(2002 pop. 10.3 million). Istanbul (called Byzantium until 330 CE and Constantinople until 1930), is an ancient city in northwest Turkey that straddles Europe and Asia. Istanbul lies on both sides of the Bosporus, a narrow, thirty-two-kilometer-long...

Istanbul (Turkish: İstanbul, historically Byzantium and later Constantinople; see Names of Istanbul) is Turkey's most populous city, and its cultural and financial center. The city covers 25 districts of the Istanbul province. It is located on the...

Von der Lebenswirklichkeit der türkischen Gesellschaft findet man im türkischen Gegenwartskino vieles wieder. Auf dem Internationalen Filmfestival Istanbul (1.-16.4.), das in diesem Jahr sein 25-jähriges Bestehen feierte, konnte man das hautnah mitverfolgen. Das auf Literaturverfilmungen spezialisierte Festival zeigte über 200 Filme; mit zusätzlichen Dokumentationen...

ISTANBUL, Turkey ON A RECENT evening here, I went from the courtyard of a pilgrimage mosque thronged with more than 10,000 Muslims waiting to break their Ramadan fast at sundown to a modern dance performance in which the dancers' shoes were attached to 10-...

An explosion ripped through an unlicensed fireworks factory in an industrial section of Istanbul on Thursday, killing 20 people and injuring 117, officials said.The city's governor, Muammer Guler, blamed fireworks manufactured illegally in the five-story building. He ruled out terrorism, and said an investigation was...

Who could have imagined that the aggressive, angry, über-feminist Pina Bausch of 20 years ago would have metamorphosed into the romantic, sensual and—yes—charming Pina Bausch of today? The sensibility that produced what Arlene Croce, in 1984, referred to as “Animal House with weltschmerz” is now...