After a rise in the cost of gasoline on Tuesday, Turks are now paying what may be the world’s highest price for the precious liquid. 95-octane unleaded gasoline jumped to 4.62 Turkish Lira ($2.60, or € 1.93 ) per liter on Tuesday. By comparison, the European countries with the highest current gas prices — Italy, Denmark, […]
Think Egypt’s White Desert meeting Mont Blanc. Three days of heavy snowfall hit downtown Amman, fat flakes screaming for clothes not found in our closets. Schools shut and offices closed. Icy roads wrought havoc on the annual Dead2Red bike and running race. Park aside historical significance, religious connotation, and cultural pride: I say this waterbody’s main value is as […]
From protests in Turkey to everything you wanted to know about climate change, catch up on the latest green news from the region Saudi Minister Denies Land Bridge to Egypt Plans Following a rather mixed reaction to the news that plans were afoot to build a bridge connecting Egypt and Saudi via the Red Sea, […]
German wind turbine manufacturer Nordex will construct eleven 2.5 MW turbines for the Tektuğ Elektrik Group’s first wind project. This autumn, on a mountain ridge in southeastern Turkey’s Adiyaman province, construction will begin on the 27.5 MW “Sincik” wind energy farm, Nordex announced today. It will be the flagship wind energy project of the Tektuğ Elektrik […]
Karin draws a line between women’s rights and green issues in light of upcoming SlutWalks in Israel. Last April Green Prophet asked: Should the Middle East Have More Sluts? Of course we wanted to attract our reader’s attention, and we did with thousands of readers, hundreds of “Likes” and dozens of comments. Although I am […]
Are you up for a bit of quiet activism? Take our plastic bag challenge This is a call to arms, and to hands: my challenge to you when you shop this week, this month or this year. Tell the clerk you’ll pass on that bag, instead tuck your purchases into your pockets or purse. Bring your own sack and […]
Streets become highways, trees make way for the mall in a new plan for Taksim Square in Istanbul. Today, Istanbul’s Taksim Square is a bustling hub of activity, with majestic Gezi Park providing some natural solace — even when the trees are brown in winter, as in the above photo. But a new plan would […]
Every year in Namibia, 86,000 Cape Fur Seal pups are butchered to death and only one man has the contract to turn their fur into so-called fashionable apparel. We had pictures of what’s going on but Google banned the page for it being too graphic. The Turkish and Australian based company Hatem Yavuz named after […]
Majestic Mt. Ağri presides over Turkey’s Kars region, one of the world’s richest biodiversity areas and the entrance to a new protected area in eastern Anatolia. The large mammals of Turkey aren’t doing so well these days. As new developments have eaten up more and more of their habitat, leaving them stranded in island forests, their […]
Your sandblasted Armani jeans could be killing people. “Distressed” jeans are commonly made by blasting the denim with silica (pictured above) after it has been pressurized into miniscule dust particles. But this fashion trend has been lethal for workers in denim sandblasting factories around the world. In Turkey, İdris Oral has become the 50th factory worker […]
Tanin 1 gas field, in large yellow area north of the Tamar field, is too close for comfort to Lebanese shores. Lebanon is going to the UN to complain. Israel’s got natural gas. A lot of it. Cleaner burning than coal or bitumen, natural gas has a reputation for being more environmentally friendly. Countries like […]
The Nabucco natural gas pipeline (in orange) was designed to lessen eastern Europe’s dependence on Russia’s sometimes unreliable gas supply. But Russia’s South Stream pipeline project (in blue) now seems more likely to be built. A 2,400-mile pipeline transporting 30 million cubic meters from central Asia to Austria each year. That was the plan when […]
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. […]