Selected Works

The building that Atatürk dreamt of, where Turkey staged its first opera and where Reza Shah wept at the curtain call, has spent decades haunted by a different kind of drama: hundreds of paintings stolen, copied, distributed to bureaucrats and sold through criminal networks. A full account of one of Turkey's most remarkable institutions — and its most painful wound. Originally built in the 1920s as the headquarters of the Turkish Hearth (Türk Ocağı), this building is known as

From the British Royal Family to the United Nations, the world sent money to Turkey after the February 2023 earthquakes. For decades before that, Turkey collected a dedicated earthquake levy from its citizens. Three years on, more than 360,000 people remain in temporary housing — and those who have received new homes are paying for them in instalments. We investigate why. More than 53,000 people died and over 107,000 were injured in two earthquakes that struck southeastern Tu

Where Turkey's first state-licensed brothels once stood, archaeologists have unearthed an Ottoman bathhouse, a Roman theatre and a cache of medieval medallions — revealing a capital city far older, and far richer, than its grey modern reputation suggests. The restoration work on the walls of Ankara Castle was completed in 2025/Photo: Gökçen Tuncer Bentderesi is a neighbourhood that has carried the weight of history on its narrow shoulders for millennia — Hittite traders, Roma

Nestled in the sunbaked plains of Şanlıurfa province, the town of Harran is a region that is as valuable as Göbeklitepe. While archaeologists have excavated its underground treasures for seven decades, Harran’s above-ground jewels — its iconic beehive-shaped “kümbet” houses — remain largely in the background. For the Özyavuz family, protecting these structures has been a lifelong mission. The Harran Dome Houses were registered as an archaeological and urban site in 1979. Harr

Journalist and documentary filmmaker Hasan Söylemez paused his bicycle journey across all 54 African nations to make his first feature-length film. Tenere tells the story of those who must cross the Desert of Deserts just to survive. 20 October 2011. The world watches the end of a 42-year reign through a mobile phone camera. The final images of the longest-serving leader in the Arab and African world enter history while his face is covered in blood, his lifeless, wound-ri

Doomscrolling — the compulsive act of consuming an endless feed of catastrophic news — was named one of Oxford Dictionary's words of 2020. Psychologists say the more anxious we become, the more we seek out news that confirms our fears. Breaking the cycle may be harder than it sounds. According to The Center for Internet & Technology Addiction 58% of teens report anxiety when separated from their phones./Photo: Pexels.com/@cottonbro For a few weeks at the start of the pandem

On 11 July 2021, British billionaire Richard Branson flew to the edge of space. Nine days later, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos followed. According to Oxfam, during the 11 minutes Bezos was in space, 121 people died of hunger. In March 2026, Forbes magazine listed Richard Branson's estimated net worth at US$2,8 billion. Photo: Joe Skipper/Reuters The original space race of the 1960s was a geopolitical rivalry between the United States and the Soviet Union. Today, the competition l