Istanbul Modern: Iron Dragons, White Storks and a Vanished Corniche

plus a recipe for beetroot and pomegranate salad

Good morning. This newsletter, a paid-for special, will be the last dispatch from Turkey for a while but it is, I hope, a good one bringing together Istanbul’s dockside demolitions, the photographer Ozan Sağdıç, the writer Carla Grissmann, and to top it all off, a surprising beetroot recipe.

When I’m in Istanbul I no longer stay in the tightly packed Beyoğlu district - there is a limit to how many Instagram poseurs you are willing to bump into on your sweaty morning jog - but I never quite feel like I’m in the city until I’ve been there, inevitably dropping down to Karaköy and wandering familiar backstreets. Nowadays, that may also mean a stroll further along through one of the largest public-space transformations that downtown Istanbul has seen in years: the multi-billion-euro Galataport Project.