Entries Tagged 'Research in Turkey' ↓

My weekly trip to Bursa has been preempted by the Queen of England. She’ll be visiting Bursa tomorrow, and as part of her trip she’ll visit the Green Mosque and listen to recitation of a sura from the Koran, which means the folks I usually observe at the mufti building will be up to their […]

I was so ready to keep up last week’s momentum — I visited four different sites in three days — but instead I got a cold and have been out of the house only once since last Friday. Ugh.
On the up side, I’ve had more time to work on a paper revision due at the […]

The bus dropped me off in Bilecik at 5:30 AM, a wee bit early for my 9:00 AM meeting. I hung out at the bus station for a few minutes and then walked out to the main road, which overlooked a valley. I thought I would wait around till sunrise and take some pictures, but […]

I’m taking an overnight bus to Bilecik to interview the mufti there. Bilecik is one of the smallest provinces in Turkey, but the mufti has been the mufti of Istanbul, Ankara, and Diyarbakir, and a vice president at the Diyanet, so I’m looking forward to learning about his experiences. (I probably won’t bring up why […]

I’m feeling a little under the weather, but I’m still planning to catch my flight to Izmir tomorrow AM. I haven’t been there for a sermon meeting since October because the hajj season interrupted their regular schedule, so I’m glad to be getting back in touch. My last visit was great.
From Izmir I’ll take a […]

After an early morning ferry ride across the Sea of Marmara to the city of Yalova, I was walking along when I came across a few pieces of a slot-car race track lying on the sidewalk. They were just sitting there in front of a store. Another ten feet down the road there was a […]

I traveled two hours outside of Istanbul today to interview Ahmet Okutan, the mufti of Tekirdağ.  He was incredibly helpful both in terms of providing information about sermon preparation in his province and in terms of setting up additional interviews in the region (tomorrow I’m going to Edirne and tomorrow night it’s off to Çanakkale). 
Thanks to […]