Blog - SOMEWHERE WONDERFUL

What St Nicholas Did…

Posted on 18th December 2023 by Jeremy Seal

Last week I was back in southern Turkey on the trail of St Nicholas, the fourth-century bishop whom I first wrote about decades back in my Santa: A Life (or, more solemnly, Nicholas: The Epic Journey from Saint to Santa Claus in the US edition). It is a remarkable story…

Istanbul and Cappadocia 2023

Posted on 28th February 2023 by Jeremy Seal

I am just now back from our winter tour of Istanbul and Cappadocia, the third time we have run this distinctive and, as far as I know, unique itinerary. It will not be the last. I’ve long been convinced that this is the time to visit Istanbul and Cappadocia, in…

6th February 2023

Posted on 7th February 2023 by Jeremy Seal

The horrific, heartbreaking scenes reaching us from southern Turkey and northern Syria speak of unimaginable tragedy in a corner of the world that has seen more by far than its fair share. To Russia’s war (its previous one), to displacement, political unrest, minority oppression, brutality and poverty we may now…

A Visit to Sagalassos

Posted on 27th October 2022 by Jeremy Seal

A week or so ago I was lucky enough to visit Sagalassos, a Roman city site in the Taurus Mountains a couple of hours’ drive north of Antalya. I had visited some years before; this time I did so with Jason Goodwin – he of the acclaimed Yashim detective novels,…

Turkish Dates

Posted on 17th August 2022 by Jeremy Seal

Turkish Dates (29th May 1453 and 15th July 2016, to name but two) What is it about dates – and I mean the day and the month rather than the year (easy-peasy) – which lends them such prominence in Turkish public life? They are everywhere. In my recent A Coup in…

Göbekli Tepe and neolithic Turkey

Posted on 27th January 2022 by Jeremy Seal

In January 2018 I travelled with publisher Barnaby Rogerson and writer Jason Goodwin – distinguished Turkophiles both, savvy winter dressers neither – to Urfa in southeast Turkey. This Kurdish/Arabic/Turkish region, where the Anatolian uplands meet the Syrian plain on the northern fringes of the Fertile Crescent, is astonishingly rich in…

A Coup in Turkey and the Fight for Democracy

Posted on 26th January 2021 by Jeremy Seal

As a life-long devotee of the country, it was with some regret that I chose to call my forthcoming book A Coup in Turkey – in the manner of a news headline, as if coups are to Turkey what school shootings are to the US, missile tests to North Korea…

A Coup in Turkey – An Airport in his Name.

Posted on 6th January 2021 by Jeremy Seal

When Izmır’s new airport opened in 1987, it bore the name of one of the Turkish port city’s most famous sons, though many preferred less publishable names for Adnan Menderes, who had led the country from 1950 to 1960. Chief among these were military officers who had hoped the airport…

A Coup in Turkey: A Tale of Democracy, Despotism and Vengeance in a Divided Land

Posted on 17th December 2020 by Jeremy Seal

Just as 2020 saw the 60th anniversary of Turkey’s first coup on 27th May 1960, so 2021 will see the 60th anniversary of the subsequent execution of the deposed prime minister, Adnan Menderes, whom the military hanged on 17th September 1961. 2021 also sees the publication on 4th February of…

On the Quarantine and on Getting Home from Turkey

Posted on 10th July 2020 by Jeremy Seal

In 1785 John Howard – he of the Howard League for Penal Reform – made a journey to Turkey to establish, among other things, the quarantine arrangements that those returning to Europe were required to undergo. A man for our own extraordinary times, then, even if Howard’s views of the…

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