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Cornucopia

While many of us merely read Cornucopia, a magazine about Turkey, Scaramelli spent this summer helping out at their ?stanbul office.

So what is Cornucopia's niche? “It's impossible to situate the magazine among travel, history or architecture magazines,” she observed, adding: “It's more like a small book. It can't be compared with lengthy and arid academic journals, either, even though its writers are often academics themselves. I see articles in Cornucopia as a journey into intriguing aspects of life, culture and history in Turkey; some are secret pearls waiting to be discovered, while others are subjects represented to the public with great attention to detail and accompanied by splendid photos. Cornucopia is a great travel companion, whether the journey is real or imagined. It's published three times a year and distributed both in Turkey and worldwide with around 18,000 copies sold each time.”

As the theme for the most recent edition was the Kaçkar, she also contributed a couple of short pieces. “One was about folk music in the Black Sea region,” she highlighted, adding: “Luckily, I have many friends who are musicians and ethnomusicologists, and that also happens to be my favorite kind of Turkish folk. The other introduces Kate Clow's article about a selection of hiking routes in the Kaçkar. I also reviewed three books, interesting novels set in ?stanbul which accompanied me in my exploration of the city's humors.” There are also features on ?stanbul's first impressionists and the city of Kars and a profile of Uighur figurehead Rebiya Kadeer as well as regular columns by people like Andrew Finkel, Azize Ethem and Berrin Torolosan.”

Asked about her favorite Cornucopia articles, she replied: “It's hard to say as I've rarely been bored by any of them. The content is carefully selected so that articles complement each other but there's always a surprise waiting for readers when they turn the page. The magazine is elegantly edited, and its great photographers are as valuable as the writers. The magazine's contributors are people whose involvement with Turkey is too varied to be generalized, brought together by a passionate curiosity about different places, regions and people in Turkey and the country's history. There are also a lot of very informative pieces which are always superbly written, a rarity in non-fiction writing. The articles are quick and thrilling to read.”