Tag Archives: Turkey
The Great Turkish Forgery
A Turkish court has confirmed the government can convert Istanbul’s Hagia Sophia from a museum to a mosque. Not an unexpected decision given Turkey’s political climate. I’m sure the folks at UNESCO are not happy, given that they weren’t consulted on this change to a world heritage site. It really is Turkey’s decision tough, but… […]
Turkish Politics and You
With the world concentrating on COVID-19, you may have missed Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan’s latest not so subtle move to reshape his country. He wants to turn a museum into a mosque. Not just any museum though, but a UNESCO world heritage building, the Hagia Sophia. This is a popular move in a country where […]
Testament of Time
I understand why this piece, originally published in February 2015, was popular in 2019. There has been a movement in Turkey for a number of years to convert the Hagia Sophia from a museum into a mosque and it seemed there was increased talk of that this past year. This was the second-most read post […]
Buyukada Orphanage
I was reading a news report about the possible re-opening of Halki Seminary in Istanbul, which was shuttered by the Turkish government almost 40 years ago, leaving Turkey’s Orthodox church without a seminary to train its priests, when I remembered this post I did four years ago about another Orthodox institution on a neighboring island. […]
Karanalik Kalise
I’m not even going to try uploading pictures and a new post for today, given the weak internet connection where I am staying. I’ve got a few posts planned for when I get back to Germany next week and those will have pictures attached. So today I thought this post from a few years ago […]
The Geriatric Vote
There is a certain prestige involved in being the world’s oldest person. The oldest living person on record (Biblical accounts are not considered records in these things) was a Russian woman who died earlier this week, supposedly at age 128. Her age has been disputed – there were no records of her birth, and allegations […]
Buying A Carpet
I attended a workshop where the speaker recounted how she bought a carpet on a trip to Istanbul. She talked about the process, recounted how much she had paid, then displayed her purchase. She spent several hundred dollars on what was essentially a placemat. I don’t remember why she was telling the story, probably an […]
Dervish Dance
I had mixed feelings about attending – but I am glad I did. Whirling dervishes are part of an obscure branch of Islam, an ecstatic dance performed only in a few places. I won’t go into details, you can look it up. I am extremely reluctant to contribute financially to something I don’t believe in, […]
Hiking In The Rose Valley V
Time to let the pictures speak for themselves. I walked for a couple of hours, no more, and really only scratched the surface of what there was to see. I’ve been back to Turkey a couple of times since, but on those occasions I never got out of Ataturk Airport in Istanbul. I’m hoping that […]
Hiking In The Rose Valley IV
I knew from the faded frescoes on the walls and ceiling where I was though I didn’t know its name, if indeed it had one. It was perhaps the most emotional experience of my trip to Turkey. I was wandering through the Rose Valley and choosing caves at random to explore. People had been living […]
random thoughts from lorne 
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