Alev Scott
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Articles by Alev Scott
Restoring mothers to the historical record
A Woman’s Work: Reclaiming the Radical History of Mothering, Elinor Cleghorn, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, £22 In the 2nd century AD, a famous (male) gynaecologist from Ephesus, in modern Turkey, wrote a treatise outlining the best care for pregnant women.
Cash Cow: How the Maternal Body Became a Global Commodity - and the Hidden Costs for Women
Baby Love By HarperCollins 320pp £22 Subscribe or Sign In to read the full article For People Who Devour Books Only a selection of our reviews and articles are free. Subscribers receive the monthly magazine and access to all articles on our website. Visit our Bookshop Browse our selection of reviewed and recommended books
The best new popular science books of February 2026
Space scientist Maggie Aderin has a new book out this month It’s nowhere near early enough for those of us in the northern hemisphere to start struggling against winter’s somnolent spell, so there’s no need for excuses as you take to your bed with a pile of good books. And there’s plenty to keep you occupied while you eschew the chilly outdoors.
Appeasing the Djinn
I am 22 weeks pregnant. During this pregnancy – my fourth; I have two children already and had a miscarriage in February – I have become unduly superstitious, increasingly preoccupied by the idea of life emerging in the shadow of death, and half-remembering folklore taught to me by my Turkish grandmother. Though it isn’t forbidden by scripture, there is a belief in both Muslim and Jewish cultures that a pregnant woman should not attend a funeral, visit a cemetery or see a dead body.
Letter from Amsterdam: the art of lifting lockdown
“Welcome! Do you have a cough, cold or fever?” asks a smiling young man, emerging from a mass of neon pink balloons.
Subscribe to read | Financial Times
Become an FT subscriber to read: Patrick Leigh Fermor’s Greek villa prepares for its first guests An intelligent take on global...
Subscribe to read | Financial Times
Become an FT subscriber to read: Patrick Leigh Fermor’s Greek villa prepares for its first guests An intelligent take on global...
Patrick Leigh Fermor’s Greek villa prepares for its first guests
“If a 94-year-old man could brave these waters, so can I.” It was February, and I was inching towards the waves that lap Kalamitsi beach,...
POWER AND THE PEOPLE
In ancient Athens, democracy thrived because of engaged citizens. Journalist Scott and classical scholar Makres, founding member of the Hellenic Education & Research Center in Athens, offer a spirited portrait of Athens from 621 B.C.E., when Draco wrote Athens’ first set of laws, to 322 B.C.E., when democracy was stifled under Macedonian domination.
Remembering Roger Scruton
Roger Scruton’s body of work is stunning, not just in volume — 50 books; decades’ worth of articles; academic papers; lectures; musical...
Britons should learn to vote like the Ancient Greeks
Much has changed since democracy emerged 2,500 years ago. Women vote. We do not kill or exile politicians who mislead us.
[Postcard] Out of Sight, by Alev Scott
I approached the refugee camp from above, on the back of a Harley-Davidson. Beyond loops of barbed wire, aquamarine Aegean waters lapped at a white pebble cove and goats bleated among pine trees fringing the shore. I was on the west coast of Leros, on my way to a camp housing around seven hundred asylum seekers from Syria, Afghanistan, Libya, and Sudan, waiting to be shipped to Athens. The humid air smelled of salt and resin.
At home with master ceramicist Alev Ebüzziya Siesbye
The side street leading to Alev Ebüzziya Siesbye’s apartment in Paris’s 14th arrondissement is charming — bustling market stalls, chatty...
Paris Diary: sad selfies at Notre-Dame
Opposite the Île de la Cité, amid a crowd of tourists taking photos of the wreck of Notre-Dame across the Seine, an American couple stand...
Balancing Power in the Lebanese Borderlands
In May 2017, I traveled with the artist Richard Mosse, who was taking thermographic photographs of the refugee camp of Arsal from the army outpost on a hill above the town. Because the region was so volatile, we would never had been allowed permission to visit the area alone. Instead, we went under the protection of Nora Joumblatt, the Syrian, non-Druze wife of the warlord Walid Joumblatt, who is the de-facto head of the Druze minority in Lebanon.
Back to the Balkans
The First World War brought the Ottoman Empire to its knees. The sultan’s alliance with the kaiser had gone horribly wrong. British forces held the capital Istanbul; most of the territories had fallen and Greek troops were ravaging the west of Turkey. But east of Istanbul, a maverick general was masterminding a resistance from the arid Anatolian steppes.
Why Greece’s Syriza and Golden Dawn parties are feuding over the classics
Three figures in black suits stand within the legs of an upturned conference table, like prisoners in a dock.
From exile, watching Turkey and Erdogan’s tightening grip
I’m sitting on a tyre in a once-beautiful house in central Athens that smells of urine.
The agonies of writing from exile
I first met Can Dündar in 2016, just before he was sentenced to nearly six years in jail.
‘By the way, I’m a woman’: the truth about ambiguous names
It is ironic that in Turkish, Alev is an exceptionally romantic girl’s name — if a little old-fashioned these days.
Echoes of history at Europe's borders
This article is a preview from the Summer 2017 edition of New Humanist. You can find out more and subscribe here. Last March, history repeated itself on Turkey’s Aegean coast after a 94-year hiatus.
The Turks who lost their language
In the sleepy village of Naime, 60km southeast of the Aegean port of Izmir, a woman who claims to be 106 years old was trying to remember the founding of the Turkish Republic in 1923. Dressed in baggy shalvar trousers, Hatice was huddled on a bench under the vine-covered veranda of her tiny house, her movements slow in the intense June heat.
Return of refugees raises Turkish suspicions
Many Turks believe the ruling party is housing refugees in towns that vote for its rivals.
‘The day Assad leaves Syria, I will return’
ALMERE, Netherlands — Take the rickety city-link train from the center of Amsterdam for 30 minutes and you reach Almere, a drab suburb town which hosts many of the Netherlands’ asylum seekers in a 1,000-strong camp on its outskirts. The identical bedsits in two-story, Lego-like blocks of red brick set in featureless fields have an atmosphere of impermanence and reluctant schedule, housing a collection of people with radically different backgrounds thrown together for a common purpose.
Erdoğan roars back
ISTANBUL — Jubilant car horns and cheers rung out over the streets here on Sunday night as supporters of Turkey’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) celebrated their historic win at the polls. Opposition supporters, meanwhile, were left in stunned disbelief at the results of an election which attracted an 86 percent turnout, and which was described by the prime minister as “a referendum on New Turkey,” a reference to the AKP’s vision of a country radically altered from its founding roots.
The most important woman in Turkey
ISTANBUL — Figen Yuksekdağ would be a superstar in a country less suffocated by macho politics. As co-chair of the party which unexpectedly robbed the Justice and Development Party (AKP) of its ruling majority in June, Yuksekdağ is one of the most important politicians in Turkey today. She is also the embodiment of the leftist Peoples’ Democratic Party’s (HDP) commitment to gender equality, in a country that ranks 120 of 136 on the Global Gender Gap Index.
Atrocity in Ankara
Relatives cry at the funeral of victims of the October 10, 2015 Ankara bomb attacks | Burak Kara/Getty Images Dispatch Atrocity in Ankara The Turkish government is accused of complicity, as bomb victims are buried. By Alev Scott 10/12/15, 8:14 PM CET Updated 10/12/15, 10:14 PM CET ANKARA — At a funeral for the victims of the October 10 bombings in the Turkish capital, hundreds of people who gathered the day before in the name of peace repeat their call.
Turkey’s lip-reading censors
Don’t insult the president: Erdoğan waves off journalists | OZAN KOSE/AFP/Getty Letter from Istanbul Turkey’s lip-reading censors Journalist detentions and rewards for informants: Turkey goes 1984.
Fateful dead - POLITICO
Women carry the coffin of a militant during her funeral on July 27, 2015, in Istanbul | Getty Letter from Istanbul Fateful dead Angry Turks turn on their government at funerals for slain soldiers.
Human Traffic | WdW Review
In Istanbul there is an elite band of commuters, a lucky few who pass serenely from one continent to another in an unbroken path. While their terrestrial counterparts stagnate in miles of miserable traffic, ferry passengers ride in the slipstream of Jason and the Argonauts and Mehmet the Conqueror, crossing a stretch of water that cuts majestically through the most congested city on earth and disappears into expanses of sea at either end. The Bosphorus is the subject of countless romantic clichés.
Kurdish party leader Selahattin Demirtas defiant in face of threats
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Machismo and His Demons
A man comes home, briefly greets his young daughter, and sits down to eat his evening meal. Hovering behind his chair is his wife, watching as he takes the first bite. Something is wrong—she knows it and dreads his discovery. He lowers his fork. “No meat?” Silence. “Where is the meat?” The wife, anguished, pleads her usual defense: “How can I buy meat? You never give me any money!” The man turns in his seat, lifts his heaped plate and throws it with force through the open window beside him.
Turkish pro-government film is a blatant smear campaign
For the past few weeks, a new Turkish film, Kod Adı: KOZ (“Code Name: KOZ”) has been heavily advertised in cities around the country. The sinister, sepia-tinged poster features a tableau of suited men viewed through the crosshairs of a gun; at first glance, it could be mistaken for a Turkish version of the classic Bond or Bourne spy thriller. On closer inspection, however, several intriguing details spring out.
Editors' Picks: Favourite Nonfiction of 2018
I’ve been asking people for book recommendations for close to a decade now (our first Five Books interview with Harvard economist Robert Barro was back in 2009), so I feel a bit sheepish admitting I don’t much like recommending books. My reading choices reflect subjects I happen to be interested in finding out more about—and that’s not necessarily what anyone else wants or needs to know more about. That disclaimer aside, these were my favourite nonfiction books of 2018. 1.
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