Evan Pheiffer
Evan Pheiffer was born and raised in St Louis and educated in the U.S., France and U.K. A freelance writer and editor, he has lived in Istanbul since 2016.
Latest from Evan Pheiffer
The Statements We’re Obliged To Make Tend To Be False
If something has to be said, and said in public, there’s a decent chance that it’s a lie. Think of history’s favorite shibboleths: separate but equal; the war to end all wars; we value your privacy. Yet when these pronouncements are made, they also offer a shortcut to the truth.
‘They Cloned Tyrone’ Wakes Viewers From an American Dream
Delightfully absurdist, in “They Cloned Tyrone,” Taylor and Rettenmaier make a subtle but damning point: Our experiment in democracy, or republicanism at least, has always relied on a violent dose of coercion.
As Turkey Counts Its Dead, a Reckoning Is Still To Come
To have built homes with earthquake-resistant concrete would have cost around $3,000 more for a 120-square-meter apartment. For an extra $3,000, someone could be alive today.
Netflix Satire Puts French Universalism to the Test
Netflix's "Represent" tells the story of Stéphane Blé, an affable Black 30-something youth worker in the notorious banlieues of Paris who, thanks to a social media fluke, unexpectedly finds himself running for president. A furious battle for what kind of France is possible ensues.
Migrants Thrive Where Slaves and Martyrs Once Crossed Paths
The neighborhood was filled with forced migrants: Anatolian Turks from Aksaray, Armenians from Crimea, Janissaries from the Balkans. Its bleaker side was ever-present, too. From its Roman execution square to an Ottoman female slave market, Aksaray has always dabbled in the darker side of human affairs.
How the Mountain Jews of Azerbaijan Endure
For decades, Red Village in Azerbaijan has remained the only all-Jewish enclave outside Israel and the United States. Its residents are prosperous and pragmatic, fluent in various dialects of Persian, Russian and Turkish — and usually a Western European language, too.
Turkish Sitcom Taps Into the ‘Seinfeld’ Vibe
Upon risk of social death, there are three subjects that comedians shy away from in Turkey: Atatürk, religion and homosexuality. Everything else is fair game. The creators of “Gibi,” 33-year-old Feyyaz Yiğit and 41-year-old Aziz Kedi, seem to feel this in their bones.
‘The Club’: Netflix’s Sephardic Heroine Braves Turkey’s Troubled Past
“The Club” also offers a biting social critique. For the show is less about the arrival of cocktail modernity to Istanbul than about the Turkification of cocktail modernity, i.e., a pincer movement by Kemalist state and society to substitute good secular Muslim Turks for Istanbul’s Greeks, Jews and Armenians.
A Brief History of Bağcılar, Turkey’s Most Misunderstood Municipality
“Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in,” wrote Robert Frost. In this profile of Bağcılar, one of Istanbul’s most misunderstood districts, we look at the riveting history of Turkey’s self-styled “municipality to the world.”