Welcome to Al-Monitor Istanbul.

This week, the Istanbul Newsletter takes a detour, traveling from Istanbul to Ankara to explore what the capital has to offer, from the stylized goat sculptures at the city’s airport to the open-air sculpture gardens behind an embassy wall.

Istanbul, the capital of three empires, likes to boast that it still rules Turkey’s cultural scene. But Ankara, the landlocked city hand-picked by the country’s founder, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, also has some trump cards: stellar museums, literary tradition and an events calendar that runs deep.

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Nazlan (@NazlanEr on X)

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1. Leading the week: Embraceable (E)U

“Human Cloud” by Aykut Oz. (Courtesy of Demarche)

Unlike Istanbul, gardens are not the first thing that comes to mind when you think of gray, bureaucratic Ankara. Yet the city has great parks and, behind tall walls, surprisingly lush ambassadorial gardens.

Earlier in June, the Polish Embassy’s garden turned gallery for “Kavusma / Embrace,” an open-air sculpture show curated by Attila Gullu, the sharp-eyed impresario who led Bilkent University’s renowned art gallery for decades. Six Polish and Turkish artists placed their works among the trees and walkways with quiet intent.

Beata Zalewska’s “Poplar Valley” pairs nature with womanhood. Aysel Alver’s “Cannot Be Done,” a girl poised in yoga stillness, stands before the embassy’s austere modernist facade. Aykut Oz suspends fairy-tale creatures and unsaid thoughts like fruit from........

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