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Where you read it first | Thursday, December 4, 2025
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Max Turnacioglu

Almaty
Columns

Almaty: The city of lovers

By Max Turnacioglu | December 4

As my homesickness began to reach its peak in conjunction with the start of the holiday season, I found myself recalling even the most inconsequential details of my life back home in the U.S. with some sympathy. Even Washington, D.C.’s infamous Beltway called out to me with its siren song of car horns and exhaust, and I was instantly brought back to the iconic “Welcome to Virginia” sign underlined by the state’s travel slogan: “Virginia is for Lovers.”

Almaty
Columns

Almaty: The city of believers

By Max Turnacioglu | November 21

To be blessed just once is a rarity, a singular act of divine deliverance. And yet, as I sat hunched over my laptop stewing over this very column, I set to counting my blessings and discovered that they numbered a staggering two over just this last week.

Almaty
Columns

Astana: The city that is not Almaty

By Max Turnacioglu | November 7

Besides its claim to the title of second coldest capital city in the world, Astana, Kazakhstan is renowned for its architecture — in fact, mentions of the city are always accompanied by reference to its futuristic architectural style. After 17 hours of pacing, playing cards, intermittent sleep on a stiff fold-down bed and watching the low hills of the Kazakh Steppe race by the train window, I was prepared to be unimpressed by the city of Astana. Yet, even bleary-eyed and weakly shuffling after our tour guide, the sleek, fantastical skyline of Astana throttled me into amazement. 

Almaty
Columns

Almaty: The city of night buses

By Max Turnacioglu | October 24

The bitter memory of a homophobic stand-up routine continued to curdle in my mouth as I looked out into the street beside me. A few cars idled at the light, but the night was otherwise silent. Trolley Bus No. 8 was nowhere to be found. In a night already punctuated by poor jokes, this may have been the worst: my phone lay dead in my pocket — willingly discarded in the name of challenge — and my only guide home was a Soviet-era Russian–English dictionary, with pages 28, 31 and 79 dog-eared as an ingenious reminder of which buses I needed to take.

Almaty
Columns

Almaty: The city of postcards

By Max Turnacioglu | September 26

The dusty record player, struggling through a faded song, was almost entirely drowned out by the sounds of the marketplace outside. Bins of pins, coins and assorted Soviet paraphernalia dotted the floor, and the shelves along the walls were crowded with ceramic figures: a village boy dancing with a girl, a stout bear, an old woman with a scarlet headscarf. In the center of the second room stood a metal stand — designed to rotate, but rusted stiff — stuffed with postcards.

Almaty
Columns

Almaty: The City of Doves

By Max Turnacioglu | September 12

For the entirety of the fall semester, I will be tucked away in the (surprisingly temperate) mountains of Kazakhstan, learning Russian in the nation’s cultural capital: Almaty. In Kazakh, Almaty means “full of apples,” a fitting name for an area that first contained the distant ancestor of the modern apple. Long before “The Big Apple” in New York, there were many big apples in Central Asia, and, during the course of my time here, I’m hoping to cut right to the city’s core and share whatever sweet fruit I find along the way. Every two weeks, I will publish juicy vignettes about life in Almaty — some may connect, and some may not… 

Hey Wait Just One Second
Columns

Hey Wait Just One Second: The sun

By Max Turnacioglu | May 14

Yesterday, I stared at the sun. It really hurt. Yet, as I stumbled down Prez Lawn barefoot (#freethefoot) with holes burned into my retinas, I began to realize something about my fiery, eternally-smiling foe: Without the sun, the world would be a much darker place.

Hey Wait Just One Second
Columns

Hey Wait Just One Second: First words

By Max Turnacioglu | April 16

Parsnip. Magnanimous. Sepulcher. This could be the beginning of a particularly esoteric New York TimesConnections puzzle, but it is also how I chose to begin this week’s column. By selecting and recording arbitrary words that popped into my mind, I demarcated this piece of writing as a piece of writing; I began a series of words that followed from this obscure beginning and, taking this series in sum, I thus constructed a unified column upon the parsnip-laden ground. This is the raw power possessed by my first words.

Hey Wait Just One Second
Columns

Hey Wait Just One Second: Birds

By Max Turnacioglu | April 2

I suffer from ornithophobia — the fear of birds. It is my daily affliction and eternal curse. Every time a pigeon or goose lunges towards me, I cower away from their dastardly attacks. I imagine that I can see the unbridled malice in their little, beady eyes. This fear does not stem from lived experience — although I believe that some seagulls were very close to murdering me for a sandwich in Dublin if I hadn’t fled and saved myself — but rather a propensity to fear that which is different. Birds, to me, are uncomfortably different.

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