my favourite german weekly newspaper, the leftist “jungle world”, visited İstanbul. They spend two weeks abroad every year. so i was really looking forward to an interesting perspektive, wondering how an point of view, i know quite well, fits to reality in the city, nobody can really know.
now the special issue “a la turka” is presented. all in all i am disapointed. they did not seem to have moved out there ass out of beyoğlu, the “modern”, “cosmopolitan” part of europes maybe biggest metropol.

ok, the artikle about the progrom 1955, when thousends of rum, which is the turkish expression for greek people living in turkey, where attacked is something, i appriciated to read. and maybe the connection to the destruktion of old istanbul is an intersting story. but on the one hand, jungle-world should be able to say something about the role of violence in the process of nation-building in turkey and maybe the fakt, that still there is no discussion about that, the murder of one million armenians and the millions of rum attacked driven out of the young turkish republik. on the other hand, i cant hear the speach about old istanbul not any more, cause its mostly the old istanbulu, who complain about those who come from the east, an racist attitude to migrants.

“tschüss almanya” - of coıurse a german leftist newspaper has to write about almancı. but this is flat. there is nothing to discuss about and nothing about the reaktion of turkish society. - disappointing

the artikel i liked most, was definitly about rock`n coke, discribing the middleclass youth, going to an rock open-air festival not willing to get dirty. this is something, which is true and observed by jungle-world, not written by an turkish leftist activist.