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Alexander Christie-Miller
ALEXANDER CHRISTIE-MILLER  is a writer and journalist based in Istanbul. His writing about Turkish politics and culture has been published in Newsweek, the Times, the Atlantic, and other publications. He is a regular contributor to The White Review.


Articles Available Online


Ada Kaleh

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Issue No. 17

Alexander Christie-Miller

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Issue No. 17

When King Carol II of Romania set foot on the tiny Danubian island of Ada Kaleh on 4 May 1931, it was said among...

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October 2015

War is Easy, Peace is Hard

Alexander Christie-Miller

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October 2015

At around midday on 19 July, Koray Türkay boarded a bus in Istanbul and set off for the Syrian...

You won’t be able to do it It is a call, and it is something you only know how to do by doing it over and over Birds practise their musical tunes Cows practise their ‘moo’ as they stroll through the fields But persons don’t know how to make a call, and so you will never be able to do it   ‘Oh you’ is sung It starts out a little bit lower and ends a little bit higher like the call for a Bob White bird, only slower You hold on to it longer And like the call of the Bob White bird, you do it over and over and over again The more you do it, the more you have to do it And you have to think of a 1% solution of WC Fields and little bit of bursting at the end ‘Oh you,’ ‘Oh you’   But anyway, you can’t do it You can’t do it because you hardened your voice around some sounds you heard once And now you can’t change it   You thought it would sound good to hold on to the ts at the ends of words with a breathy whistle that is held until the beginning of next word You make that whistle for every single word that ends with a t You like it, and your head jumps a little bit every time you say it You say ‘but’ or ‘but-uh’ a lot so that you can make that t sound a whole bunch more times You put it in everywhere: But-stah-aah But-stah-aah You put it in between words, at the end of sentences, and at moments when other people would have a chance to talk   Or you say ‘Sure, sure, sure’ while other people are talking like you already thought of everything they were saying a thousand years ago Sometimes you say the name of someone and then ‘Sure, Sure, Sure’ Then sometimes you repeat the name several times together with ‘Sure, Sure, Sure’ while holding your finger in the air so that they will stop talking and you can say all of your sentences

Contributor

August 2014

Alexander Christie-Miller

Contributor

August 2014

ALEXANDER CHRISTIE-MILLER  is a writer and journalist based in Istanbul. His writing about Turkish politics and culture has been...

Forgotten Sea

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Issue No. 11

Alexander Christie-Miller

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Issue No. 11

I. As I stood on the flanks of the Kaçkar Mountains where they slope into the Black Sea near the town of Arhavi, the...
Occupy Gezi: From the Fringes to the Centre, and Back Again

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July 2013

Alexander Christie-Miller

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July 2013

Taksim Square appears at first a wide, featureless and unlovely place. It is a ganglion of roads and bus routes, a destination and a...

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poetry

December 2011

Return After Earthquake

Jeffrey Angles

poetry

December 2011

although left for months my house is still standing here on terra firma branches broken by snow fallen into...

Art

October 2012

Mitra Tabrizian's Another Country

Matt Mahon

Mitra Tabrizian

Art

October 2012

Mitra Tabrizian’s Another Country (2010), a collection of nine large-scale photographs taken between 2009-2010, present to the viewer an...

Interview

August 2017

Interview with Ottessa Moshfegh

Yen Pham

Interview

August 2017

Ottessa Moshfegh’s first two books are, as she tells me, very different from one another. But despite the contrast...

 

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