Dror Benshetrit designs a Net Zero artificial island off the coast of Turkey. The HavvAda artificial island was designed as an antidote to Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s proposal to build a canal between the Black Sea and the Sea of Marmara. The project has scores of critics, who worry about the environmental and […]
Hayrettin Karaca, 90, faces up to six years in prison for championing the environmental causes to which he has devoted his life. Turkey is not a country where environmental awareness is terribly high. But one man has done more to solve this problem, as well as the forces that threaten Turkey’s natural habitats, than almost […]
Tunisian buildings are the most energy intense in the Arab world. Carboun has released a powerful infographic which details how energy is consumed in the Middle East. Using data received from personal contributions, the World Bank and the International Energy Agency, founder Karim Elgendy has mapped out energy use by country in each of the […]
Turkey is reforming its property laws according to Reuters. Among other changes, new laws will double the amount of land foreigners are allowed to buy in Turkey. Wealthy investors from Russia and the Middle East are taking a new interest in Istanbul. According to the Knight Frank Global House Price Index, Turkish property prices are […]
Defying the Iraqi central government, the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) has begun selling gas directly to Turkey. Crude oil sales will also begin soon. Five tankers crossed the border from the KRG into Turkey in July, marking the first exchange of oil or gas between the two governments. The trade was just a harbinger of […]
This Green Prophet tours Turkey and sees a mosaic of eco-sensibility. Little Eid, a Muslim holiday, is a great time for a getaway. So I reeled in my family from disparate zip codes for a week spent touring someplace new. Years back, plump thighs on my enormous babies tagged the kids as “turkey legs”. It feels […]
A nuclear bomb wipes out all of Tel Aviv and central Israel, using the Ground Zero app. There was much disagreement around the dinner table the other night about whether or not Israel will be obliterated if Iran drops a nuclear bomb. Will there be something to spare? Should Israelis expect a bomb to melt […]
A growing body of research shows a split down gender lines when we make environmental choices. Men may be from Mars, but women are the greener creatures, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). Women in industrialized countries buy most of the eco-friendly household products. Women also load up on organic foods. […]
Rosé wine is gaining global popularity. Did you know that the Middle East with its long history of wine-making is producing some great rosés of its own? The summer heat is upon us and if you’ve been smart you’re perfecting those non-cook recipes to beat the heat. If you like a glass of wine here […]
The more than 20 hydroelectric projects that Turkey has built on the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers have been sharply criticized for displacing populations and harming the local environment. Now it’s even easier for hydro companies to build destructive dams in Turkey. Real estate for 13 different hydroelectric projects in 12 provinces can now be seized […]
In Kuşköy, which literally means “Bird Village” in Turkish, the villagers have been able to communicate across long distances well before the invention of cellphones. Laid out along a deep, lush valley in Turkey’s Pontic Mountains, Kuşköy isn’t an easy village to traverse quickly. So some time ago — 400 years, according to some local […]
Lake Nar is in central Turkey, which was the epicenter of a disease that ravaged the Byzantine population 15 centuries ago. Climate change may have been a factor. The Justinian Plague swept through the Eastern Mediterranean from 541 BCE to 750 BCE, killing approximately one quarter of the region’s inhabitants. Samples of sediment from the […]
Istanbul’s top ten secondhand clothing shops are easily accessible from the city’s main pedestrian drag, Istiklal Avenue, highlighted in blue on the map. Until recently, Istanbul’s secondhand clothing culture had been minimal, confined to costume shops, small racks in antique stores, and “eskicis” — old men wheeling carts of used items around the streets of […]
The district of Sulukule has been home to Istanbul’s Roma community since Byzantine times, but many of its residents were displaced to make way for a development project that started three years ago. Sulukule was declared a target area for “urban transformation” by the Turkish cabinet in 2006. Six years, four lawsuits, and many evictions […]
The first hydroelectric dam built in Ankara, Turkey’s capital city, the Çubuk Dam was promoted as “Ankara’s Bosphorus”. A new exhibit at Istanbul’s avant-garde SALT Galata gallery, Graft, throws open the archive of material about Turkey’s first major hydroelectric projects in the 1930s. The display critically analyzes the motives behind these early endeavors — and the […]