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 on Jun 25, 2008 - View this thread

Poor localization causes a simple, if slightly inflammatory, text message to go awry.
posted on Apr 21, 2008 - View this thread

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 on Feb 4, 2007 - View this thread

From Rebetika to Surf Rock: Misirlou is a melody that has spanned genres, from Greek, Turkish and Jewish folk songs to the classic Dick Dale version on the Pulp Fiction soundtrack to the Black-Eyed Peas, to the obligatory Greek folk version/Pump It mash-up.
posted on Jan 23, 2007 - View this thread

Victorian Turkish Baths - "Can the active, fox-hunting, cricketing, boating Englishman bear the same kind of treatment that benefits and gratifies the indolent, languid, luxurious Turk?"
posted on Jan 17, 2007 - View this thread

Karakuri automata are representative of the highest technology in the Edo period (1603 to 1867). Automata were also crafted hundreds of years ago in Europe: The Dulcimer Player by Pierre Kintzing , made in 1772; The Singing Lesson, created by Robert-Houdin; three androids by Jaquet-Droz; the Pooping Duck by Vaucanson (the first link at the top). Ancient robots. The first automaton was created by Al-Jazari: video of his clock. The history of automata [pdf]. Contemporary toy automata. [more inside]
posted on Jan 14, 2007 - View this thread

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 on Oct 12, 2006 - View this thread

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

The Russian cup of tea is a marvelous triumph of quality over schedule. It is also remarkably similar to the way the Turks make tea.
posted on Mar 2, 2004 - View this thread

Turkish Star Trek [via Boing Boing]
posted on Dec 10, 2002 - View this thread

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 on Oct 29, 2002 - View this thread

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 on Apr 4, 2001 - View this thread

I have no idea what this is. monty python meets the near east. (warning: fairly loud audio; flash required) I would think this was one of those "viral marketing" sites except that it's in... turkish? any ideas what this is? babelfish doesn't translate turkish.
posted on Feb 9, 2001 - View this thread