It’s not every day you discover a bit of family history you share with the British Prime Minister, but it happened to me late last summer. I was flicking through family photo albums with my father, Oktay Hamit, when I came across a large black and white one of him and seven other men. I […]
The Mid Summer Ball (MSB) is one of the most famous club nights in modern Turkish Cypriot history, helping to bring a slice of the London underground to North Cyprus since 2004. Every summer, this mega event, attended by thousands of people, flies in dozens of leading House and Garage DJs and MCs to perform […]
On 3 August 2020, the family and friends of Cüneyt Cebenoyan received the news that he and his wife Ayşegül had been involved in a fatal road traffic accident. The pair were travelling on a dual carriageway in Seydişehir, Konya, around 9am in the morning when Cebenoyan lost control of the car he was driving, […]
Today, Arsenal take on Chelsea in the FA Cup Final, the climax of what has undoubtedly been the strangest football season in living memory, primarily due to the impact of the coronavirus pandemic. The two London sides will battle it out at Wembley Stadium without any fans in order to prevent the further spread of […]
Dear T-VINE, I don’t remember the last time I went out and bought a newspaper, but today [29 July] I did just that. It was my small way of saying thanks for the article [Don McCullin’s prize photo of Cypriot misused for propaganda, The Times, 29 July 2020], which tells the truth about this picture. […]
Dear T-VINE, I’ve been following the travel advice updates closely and have to say I am really upset with the Turkish Republic of North Cyprus and its policy towards travellers from the United Kingdom. At the beginning of this coronavirus crisis, I and other British Turkish Cypriots and expats applauded the TRNC for taking quick […]
One of Turkey’s leading entertainers Seyfi Dursunoğlu has died in hospital after a short illness. Dursunoğlu, better known by his stage name and drag character Huysuz Virjin (The Grumpy Virgin), was admitted to Istanbul Acıbadem Altunizade Hospital a fortnight ago. He was being treated for pneumonia, as well as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), according […]
Dear Dr Sivri, I hope you are well? I feel kind of embarrassed with my problem, but you are the only person that can help me. I am a man in his late thirties, and I feel really stuck at the moment and in this stage of my life. I have never been married, and […]
On this day twenty years ago, actor Kemal Sunal suffered a fatal heart attack as he boarded an early morning domestic flight from Istanbul to the Black Sea city of Trabzon. He was just 55 years old. Sunal is said to have had a lifelong fear of flying and had not been on a plane […]
On June 23 at around 6pm a disabled woman in her 80s stood on the tarmac at Ercan Airport, supporting herself on crutches, heart heavy with the fear of deportation. She and her husband were one of a number of people who had been asked to step off the passenger transit bus by the police […]
