Category: People

Yonca Abla
Ask Pemba abla: how can I tell them?

Dear Abla,  I am a 22-year-old male. I’ve just moved back home after studying away at university for the past four years and it’s doing my head in. The problem is I’m gay and my family doesn’t know. From the outside, I am the archetypal macho Turk: I go to the gym and pump iron, […]

Columnists
Israel triumphs while Cyprus goes close in Eurovision

So Israel has won Eurovision with Netta’s quirky Toy song, which is themed around strong women and features chicken noises. While Netta had been the favourite to win for some time, Cyprus was the unexpected frontrunner after an impressive performance in both the rehearsals and semi-final. For a time it looked like Eurovision was heading to […]

Guest Views
Ankara Agreement suspension – will you stand by or stand up?

Would you like to hear a story? It’s about a forgotten deal between the UK and Turkey, which came to life in the 90s. For the past two decades, the Ankara Agreement has been a strong and vital option in enabling commercial immigration from Turkey to Britain. Recently, the significant rise in new applicants has […]

Columnists
Community spirit, please step forward…
 

  I have been a trade unionist all of my working life and would tell everyone reading this article, if you are working and not in a trade union, I urge you to join a union today. Currently, our community faces a bigger threat from the far-right than we have ever seen before and I […]

Features
How a Turkish ambassador broke the race barrier in segregated America

Last week, a lesser known but important story broke on Martin Luther King Jr. Day. It involved Turkish ambassador Münir Ertegün, who served in the United States of America between 1934 and 1944, a time when racial segregation was the norm for Americans. At the turn of the twentieth century, although slavery had been abolished, […]

Guest Views
Cyprus – unilateralism on hydrocarbons will result in permanent division

  The Greek Cypriot position on hydrocarbons exploitation is that as an independent and sovereign coastal state, member of both the UN and of the EU, the “Republic of Cyprus” has the right to exploit her natural resources, including offshore resources, and agree boundaries with other coastal states in accordance with internationally accepted procedures. Greece […]