Alkan Çağlar

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Alkan Chaglar (born August 5, 1981 in London) is a Turkish Cypriot journalist and columnist for the weekly bilingual (English-Turkish) newspaper Toplum Postası. Educated at Leicester, Liège, and the School of Oriental and African Studies, with a background in languages and political science, Alkan is currently researching a PhD on the phenomena of Crypto-Christians in the Ottoman Empire.

In his weekly column Cultural Encounters Alkan Chaglar writes with a passion for cross-cultural influences and diversity in multi-ethnic countries and the state of minority languages in the World. Coming from a Turkish-Cypriot background, Alkan expressed an interest in the phenomena of Crypto-Christians and the issue of conversion to Islam in Cyprus. On the 5th of May 2006 in Toplum Postasi Alkan wrote about the Latins and Maronites in Cyprus who proselytised to Islam during Ottoman rule. He argued that "The fact is a substantial number of today’s Muslim Turkish Cypriots have a Christian past, and are partly descended from those Venetian, Genovese and French families that had estates on the island who proselytised to Sunni Islam. "Cypriot historians from both sides of the divide tend to focus too much on our Greco-Turkish heritage, at the expense of objectivity, but Cyprus has and always will be a convergence of cultures".

But his interests also extend to the Antipodes. Alkan wrote extensively about the threat of destruction of the New Guinean rainforest, and the tribes and rare species that they provide habitation for. In his article Terra Incognita published on the 25th of May 2006, Alkan drew attention to the deforestation of the New Guinean rainforest together with the recent discoveries of birds of paradise in the North Western mountain region. He called for greater responsibility on the part of the Indonesian and Papua New Guinean governments and for a switch over to eco-tourism to replace the revenue derived from logging.

Alkan also wrote extensively about Inter-faith Alliances in the Moluccas or Spice Islands, the plight of the banishment of the Acadians and the formation of the Cajuns. Among his more recent articles are Marooned on Tristan, Chastity and Austere living and Ferocious Waterfalls and Guanos.