Alkan Boudewijn de Beaumont Chaglar (born August 5, 1981 in
London
London is the Capital city, capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of both England and the United Kingdom, with a population of in . London metropolitan area, Its wider metropolitan area is the largest in Wester ...
) is a
Canadian
Canadians () are people identified with the country of Canada. This connection may be residential, legal, historical or cultural. For most Canadians, many (or all) of these connections exist and are collectively the source of their being ''C ...
and
British
British may refer to:
Peoples, culture, and language
* British people, nationals or natives of the United Kingdom, British Overseas Territories and Crown Dependencies.
* British national identity, the characteristics of British people and culture ...
journalist
A journalist is a person who gathers information in the form of text, audio or pictures, processes it into a newsworthy form and disseminates it to the public. This is called journalism.
Roles
Journalists can work in broadcast, print, advertis ...
. He used to be
editor
Editing is the process of selecting and preparing written, visual, audible, or cinematic material used by a person or an entity to convey a message or information. The editing process can involve correction, condensation, organization, a ...
and
columnist
A columnist is a person who writes for publication in a series, creating an article that usually offers commentary and opinions. Column (periodical), Columns appear in newspapers, magazines and other publications, including blogs. They take the ...
for the
Turkish Cypriot
Turkish Cypriots or Cypriot Turks ( or ; ) are so called ethnic Turks originating from Cyprus. Turkish Cypriots are mainly Sunni Muslims. Following the Ottoman conquest of the island in 1571, about 30,000 Turkish settlers were given land onc ...
weekly bilingual (English-Turkish) newspaper ''Toplum Postası''. He is currently Editor-in-Chief of the UK-based ''The Cypriot Chronicle'' and a member of the L'Association des journalistes indépendants du Québec. He currently lives in
Montreal, Quebec
Montreal is the List of towns in Quebec, largest city in the Provinces and territories of Canada, province of Quebec, the List of the largest municipalities in Canada by population, second-largest in Canada, and the List of North American cit ...
,
Canada
Canada is a country in North America. Its Provinces and territories of Canada, ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, making it the world's List of coun ...
.
In his weekly column Cultural Encounters 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, Chaglar expressed an interest in the phenomena of Crypto-Christians and the issue of conversion to Islam in Cyprus. On May 5, 2006 in ''Toplum Postasi'' Chaglar 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".
Alkan also writes about political events in Cyprus and Turkey. His articles have been published from time to time in the ''Daily Turkish News'' and the ''Cyprus Mail''. Often controversial, his most recent article in ''The Cyprus Mail'' is "Why Turkish Cypriots should not celebrate 1974" and "Why Cyprus cannot exclude its Turkish settlers".
But his interests also extend to the Antipodes. Chaglar wrote extensively about the threat of destruction of the New Guinean
rainforest
Rainforests are forests characterized by a closed and continuous tree Canopy (biology), canopy, moisture-dependent vegetation, the presence of epiphytes and lianas and the absence of wildfire. Rainforests can be generally classified as tropi ...
, and the tribes and rare species that they provide habitation for. In his article "Terra Incognita" published on May 25, 2006, Chaglar drew attention to the deforestation of the New Guinean
rainforest
Rainforests are forests characterized by a closed and continuous tree Canopy (biology), canopy, moisture-dependent vegetation, the presence of epiphytes and lianas and the absence of wildfire. Rainforests can be generally classified as tropi ...
together with the recent discoveries of
birds of paradise
The birds-of-paradise are members of the family Paradisaeidae of the order Passeriformes. The majority of species are found in eastern Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, and eastern Australia. The family has 45 species in 17 genera. The members of this ...
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
Logging is the process of cutting, processing, and moving trees to a location for transport. It may include skidder, skidding, on-site processing, and loading of trees or trunk (botany), logs onto logging truck, trucks