Turkey | The Monthly

Women in the Military

The Lady Killers

By Anne Summers

A few years later, that soldier asked the other three officers who had assisted her maiden fast-rope that day to be bridesmaids at her wedding. Lieutenant Toni Wilson, who’d been on the bridge, was overseas and unable to be there but Lieutenant Commander Natalee Johnson, the chopper pilot, and Lieutenant Karly Pidgeon, the observer, were able to join Major Matina Jewell in northern New Sout

Archduke Franz Ferdinand & the Platypus

By Shane Maloney

On 17 May 1893, the newly launched SMS Kaiserin Elisabeth – a battle cruiser of the Austro-Hungarian Navy – steamed into Sydney Harbour. It bore a most distinguished passenger, no less a personage than the 29-year-old heir presumptive to the dual crown of Austria–Hungary, the Archduke Franz Ferdinand. A 21-gun salute was fired, civic dignitaries went aboard to bow and scrape, and a larg

Linda Jaivin on Harbin, China

Holiday on Ice

By Linda Jaivin

“Five bus tickets, one turkey and one lamb, please.” My friend then turns to the rest of us: “Karmically speaking, we’re going to hell.” That may well be so. In the short run, we are cramming into a small armoured bus along with a crowd of palpably excited Chinese tourists. We are about to have a close encounter with the largest cats on Earth. And our contingent is providing the picnic.The Siberian Tiger Park, a 356-acre reser

Richard Dawkins' 'The Greatest Show on Earth'

Unbelievers

By Ian Lowe

You wouldn’t believe me if I claimed that almost half the people in a rich, modern country still thought the earth was flat, or that the Roman Empire never existed. It would be a ridiculous assertion. Yet almost half of all adults in the United States believe that human beings did not evolve from other species, but were created by a divine being less than

Open Market

By Cate Kennedy

Once Kevin Rudd's $10.4-billion bonus found its way into Australians' bank accounts, malls and mega-marts across the land were reportedly swamped with eager spenders in the days leading up to Christmas. Sure, we grasped the implications of the global economic

On Fragments and Dust

By Nicolas Rothwell

Thoughts of this kind would always come to me after I had driven the narrow, ill-maintained highway through the Syrian Desert, towards the Euphrates Valley, the Iraqi border and Anbar Province beyond: I used to break my journey round sunset, at Tadmor, beside

A Turkish Tale: Gallipoli and the Armenian Genocide

By Robert Manne

During the exact time Australian troops spent in hell on Gallipoli, another event of world-historical importance was taking place on contiguous ground: the Armenian Genocide. Some contemporary scholars think that during this catastrophe, one million people were murdered