Why is Turkey an odd country?
17 April 2013
Our country’s agenda gets so odd at times that one inevitably wonders if such things happen in other places as well. Are we one of a kind? Is there any other country that has suffered from terrorism and high inflation for 30 years? Do they sentence their star pianists to prison for re-tweeting poems? Are the sidewalks of any other capital city, governed by the same mayor for 19 years, falling apart as they are in Ankara? Is what’s happening around us the normal flow of human history, or are we experiencing things that are peculiar to Turks?
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Is the 2023 Vision Represented by Çukurambar?
01 April 2013
Do you know the Çukurambar neighborhood in Ankara? Those living in here will know it, but it would seem familiar to many others, too. It is a slum in the middle of the city that underwent urban transformation in the last decade. The former jerry-built houses were replaced by tall buildings, some of which are luxurious and others ultra-luxurious. Since TEPAV lies only 5 minutes away from this odd neighborhood, we have been watching how Çukurambar has been transformed during the years of Turkey’s economic transformation. While we were discussing the country's middle-income trap, we witnessed how a nearby neighborhood climbed from low-income to high-income status, skipping the middle-income trap.
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An Uber-Crazy Project Proposal for Istanbul: Relocating the Bosphorus
19 January 2013
We haven’t heard much of the so-called “the crazy project” for Istanbul since the general election of 2011. I would like to present my humble contributions to its fulfillment, just in case it is still in the works. My goal: to make the crazy project even crazier.
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A Tale of two Boulevards – Find the seven Differences between the two Images
16 January 2013
Picture Source: Trekearth.com
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