanbul 'expert' at work

2010-09-07T07:15:00.000+03:00

After helping update guides to Istanbul and Turkey for DK Travel and Weissmann Reports, I've started an assignment as the "Istanbul expert" for Simonseeks, a new British travel site. I'll be scoping out the best hotels and restaurants in the city, and writing guides to sightseeing, shopping, nightlife, and getting around -- not to mention highlighting some of my personal favorite spots in my adopted home. The Istanbul guide will debut later in the fall -- watch this space for more details.

To go along with my new gig, I've also started up a second Twitter account, @TheTurkishLife, devoted to all things Istanbul and Turkey.

One expat eyes another, 100 years in the past

2010-06-28T09:11:00.000+03:00

Immersing myself in the late 19th and early 20th century life of a bourgeois Jewish woman in San Francisco might seem like a strange thing to do while living in Istanbul, but I jumped on the chance to investigate little-known writer Harriet Lane Levy for California magazine.

Though at first I found it hard to relate to the cloistered childhood she depicts in her autobiography, I became fascinated by how someone who grew up in such a small, closed-off world could make the leap to a larger one -- and eventually saw some similarities to my having caught the travel bug so badly when no one else in my family even has a passport. My expatriate life is pretty different than what we know of Levy's -- more cheap beers with fellow journalists in dive bars and fewer swanky soirees in famous artists' ateliers, and, of course, no family wealth to live off -- but the journey into the past provided worthwhile insights.

My article on Levy appears in the Summer 2010 issue of California, part of the theme of "Shelf Life."

Boing!

2010-02-20T08:48:00.000+02:00

A photo gallery I put together for TreeHugger got linked on the popular tech site Boing Boing yesterday. Photographer Mary Taffe was great to work with and her abstract images of pollution in the lake near her Minnesota home are both artistically striking and very sobering.

It's always gratifying to be able to help call attention to the local environmental battles that people are fighting across the world. Having that coverage get attention from my blogging peers is a nice bonus.

Istanbul in an Urban Age

2009-11-09T22:59:00.000+02:00

For someone who loves cities like I do, it was nothing short of fascinating to spend two days listening to the big thinkers -- architects, planners, academics, and activists from around the world -- that Urban Age brought to Istanbul this past week for the ninth in its series of globe-trotting conferences on the future of the planet's mega-cities.

(The stunning, Bosphorus-side setting at the Esma Sultan Yalısı, a thoroughly modern interior re-imagining of a gorgeous wreck of an old mansion into an airy event center, didn't hurt -- nor did the decadent amount of tasty food served.)

The event also marked my writing debut for the local English-language newspaper the Hürriyet Daily News & Economic Review, for which I filed two stories, an overview of the conference ("The future of cities in an Urban Age") and a look at some imaginative architects' ideas for re-envisioning parts of our often chaotic and under-planned city ("New design visions for Istanbul neighborhoods").

The cost of 'virtual water'

2009-07-15T01:45:00.000+03:00

A presentation by Arjen Y. Hoekstra of the Water Footprint Network was one of the most interesting I heard at the World Water Forum this spring, prompting all sorts of questions about water footprints vs. carbon footprints and when it might not be best to produce goods locally -- subjects that I could barely give a glancing look in a short news piece for the latest issue of Sierra. Working on it certainly piqued my interest in the topic further; hope it does the same for readers.

Underground adventures

2009-05-04T20:37:00.000+03:00

Writing a short travel piece for the May/June 2009 Sierra about a trip I took some time ago to New Zealand brought back great memories. It's a long flight, of course, but well worth it for the amazing scenery, fantastic food and drink, and potential for adventure.

Where else can you hike across an active volcano, kayak secluded coastlines, and go inner-tubing in caves filled with glow worms? And we didn't even get far enough south to hit the glaciers.

World Water Forum in Istanbul

2009-03-23T07:00:00.000+02:00

I spent the past week at the 5th World Water Forum, held here in Istanbul this year, attending sessions on traditional cultural uses of water, migration and conflict, and women's issues, among other topics that jumped out from the thick catalog of panels and presentations.

It was a productive week, as I filed daily dispatches from the conference for TreeHugger.com and wrote my first piece for The National, an excellent English-language newspaper based in Abu Dhabi.

UPDATE (Feb. 16, 2011): The article I wrote for The National is no longer online on their website, but you can read it after the jump.

- - -

Water scarcity harder on women
Supply a problem
Women and girls best-suited to spearhead conservation efforts
Jennifer Hattam

ISTANBUL // In the rural areas near Edéa, Cameroon, women leave home before dawn, walking for two or three hours to fetch water, a journey they make again each evening. Carrying the heavy loads on their heads, and sometimes their babies on their backs, they endure searing heat and difficult terrain.

“Our country is so hot, and sometimes the roads are slippery,” said Ndjebet Cécile.

“Women have to go over hills and through forests, where they sometimes get bitten by snakes.” Girls often make the trip too, arriving late to school if they get there at all.

In the Congo, and other conflict areas, it is not snakebites women fear as they trek along the deserted roads in search of water, but rape from marauding rebels.

Women in towns lucky enough to have public water pumps face fewer dangers, but save little, if any, time.

“I see them queuing for hours, from five in the morning to 10 at night,” Cécile said.

“There are not enough pumps, so women come from all over.”

Reema Walia, a masters student at the University of Pennsylvania, has calculated that 150 million work days and 10 billion rupees (about $200 million) are lost annually in India because women must walk up to nine kilometers each day to get water.

Water is a universal need and right, but traditional cultural roles mean that the lack of it affects women and girls more severely than men.

Women have traditionally been the caretakers of water, they collect it, cook with it and bathe children with it, and subsequently deal with the consequences of those who become sick through consuming dirty water.

With water scarcity becoming an ever more urgent issue – the UN says nearly half of the world’s population will be living in areas of acute water shortage by 2030 – the role of water in protecting and managing the resources has taken center stage.

At the World Water Forum in Istanbul this week, where more than 20,000 people gathered to discuss the looming crisis, women were tapped as one of nine major groups crucial to the conservation of water.

“We are talking about survival in a crisis situation,” said Kusum Athukorala, the chair of NetWwater Sri Lanka, a women’s organization. “Women could be agents of change if they are allowed to reach their potential.”

In many countries, that possibility still seems remote.

In rural areas of Turkey, for example, traditional agriculture is usually carried out by women—in the Aegean region, 75 to 80 percent of people working in agriculture are female—but they generally lack decision-making power, often working as unpaid family labor.

The situation is similar in Sri Lanka, where “women have a traditionally defined support role in paddy farming,” said Badra Kamaladasa, an irrigation engineer.

Diminishing water supplies have reduced agricultural productivity, forcing men to leave their villages to try to find work in urban areas.

“Women are now assuming heavier duties, preparing the land for harvest, and sharing in the family economic burden,” said Kamaladasa. “But men still own the land and make the decisions.”

The forum was also expected to promote investment in improving water supplies, but critics said this was tantamount to selling water to the highest bidder and would have an adverse effect on the poor. They are calling for more public-sector investment.

“Privatization raises prices, leaving women to carry out their household responsibilities with less, or less clean, water,” said Monika Schierenberg with the German environmental group EcoMujer.

“It is only possible to solve the problems if you accept access to water as a human right that cannot be sold. The World Water Forum does not.”

Members of EcoMujer and other international non-governmental organizations were in Istanbul this week too, a few to attend the water forum, but most to organize protests and participate in the Alternative Water Forum being held this weekend just down the road from the big event.

Some 300 people protesting outside the World Water Forum venue on its opening day on Monday were blasted with water cannons and tear gas.

At the opening ceremony a few hours later, two protesters working for International Rivers held up a banner reading “No Risky Dams.” They were detained, and promptly deported.

Dams are a sensitive issue in the forum’s host country, Turkey. In his opening-day speech, Veysel Eroğlu, the environment and forestry minister, called building dams “an absolute necessity” for Turkey.

But the 1.2 billion-euro (Dh 5.7bn) Ilısu Dam project on the Tigris River in southeastern Turkey is the subject of much controversy, as it would submerge part of the ancient town of Hasankeyf and force relocations.

Women forced to migrate as a result of dams often fare poorly, possessing few of the skills necessary to cope with city living.

Many urban areas in developing countries have acute sanitation and hygiene problems.

Though problematic to everyone, such conditions again hit women especially hard.

Women need more water for personal hygiene; spend more time doing washing and bathing, increasing exposure to contaminated water. The lack of sanitation has other, less obvious, effects too.

According to a report sponsored by UNICEF and the Gender and Water Alliance (GWA), more than 50 percent of girls in rural Pakistan drop out because their schools lack proper toilets.

Girls in rural Tajikistan skip class when they are menstruating, for the same reasons.

“Sometimes parents don’t allow girls to go to school if there are no private facilities,” says Mariet Verhoef-Cohen, president of Soroptimist International of Europe (SI/E).

“Sanitation blocks” sponsored by SI/E in rural Ghana and in Nairobi slums provide one solution, containing private toilet and shower facilities with safe water sources, sometimes even a place to do laundry, and generating cleaning and administrative jobs for women.

They are often also a place for women to learn about hygiene and sanitation, knowledge that they take home to their families.

While such projects show the importance of considering women’s special water-related needs, others tap their unique knowledge and skills. The UNICEF/GWA report gives a telling example from Tanzania, where a new well created by an aid agency quickly dried up.

Follow-up visits to the village revealed that the committee that determined the location of the well had been comprised only of men, though women are usually the ones digging by hand for water in scarce conditions – and thus the ones who know where the most water flows.

Women have been shown to be better water caretakers than men, and, when given the tools, able to transfer their household-management skills to the community level.

“Women are suffering too much to get water, so they care very much how it is used,” said Cécile. “They know, ‘If I misuse it, I have to go back and fetch more.’”

Now 'tweeting'...

2009-03-05T21:25:00.000+02:00

Count me among those who don't know exactly what the Twitter fuss is all about, but I've been hopping on Web bandwagons since 1996, so I'm not going to miss the chance to try and post some amusing observations and thought-provoking articles in 140 characters or less... Don't worry, I'll go light on what I ate for lunch.

Green amid the grime

2009-02-19T05:16:00.000+02:00

Though it would be premature to call Istanbul an "eco-city," there are plenty of green discoveries waiting to be made amidst the urban sprawl. I sought out organic markets with friendly farmers (right), vegetarian restaurants, public-transportation options, parks, running groups, and eco-friendly souvenirs for a PlanetGreen.com "Green City Guide" to my adopted home.

A Treehugger in Turkey

2008-10-19T05:30:00.000+03:00

I've taken on a new gig as the Istanbul correspondent for the popular environmental website TreeHugger.com. I'll be focusing largely, though not exclusively, on developments in Turkey and this part of the world, from Eastern Europe to the Middle East. Already I've blogged about ice-cream delivery by bike in some of Istanbul's chicest neighborhoods, problems with garbage collection in the city, a photo contest for images of Turkey's trees, and the country's first organic market.