Creating new perspectives since 2009
Items by Marwa Koçak
-
Turkiye-Syria earthquake: ‘It’s as though someone dropped a nuclear bomb’
At around 4 o’clock on Monday morning, Malik Abu Ubaidah awoke to his home rocking on its foundations. He got up, gathered his children together and stepped outside into a wall of smoke and dust. Snatched from sleep, he did not know it yet, but what Malik had felt...
-
In Turkiye, the halal hotel market is booming
“For women, swimming in a burkini isn’t easy,” Hilal Uysal Namal tells us. “Women don’t feel comfortable because they look different. Also, it’s important to swim without one for health reasons – doctors tell veiled women they need to get vitamin D because their bodies never see the sun.”...
-
‘’Do we have no future?’: A Sudanese refugee’s struggle to build a bright future for his athlete daughters in Jordan
In 2016, when she was just 12 years old, Abeer Kaffi attained third place for her age in the Amman Marathon, an annual event held in the Jordanian capital that winds 10 kilometres under the Raghdan Bridge, onto Hashemite Square and past the jigsaw of cream apartment blocks that...
-
Syrian refugee: We were never treated as humans
People on the packed boat screamed as the Libyan coastguard rammed them until they feared it would sink. They boarded and swung their truncheons and guns at men, women, and children alike. Mohammed realised he’d been cheated, and the smuggler who had arranged for passage out of Libya to...
-
As a journalist in war-torn Syria you feel no fear, it dies within you
Baynana is a new publication hitting the digital newsstands in Spain. However, it is a publication with a difference. Published in both Spanish and Arabic, Baynana is run entirely by refugees with the aim of reporting on culture, politics, sports and to fight the negative stigma attached to being...
-
Meet Turkey’s headscarf-wearing football club president
The president of Adiyaman 1954 Football Club has attracted attention for being the first woman in such a position to win a league championship in Turkey. Cevher Erdem’s team has won promotion to League Two. Aside from being Adiyaman’s club president, the 31-year-old mother of two is a successful...
-
‘We will not let anybody harm Turkey’s interests’
Over the past decade, Turkey has found itself at the fore in some major conflicts in the Middle East, causing it to bear the brunt of an international refugee crisis and a hostile EU foreign policy. The plans of its neighbours have also forced it to adapt in order...