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Shedding Clothes And Inhibitions In A Turkish Hammam
After four days of exploring Istanbul on foot, with whirlwind visits to the Grand Bazaar and Princes’ Islands, I was determined to spend a quiet evening in my hotel room. That was until I saw a...
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Kanishk Tharoor on Walking Past the Present in Istanbul
Istanbul’s Sultan Ahmed Mosque rises as if from a height. Its hulking tiered domes overlook the water and its minarets carve out the sky. When Kanishk Tharoor entered its spacious, sunlit interior as a...
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Turning on the Juice in Turkey
On the train back from Selçuk to Izmir we begin to debate. “I really need some,” my friend Kamini says. She brings up the map on her phone, tracing a potential route with her index finger. “Well, if we...
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Light at the End of the Titus Tunnel
The path is lined with tiny shops selling local sabun (olive oil-and-laurel soaps), bottles of wild honey and pomegranate syrup, bay leaf oil and an array of fruits, ranging from strawberries to plums....
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72 Hours in Turkey’s Wild West
An hour’s flight out of Istanbul, Izmir city is by the Aegean Sea on Turkey’s west coast. What stands out here is how the ancient world still pokes through—cities can be built and rebuilt endlessly, a...
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Finding Ali Baba’s Treasure in Turkey
In Avanos’ town centre stands a clay sculpture of a craftsman at a potter’s wheel—a hat tip to the earthenware crafts that define the region’s past and present. Avanos is a tiny town of around 12,000...
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‘Ghostly and Melancholic’: Bustling Istanbul is Muted by Quarantine
The Bosporus, the narrow strait running through the heart of Istanbul, flows at the intersection of Europe and Asia. It’s both a watery highway and a metaphor, uniting social life in this city of 15...
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What’s Next for Turkey’s Hagia Sophia?
It’s a UNESCO World Heritage site, the nation’s biggest tourist draw, and the contested religious centre of both Christian and Muslim empires. In mid-2020, Turkey moved to convert the 1,500-year-old...
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On a Turkish Adventure in Cappadocia
There’s something in the air in Cappadocia. Some say it’s the winged spirits—‘peri’, in Turkish—that reputedly inhabit the region’s famous, phallic geological marvels, ‘fairy chimneys’. In the recent...
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Discovering Istanbul’s Culinary Tradition
If you’re looking for something to soak up the excesses of your night come 4 a.m., you’ll have no trouble finding it in Istanbul. You’re never too far from a compact café selling döner cut straight...
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