Jennifer Hattam

Walking the 6.5-kilometer length of the city's ancient land walls my first year in Istanbul, I was delighted to discover lush green vegetable gardens (photo, right) growing in the shadow of these 1,600-year-old fortifications. Later, I learned from a historian specializing in Ottoman gardens that these small market plots -- known in Turkish as bostan -- were established on very fertile soil and had been handed down from generation to generation for hundreds of years. As with so many other things at that time, it seemed perfectly reasonable to assume that tradition would continue on for many more generations to come. But this summer, with the dust from the Gezi Park turmoil not yet settled down, I received an urgent message alerting local press that bulldozers had moved in to raze some of these gardens near the Yedikule fortress. With tensions high in the city, a fellow foreign journalist and I who arrived on the scene to report on the story became embroiled in a heated c...

Clad in a red vest with gold embroidery and matching fez, the ice cream vendor rings a bell hanging above his booth on Istanbul’s busiest pedestrian thoroughfare, then grabs a long stick and plunges it into a vat in front of him, churning its contents with great effort. Triumphantly, he raises what looks like a football-sized mass of taffy into the air, spins it around, and then drops the ice cream back into its container as the first customer of the day steps up. What gives Turkish ice cream ( maraş dondurması in Turkish, after the Kahramanmaraş region in the southeast of the country where it is believed to have originated) the unique firm, chewy consistency that allows it to be slung around or cut with a knife has traditionally been salep — a powder made from tuberous orchids.... Read the rest of this article, " Orchids Under Threat, From Turkish Ice Cream ," on Zester Daily.

During the last week of May, I found myself walking through Gezi Park at some point most evenings, drawn to the scruffy, neglected green space near Istanbul's Taksim Square to see how the crowds had multiplied since a few dozen protesters trying to block the bulldozing of trees there as part of a controversial construction plan were teargassed by police. Each night, there were more and more people in the once largely disused and ignored park, talking, singing, painting signs, picnicking, and pitching tents. And each morning, those who remained at dawn were teargassed once again. After waking up to this news one too many times, I sent off a story pitch about the protests to The Atlantic 's CityLab (formerly The Atlantic Cities), which commissioned an article for the next day. As I reported and wrote, the story changed rapidly; by the time my article about the Gezi Park protests was published, much of Istanbul (and then other cities around Turkey) had erupted into mass d...

As the international art crowd prepared to descend on Hong Kong for the city's edition of Art Basel , Time Out Hong Kong solicited editors' picks of participating galleries from Time Out's international team. My brief writeup of Istanbul gallery CDA-Projects appears in the May issue of Time Out Hong Kong under the title " Art Basel: Time Out international editors' picks ": 6. CDA-Projects Gallery (1C23) Focusing on emerging artists from Turkey, CDA-Projects doesn't shy away from challenging, multimedia work that questions gender and cultural norms. Featured artist Zeren Göktan's interactive installation Counter blends technology and tradition to confront viewers with uncomfortable realities about violence against women. Jennifer Hattam, editor-in-chief, Time Out Istanbul

Sometime in the not-so-distant future, visitors to Istanbul will be able to soar above the Bosphorus, crossing the famous strait on an intercontinental aerial tramway, the city’s mayor, Kadir Topbaş, announced last month. With Istanbul in the throes of a building boom, it’s not the only seemingly fanciful idea that’s been floated recently by a public official. During the 2011 election season, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan unveiled his self-described "crazy project" to build a second, man-made strait parallel to the Bosphorus. Neither idea has yet reached the actual planning stage, but there's at least one reason not to doubt them: Both Topbaş’s cable car and Erdoğan’s canal were first envisioned by architects and engineers in Ottoman times, along with other equally ambitious building projects­ -- some of which have actually been carried out.... Amid rapid "urban transformation" in Istanbul, it was fascinating to come acros...

It’s hard to believe now that Istanbul has become a world-famous tourist destination, but when the Turkish architect Ali Saim Ülgen first visited the city’s historic center as a youth in 1930, its many monuments were neglected, and little-known... A worker posing on a dome (date unknown), Ali Saim Ülgen Archive Inspired by the awe he felt on this first visit, Ülgen later became the first architectural restoration expert of the Turkish Republic and wrote one of the era's first books on architectural preservation. But though his influence was widespread during his lifetime, Ülgen today is almost as forgotten as Istanbul’s grand monuments might have been without his intervention. The Istanbul-based cultural institution SALT aims to bring Ülgen's work back to prominence with the exhibit " Modern Turkey’s Discovery of the Ottoman Heritage: The Ali Saim Ülgen Archive ." I interviewed associate director of research and programs Lorans Tanatar Baruh for two art...

The two great cities fashion designer Serra Türker has called home are reflected in her past-meets-present style, which combines the knowledge and workmanship of Istanbul’s longtime leatherworkers, metalsmiths, and other craftsmen with her sleek, thoroughly modern geometric designs... When Beirut-based lifestyle magazine Selections asked me to do a Q&A with a Turkish fashion designer for the Spring 2013 issue, I followed a tip from fellow Istanbul journalist Vanessa Larson to check out the work of Serra Türker. The Istanbul-born, U.S.-educated handbag designer had recently moved back home from New York to open her first boutique. She cheerfully chatted by email about Istanbul's best and worst qualities, the city's best-kept secret, and her favorite way to spend a day. Read " My City with Serra Türker " in the Spring 2013 issue of Selections or view the article as a jpg by clicking on the image below.