The award-winning Turkish film About Dry Grasses / Kuru Otlar Üstüne comes to cinemas across Britain and Ireland this Friday, 26 July. Shot in Erzurum and Adıyaman, the movie centres on a schoolteacher, Samet, who is accused of inappropriate behaviour towards Sevim, one of his pupils in a school in a remote part of Turkiye. […]
Acclaimed electro rock band Lalalar will be playing at Camden’s award-winning music venue Jazz Café in what is sure to be a memorable appearance. One of the most exciting new bands to emerge from Istanbul, the three-piece outfit serve up a unique blend of punk rock, psychedelic funk and electronica bound together with Anatolian beats. […]
Turkish jazz legend Okay Temiz brings his iconic Oriental Wind Ensemble to Camden’s award-winning music venue Jazz Café for an extremely rare London appearance. The classically trained multi-instrumentalist has been performing professionally since 1955 on musical devices that he has either collected or created over the years. A unique talent, he can transform even the […]
Barış Manço is one of the Godfathers of the Anadolu Rock sound and a national treasure in his native Turkey. He passed away in 1999, but the star and his music remain as popular as ever. Last year’s London tribute, led by musical chanteuse Djanan Turan on the twentieth anniversary of his passing, was an […]
There’s already a huge buzz among London’s Turkish community about pop star İlyas Yalçıntaş, as he prepares to make his debut appearance in the capital on Sunday 13 October. The singer-songwriter from Erzincan amassed a huge fanbase after appearing on a national television talent contest in 2014. The judges and TV audiences quickly fell in […]
Two brilliant bands – Don Kipper of London and The Langan Band from Glasgow – share the bill at the Jazz Café this Friday, 24 May. It promises to be a night of wild musical abandon as both bands are renowned for their lively, eclectic take on folk and global beats. T-VINE has a pair […]
A brilliant new one-woman play will make its world premiere in London at the end of April. Dreams Die Hard is based on the diaries of screenwriter and actress Rachel Karfistan’s grandmother Olive Davis. It tells the story of an unplanned pregnancy, a Turkish Cypriot lover, a red-headed American soldier and a monkey, with the […]
Two lucky people have the chance to step back in time and enjoy the magical music of Barış Manço. The rock star passed away in 1999, and on Thursday 31 January, singer Djanan Turan and a group of virtuoso musicians will pay tribute by performing his greatest hits at London’s Jazz Café on the twentieth […]
Books in English about London’s diverse Turkish community are hard to come by. One of the community’s foremost authorities is sociologist, writer and filmmaker Semra Eren-Nijhar. At the turn of the millennium Eren-Nijhar embarked on a six-year project to ‘give a voice’ to “[Turkish] people from different walks of life”living in the capital. She interviewed […]
Recently released, Nejla Clements’ book The Battle of Kokkina is the true story of how a besieged Turkish Cypriot community survived attempted annihilation as they defended a key coastal village in Northern Cyprus. The book is based on Erenköy ve Hayat– the extraordinary autobiography of Nejla’s uncle Fadıl Elmasoğlu (both pictured above), who led […]
