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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...

In the face of legal restraints, police repression, political violence and the pressures and insecurity precipitated by the pandemic, the feminist movement in Turkey has persisted in mobilising in the streets across the country Across several nights of the year thousands of bodies join in motion on the streets of major cities in defiance of police barricades to engage in stubborn collective joy The most recent Feminist Night March in Istanbul, which took place this year on International Woman’s Day on 8 March 2022, set itself against patriarchy, heterosexism, male violence, labour exploitation, capitalism, homophobia, transphobia and war The capillary of backstreets of Beyoğlu district sang with the movement of bodies, an accumulation of hope, hurt and protest articulated in the rhythm of shouted and painted slogans –‘Tie your hair Rapunzel, let the asshole use the stairs’; ‘There is shit in the fridge and a riot on the streets’; ‘Our labour, our body, our identity are ours’; ‘If you feel despairing, remember this crowd’ In the words of Saidiya Hartman, from Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments (2019), ‘If you listen closely, you can hear the whole world in a bent note, a throwaway lyric, a singular thread of the collective utterance’   The feminist movement in Turkey connects itself to a long tradition of riotous chorus, whose shouts against violence and despair continue to echo through different passageways into the present day The Greek etymology of the word ‘chorus’ refers to a ‘dance within an enclosure’, a dance which is transmitted through different mediums – in the history of the street, in the pages of a book and the sharp lines drawn by the visions of women who came before Among this chorus, the voices of a generation of women writers from Turkey working in the 1970s and 80s, considered cult writers today, are still active participants in the feminist imagination These writers are distinct for their examination of the lives of women within the contours of their social and economic conditions – not tracing these contours, but testing their limits through foregrounding the inner lives and concerns of their subjects The

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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fiction

April 2013

Towards White, 1975

Scott Morris

fiction

April 2013

In the morning, the square was white. Voula’s hair was white. A pigeon on a bronze horse shifted, sent...

Art

March 2013

Strangely Ordinary: Ron Mueck's art of the uncanny

Anouchka Grose

Art

March 2013

Since the Stone Age, people have been concerned with the problem of how to represent life.   Cave paintings...

poetry

November 2016

Gentle

Harriet Moore

poetry

November 2016

Forgive me Sister for I have sinned it’s been seconds since my last confession. I sit in the dark...

 

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