– Adıyaman in southeast Turkey was one of the worst hit and least supported provinces after the 2023 earthquakes, and yet it re-elected Erdoğan in the presidential elections that year. There, I followed the ongoing search for a missing lawyer, and what it reveals about rumors, trauma and bureaucratic violence.
– As the arms market is globalizing, production hubs are shifting from traditional arms making countries to newcomers like the Turkey and the UAE. While Turkish companies are pushing the limits of accessible and affordable quality firearms, investors in Abu Dhabi are attracting leading weapons engineers to their shores.
– As the economy around them withers, some of the most disadvantaged workers in Turkey have gone on massive wildcat strikes with differing success. Two young delivery workers make sense of their defeat a year later, and Syrian textile workers share why they stand with their Turkish colleagues.
– Alevis in Turkey are constantly redefining their syncretic traditions since they have no book or institution to set the rules. One woman is trying to revive what she argues is a historic practice of women leading semah ceremonies.
– The two earthquakes that flattened swathes of southern Turkey and northwestern Syria on February 6 left rescuers scrambling to stop a steeply climbing death toll. I recount the nightmarish first week as a volunteer in Islahiye, near Gaziantep.
– The covid-19 pandemic offered a moment to reflect on other kinds of hospital models that were resigned to history. The story of five non-Muslim communal hospitals in Istanbul — their founding and their fate — reminds us that hospitals were once a site of healing for much more than an illness.
– A law to return the stolen lands of religious minorities in Turkey was meant to settle a century of property disputes. In many cases in Istanbul, notably of one Armenian hospital foundation, it accelerated their destruction.
– When record-breaking wildfires hit Turkey’s Aegean coast, the debate revolved around who sparked the fires and who failed to put them out. I went as a first responder and saw what was behind this speculation.
– Peace negotiations in Colombia emptied a cordillera village of the FARC. The dam project that moved in brought with it another iteration of violence.
Naomi Cohen | journalist 