Turkey has close ties to Azerbaijan and wants a seat at the negotiating table, but Ankara’s interest goes beyond brotherly love. Continue reading What’s Turkey’s role in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict?
Tatar may be Turkey’s greatest ever boxer. But she has spent years struggling for respect, recognition, and support. Continue reading Turkish boxer Gülsüm Tatar in the fight of her life
With so much political, social, and financial capital invested in its national squad, why can’t Turkey qualify for a World Cup? Continue reading Why can’t Turkey qualify for the World Cup?
Fenerbahce is widely considered Turkey’s wealthiest, most politically important club, with millions of fans and a history of success. But the team is beleaguered, on and off the field. Can a challenger unseat the club’s powerful president? Continue reading Election day for a beleaguered Turkish soccer power
Ikranur Sarigul is only one of many girls in the eastern Anatolian region whose life was transformed by joining a girl’s school team set up to keep them in education and out of an early marriage. Continue reading How football is saving the lives of Turkish girls in Malatya
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan was once an athlete. Now, he uses sport for his own purposes—even as fans use it to express dissent. Continue reading Understanding authoritarianism through soccer
Firas al-Ali, a former player for Al Shorta and the Syrian national team, has lost friends, family members and his home in the violence that has engulfed Syria. Continue reading The Syrian football star caught up in revolution and forced into refuge
Field recordists are battling to preserve Turkey’s unique sonic heritage amid rampant gentrification and noise pollution. Continue reading A fight is on to save the sounds of Turkey
There is often also a poetic intensity to the love expressed in Turkish football songs. Many are suffused with longing and infatuation. Continue reading Love songs of Turkish football
Photographs of Fuat Husnu Kayacan show him dressed impeccably in an Ottoman tunic and fez, sporting a sharply waxed moustache, looking every bit a young man of the establishment. He attended a military school and his father was an admiral in the Ottoman navy. But Fuat Husnu was also a subversive, a criminal: an illicit footballer. Click here to read the rest of this article published … Continue reading Illicit football: The Black Stockings
REYHANLI, TURKEY – Grasping the bed sheets, Abu Staif braced against the pain as he lifted and lowered his weight-strapped right leg. The knee is swollen and there’s a large chunk missing from his lower leg but painfully, painstakingly, he is getting better – thanks to a new mobile physiotherapy unit in the Turkish town of Reyhanli. Just over a year ago Abu Staif, now … Continue reading How a mobile physio unit is helping wounded Syrian refugees to walk again
Writing by Patrick Keddie 