You could say that all big cities are, by their very multifaceted natures, places of contrast. This holds true about New York, London, Berlin... The list goes on. And yet it appears to me that Istanbul is more than any other place, a city of paradoxes. It is at once, European and Asian, rich and poor, old and new, hot ...
How can someone so outright islamophobic hold a post as integration officer in Neukölln? This is the gist of the current critique by Green and Left politicians regarding Güner Yasemin Balci’s controversial selection. That Balci (45) had been elected to such a position in such a volatile and ethnically mixed district as Neukölln came as a big surprise to me. I ...