Culture

Deq: A Mesopotamian Tattoo Tradition Revived in Istanbul

On an ordinary street in Istanbul, inside a studio quite unlike the city’s flashy tattoo studios,  a young woman artistically places careful dots with a needle; dots that symbolize a tradition that has resisted migration, war, and erasure for thousands of years: deq. In the dissonant emptiness they felt within the chaotic modernity of Istanbul, […]