Inthenews
Catching up with Nil Köksal of the CBC’s ‘World Report’
Istanbul in particular is intoxicating and sometimes infuriating. But it always calls me back.
NIL KÖKSAL
World report. Both those words carry a weight, but together they portend even more heft — one that Nil Köksal brings as host of the flagship CBC radio news show with that name. The proprietor of that rather placid voice often conveying not very tranquil headlines, she begins her mornings by giving a million-plus listeners the 10-minute dose of news they need. Seven shows, actually, as it moves through time zones across Canada.
“Our first edition is at 5 a.m. eastern, the final edition is at 11 a.m. eastern,” she says. “Think of how intimate it is to be in people’s homes just as they’re waking up. These people care so much about every second of sound, every word. To say they are passionate would be an understatement. I love them for it.”
Her bedtime is usually 8 p.m., with her first alarm set for 2:45 a.m., because she likes to ease into the morning, catch up on news broken overnight, put on some makeup (“yes, even for radio”) and get dressed. “I feel more awake and prepared for the day when I have my look together,” she says. After she gets to the studio, it’s off to process the stories left by the assignment producer, and an hour and a half to mix other content from scratch. In between, she records interviews with correspondents in Washington, London and elsewhere, and pops into different regional shows, including Toronto’s “Metro Morning.”
Spanning the globe
With most news having been consumed by the pandemic, I ask her which international stories she wished got more attention. “Haiti — the assassination of President Jovenel Moïse,” she says, “but also the circumstances leading up to it. We had some very powerful coverage the day that story broke, but I would have loved to dig even deeper ... I also want to cover international stories that are not about catastrophes and conflict.”
Her favourite assignment of the last year? “Co-hosting our live radio special of Mary Simon’s installation as Governor General,” she says. “A very powerful morning.”
She has vivid memories of her stint as a foreign correspondent, just a few years ago, when she returned to her native Turkey. “Istanbul in particular is intoxicating and sometimes infuriating,” she says. “But it always calls me back.” Working there was rewarding but difficult, she admits. Being fluent in the language helped, but she was hobbled by the fact “that there is increasingly a mistrust and fear of speaking to the media. Journalism and media have been degraded so much there that unbiased journalism is almost impossible to find from most domestic outlets.”
Reporting from other places in the region — Cyprus, Syria, Tunisia — are experiences she relishes. Another highlight? Doing one story from inside the Hagia Sophia, the one-time seat of Constantinople. Though she’s visited several times, she admits, “your jaw does really drop every single time. It is a breathtaking space.”
Turkish delights
Tulips are actually Turkish, right? “Let’s not start an international incident, Shinan!” she says.
After telling me they’re her favourite, she goes on to give a botany lesson. “Tulips have been traced back to Central Asia. They were first cultivated in Persia and were an integral part of the Ottoman Empire in Turkey,” she says. “Tulips were everywhere: in gardens, on tiles and ceramics. It was in Sultan Ahmed III’s reign in the 1700s that the Tulip Period took hold. But the Sultan’s obsession — and a series of political crises — would be his downfall.” Tulips were eventually banished, and, she says, “the hundreds of varieties cultivated during the Ottoman Empire are now extinct.”
Meanwhile, Europe became mesmerized. A Flemish diplomat took some bulbs there in the mid-1700s, and “the mania took hold in Holland,” Köksal says. The bulbs triggered a financial bubble, as history shows, as well as an association that still lingers between tulips and the Netherlands.
Something Köksal is never not craving is Turkish food, and she thinks we in the GTA are lucky to have so many great Turkish grocery stores and restaurants. She’s mastered a few dishes herself, such as Hünkâr Begendi: “cubed lamb on a bed of smoky, puréed eggplant. A showstopper.
“I have incredible chefs in my family,” she continues, “my aunts, my grandmothers, my mother. Mainly Turkish, with threads of Albanian and Syrian. The thing is, they rarely wrote recipes down.” In other words, a little bit of this, a little bit of that.
On the books
I ask about her most memorable recent reads. She rolls off a bunch of titles: Kiley Reid’s “Such a Fun Age” and Thomas King’s “Indians on Vacation,” among them adding, “I don’t usually gravitate toward biographies, but after we lost our mom in 2019, I picked up, randomly, Trevor Noah’s “Born a Crime,” Andrea Martin’s “Lady Parts” and Michelle Obama’s “Becoming.” Very different books, but they all really helped me get through that summer. And the days since.”