CULTURE AND ARTS

LITERATURE Hope raises a Syrian bookstore from the ground

Around the corner from the Chora church sits a wooden building, a cultural hub for the city’s burgeoning Syrian population. This month, Pages, one of Istanbul’s two Arabic book stores, tucked carefully between the back streets of Edirnekapi, is celebrating its first anniversary.
LITERATURE Castigat ridendo mores* or Hagop Baronyan on the 125th anniversary of his death

Baronyan had always been running counter to Armenian clergy and elites whom he criticized satirically, and he lived in reduced circumstances because of his conflict with those circles which, in Baronyan's opinion, had been managing the economic resources of the society in accordance with their own interests. Even when he found out that he got tuberculosis at the age of 45, he hadn't given up resisting. (*a Latin phrase meaning “one corrects customs by laughing at them", which was used by French poet Jean-Baptiste Santeul (1630-1697) for the first time.)
PHOTOGRAPHY “My grandmother never forgot this place”

Michelle Andonion have been photographing the children at risk around the world for providing a better future for them by raising awareness. Now, in her book “This Picture I Gift”, which was published on September 2015, she travels to the past of her family, Armenia and Anatolia by following the footsteps of her grandmother Sara.
LITERATURE Farewell to the last Baron of Aleppo

The owner of the famous Baron Hotel, which was established in Aleppo in early 20th century by Mazlumyan family from Kayseri, Armen Mazlumyan passed away last week. Mazlumyan's loyalty to his family's heritage, his struggle for keeping Baron Hotel standing and his extraordinary life in Aleppo which he didn't abandon even during the war are subjected to “Barons of Aleppo: A Hotel in Syria, A Family and the Last Century of Middle East” by Flavia Amabile and Marco Tosatti.
MUSIC A journey to longing with Dinkjian

After Onnik Dinkjian’s concert with his son Ara Dinkjian on October 24, Silva Özyerli told the journey that she went on with the songs of Onnik Dinkjian, who is also from Diyarbakir like her.
MUSIC As a Lebanese Armenian musician in international arena, it’s a double fight

Lebanese Armenian musician Eileen Khatchadourian has been recently in Turkey on April 24, for the Memorial Concert. This time she came for the Hrant Dink Award Ceremony to İstanbul. At this special evening she sang songs from her latest album ‘Titernig’ (Butterfly). We came together with her and talked about her identity shaped in various lands, her authentic interpretation of traditional Armenian songs and her feelings arising while being in Turkey.
PHOTOGRAPHY Story of a reversed migration from Diyarbakir to Aleppo, an endless longing

Every single day, some terrible news about the immigrants from Syria comes to the fore. So, in these days, we would like to share the visual diary of the forced migration that the father and grandparents of our photography editor Berge Arabian went through. In 1930, they hit the road from Diyarbakir to Aleppo. The exhibition that was opened in Diyarbakir on May 23 will visit Istanbul and Erivan, and the book that is based on this exhibition is being prepared now. Armenians are one of the communities that history challenged with migrations and they had always been migrating in the Middle East which is stirred by civil wars. This story, which is like a reversed migration, is rather an expression of longing. It is like a gloomy “uzun hava” to the lost home, Diyarbakir.