Crisis is the situation of a complex system when the system functions poorly, an immediate decision is necessary, but the causes of the dysfunction are not known. (Source: Wiki) 1923 lorem ipsum lorem ipsum lorem ipsum lorem ipsum lorem ipsum lorem ipsum lorem ipsum lorem ipsum lorem ipsum lorem [more]

At the end of my personal 60pages I can’t tell what it did with me. As many of us I’m not a professional writer, but to me writing is to comb through the entirety of myself, and thus with all involved ups and downs, a constant weighing of [more]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KOiWKXuymWw

Late last night Jewrhythmics featuring Jossi Reich performed at Kater Holzig. Ancient to contemporary stories wrapped in 80s synthie-music, sung in English, German and Jiddish. The Kater crowd, as divers as the band on stage, is dancing. The sound is not so well balanced, the lyrics hard to [more]

Year 1930: Women allowed to vote in general elections in Turkey. Year 1934: Women allowed to be elected in Turkish Parliament. Year 2013: Women allowed to wear trousers in Turkish parliament.

Recently a group of Turkish students were arrested because they led protests against a new law that would restrict universities’ nature as independent institutions of research. After the students’ release the minister for youth and sport Suat Kılıç offered to discuss bilaterally with the student representative Emre Ersel Erbaş. Student: [more]

The other night when I was walking around I passed by several Stolpersteine. These are brass cobblestones carrying the imprint of the stigmatized people, mostly Jewish, who were torn out of their homes, deported and killed by the Nazi regime and its collaborators. Why is this important to [more]

Yesterday, 75 years ago, on November 10th, 1938, the founder of the Turkish Republic Mustafa Kemal Atatürk died at 09:05. While the country is polarized over secularism versus religious autocracy, Mustafa Kemal serves may be more than ever as a symbol of separating religion and state. During the [more]

The friend that I visited in London, I have known for more than 30 years. It was in the middle of the year when I joined the tenth grade of high school, took the empty seat next to him in the left rear corner of the classroom. We [more]

Tonight I dreamed of Helmut Schmidt. I have no idea why. We somehow met in a hotel backroom where he took a break from attending a conference as a speaker. I was a bit shy and didn’t want to bother him. However, he understood right away through my [more]

During my flight to London I was thinking of how terror prevention was working and actually how severe it could already be back in analogues times. When I arrived I didn’t think to find myself queuing for almost 45 minutes until we entered the customs and border police [more]

The more concrete the incident the more intense is the impact, no? If all people ask you to be aware and take care of a matter, but you just deny that it is relevant at all or declare the irrelevance of your concerns, the higher you fall when [more]

Every society has it. The thing that glues us together, for a moment, for ever, who knows. For some it’s the founding myth, the landscape of mountains or valleys or seas, for some it’s the freedom of self protection or the freedom of happiness, for some there is [more]

I’m ill since days which drives me mad. Worse than that, since days, insanity goes through my mind because of the newest thing going on in Turkey. But I coulnd’t collect my senses to put some sentences together just to describe how insane this is. Today I resumed [more]

Dominique’s story about the FBI analyzing customer data collected by grocery stores in San Francisco in order to find traces of Iranian secret agents leads me to the question what a used Gin and Tonic cup on the tower of Lichtenberg could tell? 47 Monkeys, the Tower, a hole, [more]

Georg thinks about Gin & Tonic. I try to join with a mashed hangover brain. First of all, I resigned from Gin and Tonic a while ago after a short but disastrous period of overdosed gin consumption. The only exception was at our wonderful rainy kick-off walk over [more]

It was one of the most disturbing interviews that Kristy Warks recently conducted with Glenn Greenwald on BBC Newsnight. I checked myself several times during the interview whether I’m getting it or not. Is she challenging him because she actually knows how strong his journalistic backbone is, and [more]

Over the last days I didn’t sleep much. When you reach the right dose of too little sleep, and are still up and running from early morning on, reality becomes doubled like a shadow observing yourself. And if the mood is alright, the second ego listens, thinks, evaluates [more]

Shall I point my finger to the book publishing or to the music industry? Or to what? Shall I really write about this? I usually try to be supportive, particularly when someone has written a book, composed or produced a music album. And, if not, I try to shut [more]

The little capsule shelters her far out in the dark, hostile, endless space while circling around earth with zero gravity. Houston doesn’t answer. She doesn’t know where her signal would connect to, until she links into an AM radio wave, probably while being over Chinese territory. She hears [more]

Today is World Dog’s Day. A few years ago I had for the first time a revolving dream. It was about a dog. It went on for about three weeks until I went for a tooth treatment to my friends dentist practice. The appointment after mine had cancelled, [more]

A drawing a day keeps the doctor away. A message a day makes resistance stay.

Politics in Turkey is actually not funny. Chernobyl wasn’t funny and the mad cow disease also not. People were injured, got infected, lethally sick, people got imprisoned and people died. And still, there is this embracing ironic attitude out there coming along with a fatalistic smirk, a Monty Pythonesk way [more]

My 77 year old mother would never curse, never say something dirty, and I actually never heard her using the word shit. Today, she sent my a joke. It’s a political one, and I admit it is none of these jokes you would tell because it is a funny [more]

Only a few years ago when people asked me where I come from the reaction was quite different than today. Nowadays, to mention Istanbul is enough to cause a vivid talk about how exciting, controversial, beautiful, welcoming, artsy or cool this city is or must be according to [more]

Once our former foreign minister asked me: What would one actually consider as Willkommenskultur? I thought: he is a really smart and thoughtful person and he has seen the world, so what can I say? I recalled a situation a few years ago when I arrived at the [more]

There was once a wall running through Germany. Are we unified now?

Sometimes I really don’t understand what politics is about, and why it keeps me so concerned, and what intrigues me and disturbs me about it. Where does is actually begin, and where does it end? We are still so centralized in our system and thinking, I think. I [more]

Sometimes people ask me in which language I think. It depends. However, it doesn’t make a difference whether I’m in Turkey or in Germany, it depends on what it is, that goes through my mind. Some people say language means thinking. I don’t know, but at times there [more]

When I was a kid I loved and hated that my parents (actually all parents in Turkey) would take my brother and me where ever they used to go, particularly when they were going out in the evening or to see friends. Usually this would mean sitting at [more]

Social Bookwork a few days ago in Istanbul and Berlin. Book signing by the authors Alper Canıgüz, Murat Menteş, Emrah Serbes (“april yayinlari” publishing, Istanbul and “binooki” Verlag, Berlin) at “6:45 Dükkan” bookstore, Istanbul. Revue – tools for an unknown future magazine release “REVUE Pop-Up-Event »Transformations«” by Rabea Edel, [more]

Yesterday, Tuncel Kurtiz, died at the age of 77. Kurtiz was one of Turkey’s most respected actors, both on stage and on set. In his early years he also played in theatres across Europe, including Göteborg, Stockholm, Frankfurt am Main, London, he also appeared on the Berliner Schaubühne. [more]

I guess it is this thing one calls adolescence or disillusioning or giving up utopia or becoming reliable or resigning from aspirations or may be just forgetting why you stood up in the first place. It is this time period that apparently has to pass until you stop [more]

The first German politician my father showed me was a man with the same hairstyle, Helmut Schmidt. That was in the 1970s, and who could know he would become the nation’s wise old statesman, the ultimate authority of Germany, and the most popular chancellor of all times, turning 95 [more]

This year Turkey is different, Germany not. There is the Gezi movement and the audacity of becoming citoyens, the joyful youth creating a laboratory of borderless democracy in the middle of a park, relieved by the experience of leaving constant crisis behind, standing as free individuals like a [more]