One Thousand Shades of Grey

I recently made the effort to revisit the 1978 film Midnight Express. The film depicts the apparently true story of Billy Hayes incarceration in a Turkish prison for attempting to smuggle hashish out of the country in 1970, his experiences in prison and his subsequent escape. The film is reviled by the Turks and as I sat there watching it with my Turkish wife I could understand why, the film wheels out grotesque caricature after grotesque caricature of hideously distorted Turkish stereotypes and insulting attacks on Turkish identity. One of the reasons the film is so hated by Turks is that they feel that the movie has done lasting damage to their image abroad, with its extremely negative portrayals of Turkish personalities and not one single portrayal of even a positive character trait let alone a good Turk. Truth & Fiction In Turkey the film is often written off as being a film designed to make the Turks look bad and based on lies. This is largely due to the sensationalist depi...

Eskişehir (meaning old city) is located on the banks of the river Porsuk in north-western Turkey in Eskişehir province on the main road and rail route between Ankara and Istanbul. Eskişehir is currently largely ignored by western tourists (although has a thriving tourist industry of visitors coming from the east) presumably due to its landlocked location and sometimes harsh climatically conditions. However Eskişehir is truly one of the gems of central Turkey, the city itself is very modern and beautiful and offers a range of eateries, shopping destinations, Turkish baths, nargile houses, museums and Ottoman architecture. The two universities give the cosmopolitan city a lively and youthful vibe; it’s a fantastic destination for foodies as the quality of the restaurants here is very high. The city has a few local delicacies including helva, boza and my personal favourite çiğ börek, a fine dough mixture filled with ground meat, spices and onions then pan fried in hot oil and chased down...

It might come to some as a strange turnaround for me to decide to support a football team for the first time in 33 years having spent the rest of my life sitting on the fence as to which football team I support. When it comes to supporting national teams then no problem I always follow England and Turkey as family ties dictate, but when it comes to supporting local clubs I have never found one relevant enough to me to take an interest and to support any of the teams my friends support i.e. Tottenham Hotspur, Manchester united just makes no sense after all I’m not from north London or Manchester so these clubs hold little relevance to me on a personal level. That all changed on the 26th October in Eskisehir when the decision was taken out of my hands. I went with my brother in law, sister in law and wife to watch Galatasaray play Eskisehir in the Turkish super league at a bar in Eskisehir city centre just outside the stadium. In an historic game Eskişehirspor hammered Galatasaray 4-2 ...

So I have arrived back in England after a two week visit to Turkey a country which I absolutely love, I am one hundred percent self confessed Turkophile. However whilst I was there I tried to update this blog with some random ramblings about what I was up to out there and was met with the following message: Bu siteye erişim mahkeme kararıyla engellenmiştir. T.C. Diyarbakır 1. Sulh Ceza Mahkemesi 20.10.2008 tarih ve 2008/2761 sayılı kararı gereği bu siteye erişim engellenmiştir. Access to this web site has been suspended in accordance with decision no: 2008/2761 of T.R. Diyarbakır 1st Criminal Court of Peace. My first reaction was confusion, surely there must be some mistake but no, I tried clicking the link again and was met with the same message. My second reaction was akin to some kind of violent suppressed rage as it dawned on me just how wide and indiscriminate the website ban in Turkey was, I mean I had heard talk about You tube being inaccessible due to a slanging match between G...