Jennifer Hattam

A cinematic depiction of five adolescent sisters being married off one by one in rural Turkey, the movie "Mustang" has received plentiful accolades abroad; including an Academy Award nomination as Best Foreign Film. But in the country where the feature film was shot by French-Turkish director Deniz Gamze Ergüven, the reaction is decidedly more mixed. "There’s this idea you see in online comments and other responses that Turkey is being depicted wrongly in the movie," says Eylem Atakav, a senior lecturer in film and television studies at the University of East Anglia in the United Kingdom. "But the stories I’ve heard from Turkish women who were married off as children are far worse, much more brutal, than anything it shows."... Read the rest of my article about the film "Mustang," and the issue of child marriage in Turkey, on Women's eNews: " Oscar-Nominee 'Mustang' Puts Turkey in Unwanted Spotlight "

Driving into Istanbul from Atatürk Airport, the crumbling fortifications along the Marmara Sea demarcate where the historic, pre-sprawl city begins. But though they may evoke oohs and ahhs out the window, few visitors venture back to explore the 1,500-year-old city walls on foot. My first time walking the 6.5-kilometer length of the walls was full of surprises: homing pigeons for sale in a parking lot, spectacular (if precarious) views, a livestock market for Kurban Bayramı (Eid al-Adha) sacrifice animals. Most striking of all were the gardens: lush plots of fruits and vegetables squeezed between the walls and the modern highway that now loops outside it. Years later, urban redevelopment has transformed or rendered inaccessible many areas along the walls, but some of the market gardens (called bostan in Turkish) remain, a last vestige of an ancient urban agricultural tradition. I've written previously about the  Yedikule bostan  by the city walls for The Atlanti...

My first hints that there was something different going on in Turkey's Black Sea region came in Istanbul -- watching environmental  films  that depicted the rugged beauty of its remote mountains and their hardy , sometimes eccentric inhabitants, and reveling in a wealth of unfamiliar flavors at the (sadly now shuttered) "Laz meyhane" Mohti , where hamsi popped up in everything from corn bread to omelets served in the raucous music- and smoke-filled restaurant. Visiting the region for the first time last spring, I spent a week reporting on environmental threats from dams, mines, and other development, meanwhile picking up intriguing tidbits -- the distinctive regional architecture, the melting pot of languages and cultures -- that left me wanting to return. The two travel lists I wrote for Matador Network this month offer just a taste of what the region has to offer -- if its natural beauty and rich cultural diversity can be preserved: 9 Historic Places in Tur...

It wasn’t long after the blasts tore through the crowd that the urgent cries began going out on Twitter and Facebook: “O-, O+ and A- blood needed at Numune, Hacettepe and İbni Sina hospitals!” Next came the photographs of papers tacked to walls: lists of the names of the injured, shared online to get the word out to their family and friends. As night fell after Turkey’s deadliest-ever terrorist attack, a dual suicide bombing targeting a peace rally organised by trade unions in the capital city of Ankara, the calls for help continued... The killing of 103 people in the Ankara bombings of 10 October sent many in Turkey, myself included, into deep mourning. One of the few things bringing some comfort was seeing the solidarity and resilience of people coming together to protest the deaths and help those wounded in the attack and the families of those who perished. This is a difficult moment, however, for Turkey's grassroots, which while revitalized in some ways by the Ge...

Early November is typically a tranquil time on Lesbos, a Greek island in the Aegean Sea with some 80,000 year-round inhabitants. Residents shut the doors of their hotels, restaurants, and other businesses that predominantly serve the summer tourism market and head out to their olive groves for the annual harvest. This year, though, there are “no vacancy” signs in English and Arabic posted on hotel doors in the main port of Mytilene and lines snaking outside travel agencies. The latter are doing a brisk business not in holiday excursions, but in ferry tickets to Athens, the next stop for the tens of thousands of refugees and migrants who have landed on the island this year en route to mainland Europe. “It’s usually very quiet in winter, but a lot of businesses are still working even now, restaurants, mini-markets, car-rental agencies, so there’s a bit more life in the villages,” says Lesbos resident Aphrodite Vati Mariola. The beachfront hotel her family has operated since 1989 i...

Ufuk Kocabaş spent his summers swimming, snorkeling and eventually diving around nearby Marmara Island, where his grandfather and other forebears plied the sea as sailors. At age 14, he stumbled upon his first shipwreck, littered with pieces of amphora — an ancient type of storage and transport container — and got an early lesson in proper archaeological practice. “I took some amphora fragments [from the ship] to my sister who was studying at university,” recalls Kocabaş, now head of the Istanbul University Conservation Department. “She told me I shouldn’t have taken them from the site, that I should have left them where they were. At the time, I thought this was stupid. It’s my amphora!” After chiding him, Kocabaş’s sister helped him identify the type of amphora he found. It dated to the seventh century, and they passed the information they’d ascertained about the shipwreck to a museum. “It was an amazing experience,” Kocabaş says. “I started to read about shipwrecks then,...

For seven weeks in the fall of 2014, the villagers of Yirca kept watch over their olive groves day and night, warming themselves around a fire and taking turns sleeping in a small shelter. Sentinels with binoculars were stationed under the pines on a nearby hill with a sweeping view across the broad, flat valley. They were scanning for any sign of movement by the Kolin Group, the company that was seeking to expropriate this land to build and operate a 510-megawatt, coal-fired power plant. "If the scouts saw anything, they'd get on their phones and call down, 'The bulldozers are coming!' and the people would rush to block the road leading to the groves," says Mustafa Akin. The avuncular former teacher now serves as muhtar —the elected village head—of Yirca, a tiny settlement of 400 in western Turkey, 50 miles inland from the Aegean Sea. For a time, despite several confrontations with Kolin Group workers, the villagers' vigil was largely successful. But o...