The first time I saw Ot Dergi, or Weed Magazine, was when it was in the hands of teenagers who had just finished their recycling jobs in the hipster Cihangir district of Istanbul in July 2013 — a month after the Gezi protests. When asked what was so amusing, one of them said, “It is the weed, but not the joint — the writing here.” And he started reading a part of an old Turkish poem about living with dignity and hard work. One of them said, “We are not leftists, rich or interested in protest, but there is truth in some of these lines. Life on the streets is about resilience.”

That was my introduction to the hybrid form of literature and art magazines growing in Turkey. In early 2013, they were seen as marginal. Today, about 20 of them are in the market and still growing in popularity. Avci Onurkan, editor of Fil (Elephant) and Yeni Harman Magazine, told Al-Monitor, “It is almost impossible to calculate the exact number of sales of print media, magazines or newspapers.” However, some of these magazines are now selling over 50,000 copies per month, higher than the circulation of several dailies.

All this is quite interesting, because almost all of them are exclusively available in print, at a time when print media is dying globally. The one exception is Ot Dergi, which recently launched an application for Android and iOS mobile devices. Yet they are marketed professionally with savvy and aggressive social media teasers. Still, to read the magazine you have to get out on the street and purchase the product.

Next, these magazines flourish with a “the more the merrier” attitude, enjoying and even encouraging cooperative competition among each other. They offer literary content, most of it traditional, but post it in sound bites. Their presentation is unconventional. For example, some sections of the text are printed in boldface, others in bigger fonts. And they offer a graphic design feast from one page to another. On one page there will be photos situated in the center of a piece, on others a digital drawing. They have color as well as photos in sepia. The old and the new appear together, and some pages are like notepads. Readers are encouraged to be a part of the process and pitch their own stories to the editors using the pages left for them in the magazine.