Welcome to Al-Monitor Istanbul.

This week, we move out of the city once more, to Eskisehir, a UNESCO-listed town we love to cover. We also offer suggestions for end-of-the-year dinners, exhibitions off the beaten track, mostly on the Anatolian side, and a great leisurely book about one woman’s journey in Turkey.

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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: More art of the table

Slim Aarons “Dining Ala Fresco on Capri” (OMM)

We are leading the week with an event that is just a three-hour train ride from Istanbul, in Eskisehir, a city shaped by Phrygian antiquity, Ottoman railways and, more recently, a buoyant student population. In the historic Odunpazari quarter, the Odunpazari Modern Museum (OMM), designed by Kengo Kuma and founded by Erol Tabanca and Rana Erkan Tabanca, has opened “Wide Expanse” (Ferahfeza), curated by Yagmur Elif Ertekin.

The exhibition takes the sofra, loosely translated as “the table,” as its organizing principle, treating it not as decor or gastronomy but as a social space shaped by shared experience. In Turkish, Ertekin notes, sofra refers neither strictly to the meal nor the furniture, but to an emotional terrain in which intimacy and collective memory overlap. “This is not a food exhibition,” she told Al-Monitor, “but one that looks at the feelings and relationships formed around the table, whether at home, in a school canteen or by the seaside.”

Some works carry a particular charge for Turkish viewers. Gulsun Karamustafa’s “People of Istanbul” assembles collages of found photographs against wallpaper-like backdrops recalling 1950s interiors. The familiarity is deliberate; the context is not. The images depict non-Muslim citizens who left Turkey after the Sept. 6-7, 1955, pogroms. Ara Guler’s black-and-white photographs trace the social pulse of Beyoglu, while works by Fikret Mualla and Cihat Burak ground the exhibition in the raw, informal energy of urban life. Slim Aarons, a former war photographer who later turned to celebrity culture, appears with a photograph of a group picnicking with studied ease in Capri.

Younger voices extend the conversation. Yaren Karakas’ “Meeting Break,” with........

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