When marine politics get nasty: Ahmet Aslan recovers in a hospital after being shot in the eye by a gang of illegal fishermen. Fishing is a time-honored Istanbul tradition. But to catch and sell fish, one must have a license nowadays. That doesn’t stop some from illegally trawling for fish in the Bosphorus, or the […]
Anyone who loves nature will enjoy Balyolu’s week long tour on Northeastern Turkey’s honey road. Update May 20, 2020: this tour is no longer operating. It’s impossible to understate the importance of bees. Like fruit bats – thousands of which were gunned down by unknown assailants in Lebanon last weekend – they are pollinators that […]
Turning trash into art and employing women who have never worked for pay before — two difficult tasks that Turkish company Çöp(m)adam accomplishes at once. Turkey’s recycling culture is largely unseen. Recycling is usually carried out by poorly compensated workers who salvage reusable materials from trash collected by the municipality and take them to recycling centers. […]
Nearly 3 billion people lack safe and efficient cooking gear. It’s time to make the problem in the kitchen sexier. Half the world’s households prepare their meals over open fires or with jerry-rigged cookers fueled by scrap wood, coal, combustible waste and dung. Fatal burns are common and foraged fuel dangerously degrades indoor air quality. […]
Kerry Bingham’s off-grid earth bag home in Turkey only cost $3,761 to build. Everybody’s talking about earth bag construction lately, including The National, which reported this weekend that a British woman has built an earthbag home a la Iranian architecture Nader Khalili. Using dirt from her own 6,500 square foot plot of land, the artist and […]
A hydroelectric project in Turkey’s northeastern Ardahan district will change the flow of the Mtkvari River, the biggest water artery in the South Caucasus. A planned dam in northeastern Turkey, the Beshik Haya cascade reservoirs, will divert most of the Mtkvari River from the Caspian Sea to the Black Sea, according to Georgia’s Green Party. […]
Work will soon begin on the 44-story Renaissance Tower in Istanbul, Turkey. The only thing authentically Turkish here is its zip code. Image via FXFOWLE Located on the Asian side of Istanbul at 606-feet, which is taller than most of its skyline neighbors, this “chiseled obelisk” of an office block is meant to highlight an eastern […]
Turkish environmental journalist Mahmut Boynudelik has proposed a set of fundamental ecological principles to be enshrined in the country’s new constitution. Last Wednesday, Turkey’s Constitution Reconciliation Commission was presented with a new series of articles for inclusion in the country’s new constitution. Led by the Turkish Green Party, the articles were submitted by the Initiative […]
Our VIP list of 11 environment heroes for the Middle East 2011. If you don’t know these people already, now is the time to start. Top heroes are from Israel, Turkey and Iraq. The year 2011 has been a year like no other in the Middle East. We’ve seen protests against corruption, people have taken […]
Internet filters against evolution: Evolutionary biologists find it increasingly harder to work in Turkey
With an estimated 8 trillion cubic meters of natural gas, Turkey wants some of this energy wealth too. The Republic of Cyprus has started surveying for natural gas, and recent estimates are that its undersea reserves are worth billions of dollars. Helped by Israel and America’s Noble Energy, the subterranean Cyprus discoveries could make the […]
Increasingly smoggy skies are in store for Turkey if it follows the energy paths predicted. A mostly dismal list of 2012 predictions that recently appeared in the Eurasia Review, courtesy of Haluk Direskeneli, an energy analyst, consultant, and member of the Chamber of Mechanical Engineers in Ankara, Turkey’s capital city. Low investor interest in alternate fuels and […]
The countries that emit the most greenhouse gases only agreed to “vague, fragile” reduction targets at the recent climate change conference in Durban, according to Özgür Gürbüz, who was present at the conference. For MENA countries, there are some bright spots in the outcome of the most recent United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP17) […]
Living in Turkey and curious about where to find your nearest organic market? How to recycle? Where to take yoga classes? Yeşilist offers Turks tips on greener choices in areas ranging from Home & Garden to Ecotourism, Fashion & Textile to Nutrition. Environmentally conscious Turks are a frustrated lot. Their country is developing along the […]
The wolf pictured above is an Iranian wolf, which exists is dwindling numbers throughout Israel, Iran, and Turkey. Our fear of the wolf is historically as deep-seated as our survival instinct, which may explain why only two countries in the Middle East have established official bans against hunting them. Two subspecies of the Gray Wolf […]