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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…

Lady Mary Wortley Montagu and Vaccination

Posted on 6th May 2020 by Jeremy Seal

When in 1716 Lady Mary Wortley Montagu left England for Constantinople, she had every reason to expect adventure; she was headed, after all, for the forbidding and exotic lands of the Grand Signior. But as the mission was all about her husband, the newly appointed Ambassador to Turkey, who…

Back to Göbekli Tepe

Posted on 16th January 2020 by Jeremy Seal

I’m a great one for rootling about in junk shops and the less fastidiously curated museums, not least in the hope of happening across objects whose functions escape me. I love the lessons in what we don’t know – the discovery, for example, that the stack of glass cylinders open…

What’s in a Name?

Posted on 23rd November 2018 by Jeremy Seal

There has been a sorry lack of good news coming out of Turkey in recent years, so it’s good to be able to report on one positive initiative by the government – which allows citizens to do something about embarrassing, idiotic or otherwise unflattering surnames. The Turkish government had good…

Putting off the Turkey Visit….

Posted on 16th October 2018 by Jeremy Seal

Heaven knows there have always been reasons to Defer the Turkey Visit, as any tour operator will confirm with a sigh, but lately I’ve been coming across a new one. Back in the 1980s it was Midnight Express, the film which turned off whole generations of visitors by portraying Turks…

Midwinter Turkey

Posted on 29th January 2018 by Jeremy Seal

I recently had occasion to dust down some travel articles I wrote on Turkey a few years ago – back before the bombings and shootings, the coup attempt, the opposition purges and all the other horrors sent the country spiralling – when my main concern appears to have been inventing…

The Real Real Santa

Posted on 15th December 2017 by Jeremy Seal

‘Tis the season of St Nicholas, whose saint’s day is celebrated on December 6th but whose red-robed alter ego will be with us, trading tat and childhood wonder out of countless ply and tinsel grottoes, until Christmas Eve. In fact, the third-century Bishop of Myra has been attracting interest since…

How to Spend It… This Life or the Next?

Posted on 30th October 2017 by Jeremy Seal

As I reflect on this year’s tours to Turkey – we managed two, an achievement given the fraught political situation, both entirely without mishap and to rave reviews – I’m struck more than ever by an aspect of the country’s magnificent archaeology; that what tells us more than anything…

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