Behind Turkey’s diplomatic doors

Welcome back to AL-MONITOR Istanbul.

September is the year's cultural peak, when art lovers in the three big cities have a new opening virtually every day. Galleries reopen, orchestras tune up and for one weekend embassies, consulates and private houses in Ankara, Istanbul and Izmir let the public walk in. One event stands apart from all of it: a concert by Karsu in Hatay, the city the earthquake devastated, and all the more meaningful for being held far from where everything else is crowding in.

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Thanks for reading,

Nazlan (@NazlanEr on X)

P.S. Have tips on Istanbul’s culture scene? Send them my way at nertan@al-monitor.com.

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1. Leading the week: Open house

The 2026 campaign image: a restoration under way at Ter Elst, Flanders. (Photo courtesy of LUCID/European Heritage Days)

For two days this month, gates that normally stay closed will be left open. The European Heritage Days return for their 43rd edition across 48 countries on Sept. 19-20, marking the fifth edition in Turkey, with events running in Ankara, Istanbul and Izmir.

The theme is “Heritage at Risk: Revive, Resist, Reimagine,” which is sharper than the usual heritage-week piety. The Council of Europe names the risks plainly: climate change accelerating the erosion of stone, wood and clay; conflict and forced migration cutting communities off from cultural sites; development swallowing historic quarters; and regional and minority languages going quiet. To learn more, join the panel titled “Cultural Heritage at Risk” at the Goethe-Institut in Ankara, which focuses on preparing for disasters before, during and after they occur.

In Istanbul, the pleasure is partly architectural, partly diplomatic curiosity. Last year's list included  Austria's Yenikoy Palace, the Belgian Palace and Saint-Joseph.

Izmir, too, is on the map again, with walks through the Levantine quarter, one of which passes the house that belonged to Edouard Balladur, the former French prime minister who was born in the city in 1929 and died in Paris on Aug. 31. Ankara, where the Turkish edition began in 2022 with four embassies, has the most extensive program: Clemens Holzmeister's Schönbrunn-yellow Austrian residence, the brutalist Danish residence, the Swiss Bauhaus residence and Albert Laprade's French gardens, plus a candlelit concert in the Ataturk Forest Farm hangars and a Finnish pop-up devoted to Tove Jansson, featuring Moomin shorts.

Places are free but capped at four events per person. Register as of Sept. 12: avrupamirasgunleri.com

Date: Sept. 19-20

Location: Ankara, Istanbul and Izmir

2. Word on the street: Hona

Tuna and greens at Hona. (Photo courtesy of Hona Istanbul)

Hona is a wooden box on a Cihangir side street, with six seats and a queue, where the kitchen prepares your food in front of you. Chef Ansar Kemaloglu grew up in Tashkent, arrived in Istanbul at 18, left civil engineering and opened Hona at 22, cutting and fitting the paneling himself. He named it after his grandfather's village on the Georgian border, a place he has never seen. The cooking sits between Old Turkic and East Asian techniques: onigiri pressed to order and filled past the point of structural integrity, and matcha whisked with rose sherbet or lavender, which accounts for half the queue.

Location: Firuzaga, Turkgucu Cad. 70/A, Beyoglu

3. Istanbul diary

Nil Yalter, “Skin Story.” video. 2003. (Photo courtesy of the artist and Galerist)

Galerist turns 25 and marks the occasion with “Labour of Love,” bringing together close to 50 artists who have shaped the gallery since 2001, among them Nil Yalter, Semiha Berksoy, Ayse Erkmen and Sarkis. The works hang together in the 19th-century Passage Petits-Champs as a collective self-portrait. Until Nov. 7.

Karsu, who lost 17 relatives in Hatay in 2023, goes home to sing. The EU Delegation to Turkey puts her at Sumerler Amfitiyatro in Defne, alongside with the SEDYAD Choir and Hatay Akademi Children's and Youth Choir. Admission is free with a QR ticket. Sept. 17.

Pera Museum hands over the gallery of “Intersecting Worlds: Ambassadors and Painters” to three cellists for an evening. Ditta Rohmann, Richard Rozsa and Ozan Evrim Tunca run from Barriere to Kodaly among the diplomatic portraits. Tickets are 500 Turkish lira. Sept. 24, 7.30 p.m.

Contemporary Istanbul returns to Tersane Istanbul for its 21st edition, with more than 70 galleries from 24 countries and some 1,500 works. VIP preview Sept. 23; general admission Sept. 24-27.

Anna Laudel Ankara presents Ramazan Can's “I Was a Stranger Here,” which reads the artist's Yoruk family history through two materials that disagree: the carpet, which moves and remembers, and concrete, which settles and stays. Until Nov. 21.