engin a. yolcu

What’s Behind Noam Chomsky’s Obituary-Marring Epstein Friendship? He seemed like such a fiercely uncompromised critic of elites. But maybe it’s always been more complicated than that.

Chomsky’s tête-à-têtes with Epstein seem worse than naïve. They’re obituary-marring. Chomsky may still be an intellectual giant, but his moral giantism is no longer a done deal. trib.al/w299lzt

“remember when erdoğan did this and this?” turns out to be an extremely useful phrase when trying to explain my parents trying what’s going on in minneapolis

from what i have seen and & been hearing, the "provincial university" mentality is also alive and well in Turkey’s elite schools -- ODTÜ, koç, boğaziçi, etc. this is not surprising, but it’s infuriating when contrasted with the sheer grandiosity of some of the faculty there

i do appreciate the new vehicles though!

having a hard time understanding what makes @metrotransitmn.bsky.social’s E Line “rapid” bus transit when it stops at every intersection and doesn’t have priority at traffic lights

make TRT great again

this is also your cue to dismiss TRT World as the propaganda outlet that it is

turkish state broadcaster TRT’s anti-lgbtq doc ‘rainbow fascism’ goes live this sunday. it is easy to dismiss TRT as the propaganda outlet that it is, but this piece of hateful propaganda will likely be assigned in schools. both a new low for TRT and a horrible instance of institutionalized hate

copy-pasting this from my substack btw

CHP either is not able to establish a coherent animal welfare policy in the face of 2024’s so-dubbed Massacre Law, or does not care. In either case, this is a major moral failure for Turkey’s main opposition party

Workers from CHP-run Ankara Municipality reportedly beat a street dog to death in a metro station. This comes after horrifying reports of animals left to die in cold storage rooms in Ankara’s municipality-run animal shelters

people went absolutely berserk with fireworks here in frankfurt for new year’s the whole night. pets were miserable all over the city and birds (presumably) dead. can’t really understand how germany of all places has no regulations whatsoever about this

today’s super niche hot take: frankfurt u-bahn gives major ankaray vibes

its a phrase you use in turkish to wish a person doing something (anything) that it goes swiftly. cooking? kolay gelsin. grading? kolay gelsin. surgeon on their way to the OR? kolay gelsin. one is conditioned to utter it in any instance of someone performing any type of labor

this reminds me of the fact that i am crippled by the lack of an english equivalent for kolay gelsin on a daily basis

I think we can all agree it’s time for fireworks to become 100% illegal. Let’s ban fireworks everywhere in 2026

the line for taking a picture of the book tower at the national library in prague… not for seeing it, but for taking a pic

catching my connecting flight at amsterdam schiphol. came to my gate jetlagged & worried for a second assuming aberdeen was the dutch word for “canceled” but apparently it stood for the prior flight from my gate to aberdeen, uk. relieved

So this pic of the conspicuously socialist looking çiğköfte shop magnet just resurfaced in my gallery

shameless c/p from substack notes btw

street cats. the term you’re looking for is street cats.

anyway, it’s always the “omg look at these kitties” pieces for foreign audiences and nothing about how the government is actually trying to render their modus vivendi impossible through culling laws and feeding bans.

hmm

...while the former are wary of continuing the Kemalist nation-state building project based on Secular-Sunni Turkishness. Regarding this latter concern, Kemalists either a) do not even realize it is a problem, and/or b) don't see anything wrong with reapplying it in 2025.

c/p from y substack: I think what gets lost between foreign audiences and Turkish Kemalists (using this term loosely here) is that the latter mostly have Kemalist tenets of secularism and Westernization in mind...

valid

pure genius: turkish ministry of agriculture buries produce rejected by the eu due to excess pesticide use in plastic crates — and shares it on social media to brag. burying produce rejected with excess pesticide use… in plastic containers

this may not be the own they think this is

worth repeating for an international audience: private hospital i called in provincial turkey playing “everybody hurts” while on hold

09.48 am realization: istanbul’s beylikdüzü and bosnia’s banja luka has the same name

life imitates art