What's a Bigger Draw Than a Camel Fight? A Camel Beauty Contest, of Course To the uninitiated, what makes a camel beautiful isn't exactly obvious. But organizers of the Selcuk championship hope the addition of a pageant will draw new enthusiasts to the sport of camel fighting, which is struggling to stay relevant in an increasingly modern and urbanized Turkey.
posted by jason's_planet on Jan 22, 2011 - 9 comments

A Mid-summer Night's Story - one of hundreds of novels, poems, and tales in English translation at Suat Karantay's Contemporary Turkish Literature pages. Also: Turkish Poetry in Translation (the side-by-side translations of Dağlarca are particularly well-done), and selected stories of childhood & youth from Turkish authors in the mid 20th century.
posted by Wolfdog on Jun 25, 2008 - 4 comments

The Rålamb Costume Book. Illustrations of Turkish officials, various important occupations and just plain folks, obtained by Claes Rålamb, Swedish ambassador to the Ottoman Court, in 1657. More about Rålamb and Sultan Mehmet IV.
posted by mediareport on Feb 4, 2007 - 10 comments

Turkish Star Trek. For some reason, there's a one off Turkish cover version of The Man Trap, that old episode of ST:TOS with the salt monster that leeches saline from your body with its fingertips. And while it's been mentioned before, that was years ago, before the actual episode could be found on YouTube.
posted by jonson on Oct 12, 2006 - 19 comments

Spiderman as a villian! Just to keep the trend for the day going.. (Via I-mockery by way of Fark)
posted by Elim on Jun 30, 2004 - 1 comment

Turkish Star Trek [via Boing Boing]
posted by feelinglistless on Dec 10, 2002 - 8 comments

In college, I had an Turkish Electrical Engineering professor who used to open every class period with a story about Hoja (or Hoca, spelled the Turkish way), the bumbling yet clever 'folk philosopher'. He is known throughout the middle east also as Mulla Nasrudin and people from Azerbaijan to North Africa claim him as their own. Here are a few collections of stories about this 'comic sage': The definitive Hoja resource, a geocities site, Turkish Trickster, This reminds me of a story..., turkish humor. Enjoy!
posted by jnthnjng on Oct 29, 2002 - 5 comments

Fatima Polattas filed charges against Turkish police for raping her while she was in their custody; she's now facing charges for insulting the security forces and her country's moral integrity for talking about what happened to her, and could spend up to six years behind bars. This is easily the most disturbing thing I've read all day.
posted by lia on Apr 4, 2001 - 8 comments