Historical geography

Tour operators and tourists from Russia recently visited Mardin in southeastern Turkey, which has been dubbed "the city of civilizations."

Mardin Provincial Culture and Tourism Director Sabahattin Genç, Özgür Gürgör, president of the Mardin Tourism and Hoteliers Association, and other officials welcomed the tourist group of 65 people.

Turkey has approved development plans for a huge canal on the edge of Istanbul, Environment Minister Murat Kurum said on March 27.

The step came a year after Turkey held its first tender for the reconstruction of two historic bridges in its largest city where the 45 kilometers-long Kanal Istanbul, championed by President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, is set to be dug.

Turkey recorded 81,222 house sales in February, slipping 31.6 percent from the same month last year, the country's statistical office revealed March 15.

Nearly 24,737 newly built houses were sold while the rest were second-hand sales last month, TÜİK said in a statement.

A steep rise in the number of COVID-19 cases in most of Turkey's 81 provinces and scenes of crowded streets and restaurants over the weekend have prompted experts to issue warnings as the country moved to a controlled normalization phase.

Turkey's population hits 83.6 million as of the end of 2020, while the population growth rate nosedived from 13.9 per thousand in 2019 to just 5.5 per thousand in 2020, the Turkish Statistical Institute (TÜİK) announced on Feb. 4.

Some 459,000 were added to the country's population in 2020, according to TÜİK's Address-Based Population Registration System (ABPRS).

Timurtaş Onan, a key figure of contemporary photography in Turkey, has published his new photography book "Istanbul: A City of Strange and Curious Moments," offering a retrospective selection of his works between 2000-2020.

Onan has gained considerable popularity for his different projects that featured Istanbul in different light and perspective.

The rate of air pollution in Istanbul decreased by 10 percent last year compared to 2019, a Turkish academic said.

With many people spending more time at home due to the COVID-19 outbreak, this has brought an improvement in air quality.

Istanbul's "winter guests" Eurasian coots started to be seen on the Bosphorus. (AA Photo)

If 2020 had been coronavirus-free, it would have been difficult to envision a Donald Trump defeat or to see the global economy operating under strict statist control fueled by printed money. These are only two developments that are bound to cause a kind of lasting change that has not yet been fully realized.

Istanbul enchants visitors and residents with its mesmerizing sights during sunset. (AA Photo)