Year in review: freelance highlights for 2018

One of the first pieces I published this year was also my favorite (and for one of my favorite outlets): the story of an inspiring housing cooperative in western Turkey. I learned about the Düzce Hope Homes while reporting a big piece on political urbanism in 2017 and spent a rainy day in January at the construction site with members of the community, who sent me off on my bus trip back to Istanbul laden with jars of their homemade yogurt and preserves:

The 'Most Hopeful' New Housing in Turkey: Twenty years after being displaced by an earthquake, families in Düzce, Turkey, are getting homes that they helped design and build themselves. (CityLab, 23 February 2018)

It's far too easy to waste all day on Twitter, but I wouldn't have published this piece without the social-media platform. Spotting a call for pitches in a tweet led to my first story for Hyperallergic, and my first on performance art:

Artists Fill Six-Story Istanbul House with 672 Hours of Performance Art: The house will become a research space and library in a country where performance art remains underdeveloped, and many artists fear persecution. (Hyperallergic, 15 March 2018)

The always challenging, idea-driven Istanbul Design Biennial is never easy to grasp hold of and digest, but I enjoyed once again wrestling with its concepts and creations and synthesizing them into a review for the design journal Disegno, with which I've been happily developing a relationship over the past few years:

Back to School: The fourth edition of the Istanbul Design Biennial draws on types of knowledge that are generally little-valued in standard design education. (Disegno, 27 September 2018)

I continued my longstanding relationship with Culinary Backstreets this year, writing three pieces for the site: on a project helping refugees become food entrepreneurs, a restaurant serving Istanbul's homeless, and this one, on a new generation of farmers in Turkey. The idea for this story had been percolating in my mind since summer 2016, when I met a woman who'd given up the corporate life to make cheese, and I was happy to be able to take a broader look at this trend:

Back to the Land: Urban Turks Tackle Rural Life: The number of Turks swapping the city for the countryside is multiplying, driven by rising urban stresses and an increasingly stifling political climate. (Culinary Backstreets, 23 March 2018)

An assignment from Korean Air's in-flight magazine to write about Turkey's cherry industry saw me traveling with a photographer to the western city of Tekirdağ for its cherry festival and a tour of a prize-winning local cherry orchard. I also spoke with numerous Istanbul chefs, including Çiya's influential Musa Dağdeviren, about the use of the fruit in both historical and contemporary cooking:

Cherries on Top: Turkey leads the world in cherry production, but the fruit’s role in its kitchens has dwindled over the decades. Now, a culinary rediscovery of this local bounty may be in the works. (Morning Calm, September 2018)

This year, I also continued working with Lonely Planet as both a freelance editor and as the travel publisher's "Istanbul Local," a role that included putting together a neighborhood guide to Fener and Balat, writing news stories about a wildly popular train journey in Turkey and the new Troy Museum, and contributing photos of Istanbul's colorful "semt pazarları" (neighborhood markets) for an Instagram story.

And I traveled from İzmir to Bodrum (and quite a few other places along the way) updating the "Central and Southern Aegean Coast" chapter for the Fodor's Turkey guidebook, to be published in 2019.

Unrelated to work (but helping keep me sane enough to cope with the ups and downs of freelancing), I also ran 1,000 miles this year, and hiked to the summit of Kaçkar Dağ, amongst other outdoor adventures.

I'm still looking for a home for some of the stories I'm most passionate about: If any editors out there are interested in a feature piece about the fight to save one of Turkey's last wild landscapes and the traditional ways of life dependent on it, do get in touch.

Ready to see what 2019 will bring!

Year in review: freelance highlights for 2017

With all the juggling involved in a freelancer's life — pitching, writing, invoicing, researching, editing, fact-checking, drumming up new work, updating websites and social media, following up on emails, and on and on — it's easy to lose track of the big picture while constantly chasing after the next assignment and rushing to meet the next deadline. So it was good to take a moment to look back at the year and acknowledge that I'd published some pieces I was really proud of. Here's my personal top five stories from 2017:

1) Science, Interrupted

War and strife have uprooted many researchers. Can their life’s work be saved? (Discover, September 2017)

This feature on displaced scientists and researchers struggling to resume their careers as refugees was one of the most rewarding projects I worked on this year.  It's always a pleasure to work with Discover and my stellar editor at the magazine, who believed in me and this story enough to encourage me to take my kernel of an idea for a short news article and make it blossom into a long feature.

2) Contested Spaces

New political urbanism in Istanbul's Taksim Square. (Disegno, Autumn 2017)

Taking this deep dive into issues of public space, urban design and the politics of urbanism in Istanbul was another highlight of the year. I'm grateful to Disegno and the editors there for giving me so much room and freedom to explore issues I've been thinking, reading, talking and writing about for years in such an in-depth way. I learned so much from the architects and planners I interviewed, and even took away some bits of hope where I'd expected to find none.

3) Turkey ploughs on with controversial €1.2 billion dam project

A controversial €1.2 billion dam project threatens to displace tens of thousands of people across the Tigris Valley and submerge 12,000 years of history in Hasankeyf. (Equal Times, 20 November 2017)

The endangered town of Hasankeyf is a special place in Turkey; I first visited it in 2011 and wrote a travel piece for Time Out Istanbul, followed in 2013 by an article on a cross-border river journey that aimed to raise awareness about the dam threatening Hasankeyf and downstream parts of the Tigris River in Iraq. This year, as the pace of preparations for Hasankeyf's flooding accelerated, I wrote two news pieces about the looming destruction of its communities, heritage and environment, this one for Equal Times, and one earlier in the year for Thomson Reuters Foundation.

4) The Secrets Beneath a Suburb

Experts are uncovering millennia of history under a Turkish megacity’s outskirts. (Discover, November 2017)

Plentiful chances to ramble around ruins are one of the things I love about living in Turkey, and the more hidden-away and neglected, the better. So when one of my regular hiking excursions in Istanbul took our group hacking through thick and thorny brush to reach the largely forgotten remains of a bustling Byzantine trading port, I knew I wanted to learn more – and write – about this fascinating place. Following on my previous features for Discover about urban archaeology and the Neolithic site of Çatalhöyük, the magazine published this short piece I wrote highlighting some of archaeologists' key finds at Bathonea.

5) Beyond Baklava

To eat in Istanbul is to taste a broad swath of the world and centuries of history, and the city’s sweets are no exception. (Fare, Issue 1)

Over the years I've lived in Istanbul, I've often been disappointed to see travel and food writers cover the same well-trodden ground about Turkey over and over, even in publications I respected. So I was happy to get an email from the editor of Fare, a new magazine promising a more eclectic, imaginative approach, asking me if I had a fresh story about food in Istanbul to tell. My short piece about some lesser-known treats with bittersweet histories appeared in Fare's inaugural edition, a beautifully designed publication devoted to all things Istanbul.

Another big highlight of the year has been developing an ongoing relationship with the wonderful team at Lonely Planet, with whom my work has included helping update their online coverage of Istanbul; putting together neighborhood guides and other fun "insider" looks at the city; writing short travel news items and longer travel narratives about Turkey; contributing social media content to their channels; and editing parts of their global content on places from Argentina to Tallinn.

The year wasn't all about work, of course: hiking, traveling, running, art, books, food and friends kept me busy and inspired, both professionally and personally.

Onward to 2018!

The forgotten ruins of Bathonea

On a warm day in June 2016, I was part of a hearty band of hikers who hacked through the thick and thorny brush surrounding Istanbul's Küçükçekmece Lake to reach the largely forgotten remains of a bustling Byzantine trading port.

The ruins of Bathonea, located on the outskirts of the city far from its historic center, came as a magical surprise to me, but archaeologists have been working for a decade to uncover their secrets.

I highlighted a few of their finds in a short piece for Discover magazine's November 2017 issue: "The Secrets Beneath a Suburb."

Istanbul art madness

Art-lovers in Istanbul were spoiled for choice this fall, with the annual art fair Contemporary Istanbul changing its usual place in the calendar to coincide with the Istanbul Biennial, and dozens upon dozens of museums, galleries and artist-run spaces opening new shows at the same time.

Trying to catch them all made for an exhausting but invigorating few weeks of exhibition-hopping, during which I wrote four pieces of arts coverage:

• "Istanbul's Biggest Art Festival Branches Out to Greece," on the Istanbul Biennial and its "neighboring event" on the Greek island of Lesvos, for Lonely Planet

• "New Date, Director and Galleries Reinvigorate Contemporary Istanbul in Art Fair’s 12th Year," on the latest edition of Contemporary Istanbul, for Selections

• "This Stunning Ottoman Villa in Istanbul is Open to Visitors for the First Time with Contemporary Art Exhibition," on the Ömer M. Koç Collection exhibit at the Abdülmecid Efendi Köşkü, for Lonely Planet

• "Beauty Versus Reality – Ai Weiwei," on the world-renowned Chinese artist's first solo exhibition in Turkey, at the Sakıp Sabanci Museum, for Selections

Paint's dance with water

“Your hand must be like a machine, with a nice, steady rhythm — not dropping the paint with too much or too little force,” says Bahar Kocabaş. “You have to be patient, but when the colors open up, it’s beautiful.”

That's how Kocabaş, an artist and teacher in Istanbul, described the art of paper marbling to me. Known in Turkish as ebru, the process has been inscribed on UNESCO’s List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity -- a list that Morning Calm, the inflight magazine for Korean Air, is featuring in a series of cover stories. I was asked to write the magazine's feature on ebru, which appeared on the cover of Morning Calm's July 2017 edition, and delved into controversies about the art's origins and the way both tradition and innovation are playing a role in keeping it alive.

Read a pdf version of my piece, "Water Colors," accompanied by lovely photos by John Wreford.

A city and its food

Photo via Fare Magazine

The new magazine Fare, devoted to "exploring city culture through food, history, and community," chose Istanbul as the feature city for its inaugural issue, which was published this week. It's full of beautiful photography and design, and an eclectic selection of articles, including a piece by me on some of Istanbul's lesser-known sweet treats, such as the beyaz tatlı once beloved by the city's Greek, Jewish and Armenian communities and now, like the people who once ate it, largely swept away in a tide of cultural and culinary homogenization.

My piece, "Beyond Baklava," and a wealth of other stories are available in Fare Issue 1: Istanbul, on sale at independent book and magazine stores and other locations in Turkey and Europe -- and available for shipping worldwide.

Bonus photos:

Üç Şekerleme proprietor Altuğ Dörtler scooping out some beyaz tatlı for a guest (me!)

A rainbow array of sweets for sale at Üç Yıldız Şekerleme in Istanbul's Beyoğlu district

Top spots in Kadıköy

Artsy, eclectic Istanbullus are flocking to the city’s once-sleepy Asian side and its lively cafes, galleries, bars, shops, and eateries. For visitors staying near the historic sights of Sultanahmet, a short and scenically stunning ferry ride across continents is all it takes to join them....

I've been contracted by Lonely Planet to help update their online coverage of Istanbul over the next few months, an assignment I kicked off by writing a short guide to Kadıköy, a neighborhood that seems more vibrant every time I hop across the Bosphorus to visit it.

Read the rest of my travel guide, "10 places to soak up the vibe of Istanbul’s Kadıköy neighbourhood," on the Lonely Planet website.

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 view from Istanbul during the #TurkeyCoupAttempt

Glancing at the to-do list on my desk that I’d scribbled just hours before, the scrap of paper seemed to have appeared from some alternate universe too banal to be believed.

My story featured on the CityLab homepage.

Set alarm for 6 a.m. Take out the trash when I go out for an early-morning run. Bring some money to buy fruit for breakfast on the way home.

Cowering on the entryway floor at 3 a.m. as jets roared past, their sonic booms shaking the building and threatening to break the windows, hadn’t been part of the plan....

As shots rang out outside my window and concerned messages pinged in from friends and family around the world, my editor at CityLab, The Atlantic's website on urban issues, asked me if I'd like to write something about my personal experience of being in Istanbul during what turned out to be a failed military coup.

Read the rest of that essay, "Istanbul, the Day After," on CityLab.

For more on the politics of the coup attempt, its aftermath, and its possible ramifications, here are some news, analysis, and commentary pieces I think are worth a read:

• "The night Erdoğan almost lost Turkey," Noah Blaser, Foreign Policy, 15 July 2016
• "The tragedy of Turkey's attempted coup," Jenny White, CNN, 16 July 2016
• "Turkey's failed coup gives its president a chance to seize more power," Piotr Zalewski, The Economist, 16 July 2016
• "Turkey's last coup: What I saw in Ankara," Selim Koru, War on the Rocks, 16 July 2016
• "Erdoğan’s Pyrrhic victory," Hugh Pope and Nigar Göksel, Politico, 17 July 2016
• "Erdoğan promised to bring true democracy to Turkey. Instead, he’s held it hostage," Elmira Bayrasli, Quartz, 17 July 2016
• "No ordinary weekend: personal reflections on a failed coup," Başak Çalı, Medium, 17 July 2016
• "Turkish president foiled coup with luck, tech savvy," Dion Nissenbaum, Adam Entous, and Emre Peker, The Wall Street Journal, 17 July 2016
• "Brutality of Turkey's failed coup caught on phones, social media," Ayla Jean Yackley, Reuters, 18 July 2016
• "How the internet saved Turkey’s internet-hating president," Zeynep Tüfekçi, The New York Times, 18 July 2016
• "Vast purge in Turkey as thousands are detained in post-coup backlash," Tim Arango, Ceylan Yeginsu, and Ben Hubbard, The New York Times, 18 July 2016
• "The view from Taksim Square," William Armstrong, The Times Literary Supplement, 19 July 2016

As it happened: CNN Türk page for "news related to the 
15 July 2016 coup". The main headline reads: "Group of
soldiers in the TRT building have issued a statement."

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

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

An urban cycling adventure for a good cause

Precariously balanced on the back of a creaky tandem bicycle, I skated one foot along the curb as we wound our way through narrow roads clogged with cars and pedestrians, drawing curious stares, pointed fingers, and open laughter at the outlandish sight of bikes trying to traverse one of Istanbul's most bustling neighborhoods late on a Saturday night.

Ready to roll in Kadıköy

Inside a popular local soup joint, it was brighter and warmer, but equally busy, full of people downing hot bowls of mercimek çorbası before or after a night on the town. Our soup, however, was brought out from the kitchen not in bowls but in a large insulated container, ready to be packed into a specially rigged trailer on the back of one of the bikes in our odd little convoy. Then it was back out into the chaotic streets of Kadıköy, darting through traffic to reach the ferry terminal.

Across the Bosphorus in Karaköy, we met up with two more intrepid souls who had ventured out on a bitingly cold February night to delivery hot soup to the city's homeless. "I came the first time out of curiosity," one of the riders told me. "But the night had such a good feeling, I keep coming back."

After donning orange florescent vests, we headed back out into the night, this time on wider streets with faster traffic. Not much of a cyclist -- hence the tandem -- I felt my chest tighten every time a car zipped by closer than it needed to, or startled me with an unnecessary honk. I tried to keep focused on the reassuring tinkle of the bell on the bike behind us, and take heart from the cheerful demeanor of the only other person riding on the back of a tandem, a blind man who is a frequent participant in this unusual initiative that aims to make cyclists, the disabled, and the homeless more visible on Istanbul's streets.

Pouring bowls of soup to serve in Aksaray

Fear eventually gave way to exhilaration as we sped through the night, wind on our faces and legs pumping hard. We hopped off at ancient archways, mosque courtyards, metro entrances, and underneath highway overpasses -- anywhere we spotted someone huddled under a blanket or warming their hands around a fire burning in an empty tin olive-oil canister. Most welcomed the meal, and the chance to tell someone their story, though a group of homeless children alongside a busy boulevard ran away as we approached.

In the wee hours of the morning, the soup pot empty and our hands aching from the cold, we parted ways. As I walked up the hill towards home, I passed a building I've walked by hundreds of times without a second glance. For the first time, I noticed the alcoves created by its exterior architecture -- and the pile of blankets inside one of these niches, wrapped around a solitary sleeping figure.

READ MORE: My story about the two-wheeled soup-delivery initiative Engelsiz Çorba was published by GOOD magazine on March 13, 2015.

A sweet but fading tradition

The Altan Şekerleme candy shop was a frequent and favorite stop during my time as a tour guide for Istanbul Eats’ culinary walks, but what happened in the candy-making operation upstairs was always a closely guarded secret. At a recent press event at the Istanbul Culinary Arts Center, however, I finally had the chance to see how those glistening hard candies were made, and to return for a chat with one of the master şekerci (confectioners) carrying on a tradition that dates back, with little change, to Ottoman times.

Read my article for Zester Daily, “Turkish Candy Entices Through the Ages”

Turkey's 'Garbage Ladies'

It's a warm July day in the small harbor town of Ayvalık, on Turkey's Aegean coast. A horse cart with wooden wheels clatters down a cobblestone street, past a bustling, sun-drenched workshop, its front door flung open. Inside, a half dozen women are hunkered down over long wooden tables, cutting, stitching and crafting. Using bits of thrown-away packaging and factory rejects – leather scraps, swaths of felt, surplus canned-food labels – they're transforming trash destined for the dump into colorful clutches, purses and wallets to be sold in trendy gift shops around Turkey. Even more remarkably, the women, most of whom have no more than a fifth-grade education, are also transforming their lives: For the first time ever, they're being paid for their work...

I met American expat Tara Hopkins not long after I moved to Istanbul, when she had recently founded Çöp(m)adam, a path-breaking social enterprise that combined women's empowerment with environmental responsibility in a way largely unknown in Turkey. I knew from the start that it was a great story – one that finally found a worthy home this year in the U.S. women's magazine More.

To write the profile of Hopkins and her talented team of "Garbage Ladies," I spent time at their workshop in the seaside town of Ayvalık, hearing heartbreaking and inspiring stories about the women, their families, and their new lives.

Read my article about Çöp(m)adam as it appeared in More magazine's March 2014 issue: “She Turns Trash Into Cash..." (pdf)

A journey down the Tigris

Fifty years ago, wooden rafts called keleks regularly plied the Tigris River, carrying people, livestock, and cargo – with loads up to 35 tons – from southern Turkey to northern Iraq. Built from logs lashed together and made buoyant by inflated goat skins, a fully loaded kelek could travel the 250-mile distance from Diyarbakır, Turkey, to Mosul, Iraq, in just six days.

Today, the rafts' long, heavy wooden oars push slowly through the brown, flat waters of the Tigris as they traverse northern Iraq. Sometimes their bottoms scrape the riverbed, the water levels low enough on a late September day for a tall man to stand waist-deep in the middle of the river. It takes a full day of hard effort to row eight miles…

When a last-minute invitation arrived last month to join the environmental group Nature Iraq as they paddled, floated, rowed, and (sometimes) towed a trio of traditional boats down the Tigris River from Hasankeyf to the marshes of southern Iraq, it was an opportunity I couldn't pass up.

My stint with their Tigris River Flotilla in northern Iraq included both gritty gravel mines and glorious natural vistas, a night excursion to a Turkish-built amusement park in Duhok, a long night spent trying to cross the border, lunch with a cliff-dwelling hermit, camping (and posing for pictures) with the peshmerga, and some seriously sore muscles – plenty of fodder for numerous stories. My first dispatch from the trip was published last week by the Christian Science Monitor, marking my debut with that publication.

>> Read the rest of my article, "Dammed, dirty, drained by war: can Iraq's Tigris River be restored?" on the Monitor website.

A dessert with depth

Cooking aşure at a Slow Food event
in Istanbul.

"What kind of dessert is this?" I thought to myself the first time I tried aşure. A traditional Turkish pudding thick with wheat, rice, chickpeas, and white beans, and studded with dried fruits and nuts, it seemed more reminiscent of a hearty, good-for-you bowl of oatmeal than a sweet treat.

Joining the contributors team at Zester Daily, a website devoted to food journalism, gave me the opportunity to really dig in to this unusual dish, whose cultural associations and traditions are as rich, numerous, and varied as its ingredients.

Get to the bottom of a bowl of aşure with my debut piece for Zester, "A Pudding for All That Comes From Turkey's Melting Pot."

TreeHugging in Turkey: A look back

For the past four years, I've been blogging for TreeHugger.com about environmental issues, primarily in Turkey and the region, but also elsewhere in the world, following my interests in art, food, travel, urban planning, and other topics.

What passes for 'nature' in much of Istanbul.

In the main, the environmental news from Turkey has been distressing to follow: continual construction of destructive dams, stubborn plans to build a nuclear power plant in the face of earthquake threats, the tragic deaths of coal miners, and preventable flooding disasters, to name just a few.

Not that there haven't been some fun moments too (a cute little baby bear in a box! ice cream delivery by bike! translating Tarkan lyrics and calling it work!).

Most heartening, and rewarding, however, has been getting to know some of the people who are bucking the tide of unsustainable growth -- people developing eco-tourism options, helping others shop more responsibly, empowering consumers to learn about their food, designing green buildings, engaging in creative recycling, and planting permaculture gardens in the middle of the city.

In addition to providing an excuse to contact and meet all sorts of fascinating people, blogging for TreeHugger has also given me the opportunity to cover events such as the 5th World Water Forum and the London School of Economics' Urban Age conference; and the chance to raise the profile of places I care about – Istanbul, of course, but also Beirut, which I fell in love with on a 2010 visit, and Lake Urmia in Iran, where my grandfather originated and where I hope to travel someday. (It also let me occasionally indulge my nostalgia for San Francisco and baseball.) One of my posts got picked up by the popular tech site Boing Boing, while another led to an assignment for BBC Wildlife magazine.

Now, 656 blog posts later, my tenure as a TreeHugger correspondent is over due to changes at the site, though not my interest in covering these issues, of course. To mark the end of a little era, here's a baker's dozen worth of links to some of my favorite TreeHugger posts that I wrote about Turkey:

• A Green Bazaar for Istanbul (Oct. 18, 2008)
• Life Abroad, A Different Shade of Green (Dec. 14, 2008)
• Istanbul's Green-Design Innovators (March 7, 2009)
• Slideshow: A Year of Green, Seasonal Eating in Istanbul (July 24, 2009)
• Istanbul Chefs, Diners, and Fishermen Unite to Save Iconic Species from Extinction (May 9, 2010)
• Interview: Turkey's Scientist of the Year on Butterflies, Banding Birds, and Eco Tourism (Jan. 19, 2011)
• Clever Mobile Gardens for City with Too Little Green (Feb. 9, 2011)
• 'A Few Brave People' Fight to Protect Turkey's Black Sea Region from Destructive Dams (March 2, 2011)
• Remembering a Turkish Environmental Pioneer (March 4, 2011)
• In Turkey, Planting Trees In the Path of a Dam's Destruction (March 20, 2011)
• Istanbul: A City Growing in 'Overdrive' (April 16, 2011)
• Turkish Photographers Capture Climate Change (Nov. 12, 2011)
• Seeking Real Sustainability at Istanbul Film Festival (Dec. 2, 2011)

You can find my full archive of TreeHugger posts (for now, at least) on my contributor page.

The glamorous life of the guidebook updater

"You must have the best job in the world!" the couple at the next table gushed, having just learned that I was staying at their Assos hotel while updating part of the Fodor's Turkey guidebook.

While there are certainly some jealousy-inducing perks to guidebook work – like getting the VIP treatment at that lovely establishment (including a divine breakfast featuring fresh-baked bread, local cheeses and olives, spicy pepper dip, and homemade pistachio and chili jams) – most of what's involved is far less glamorous than fellow travelers might think.

My days on the North Aegean (one of my favorite parts of Turkey) last summer were largely spent getting up early, guzzling copious amounts of Nescafe, and then racing from one hotel, restaurant, or historic site to the next, checking opening hours, prices, menus, room features, and other nitty-gritty details, then collapsing in a sweaty mess (it was August, after all) on a bus that would take me to the next destination, where the process would start all over again.

Nearly a year later, the fruits of these labors have made it into the 8th edition of Fodor's Turkey, with "Chapter 3: The Sea of Marmara and the North Aegean" – much of which is also available online – bearing my mark as updater. Friend and colleague Vanessa Larson's imprimatur is on the "Istanbul" and "Cappadocia and Central Turkey" chapters. I hope our work helps point travelers in the right direction – and that on my next trip to the North Aegean, I'll be packing my bikini and beach towel instead of my reporter's notebook and pen!

What's lost and left behind

Arriving late for a studio visit scheduled during the Contemporary Istanbul art fair last fall turned out to be a stroke of luck. The organized group of art lovers had already breezed in and out, leaving sculptor Sibel Horada free to give me a relaxed one-on-one interview over tea.

After a private screening of the old-fashioned slideshow that made up part of her recent installation work "Urban Knights," we lounged on the antique button-tufted sofa that also featured in the piece and chatted about Beyoğlu's mysteriously disappearing tables, the sacredness of street cats and old chairs, sculpting with marble, and learning to appreciate Impressionism in a rainy beech forest.

My profile of Horada and her work appeared in the Spring 2012 issue of Selections, following three pieces I wrote on Contemporary Istanbul for the previous issue of the Beirut-based luxury lifestyle magazine.

>> Read my article, "Sibel Horada: What's lost and left behind": jpg | pdf