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  • AFP / Aris Messinis
  • AFP / Handout
  • AFP / Bulent Kilic
  • AFP / Karen Minasyan
  • AFP / Alexander Nemenov

Nagorno-Karabakh: two wars at once

Saturday 14 November 2020

When they left, they took with them all the usual kit for reporting on a conflict: bulletproof vests, helmets, satellite phones and first-aid supplies. But, as the AFP journalists dispatched to Nagorno-Karabakh discovered, covering a war in the time of coronavirus brings a whole new dimension to staying safe.

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AFP / Bulent Kilic

Who would have thought

Thursday 11 April 2019

"Who would have thought it would end like this, I wondered as I looked at the hundreds of captured suspected jihadist fighters sitting in rows in the desert," writes Bulent Kilic, a photographer who has covered nearly all of the eight-year Syrian conflict.

"Eight years ago, it all started as just protests against Syria’s regime. No-one was even speaking about jihadists back then…"

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  • AFP / Bulent Kilic
  • AFP / Bulent Kilic
  • AFP / Bulent Kilic

Something is changing

Thursday 8 September 2016

"In the five years that I’ve spent covering the Syrian war, this was the first time that I have seen substantial crowds of refugees returning to Syria," writes Istanbul-based photographer Bulent Kilic.

"I’ve shot thousands of people escaping into Turkey from war-torn Syria, be it through holes cut in barbed wire or by waiting patiently for the border gates to open.  And over the past five years you’ve had trickles returning here and there. But never in such numbers."

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  • AFP / Bulent Kilic
  • AFP / Yasin Akgul
  • AFP / Aris Messinis
  • AFP / Aris Messinis
  • AFP / Aris Messinis

Nothing will be as before

Wednesday 20 July 2016

AFP Istanbul-based photographers Bulent Kilic and Ozan Kose are both fearful for their country’s future following the failed attempted coup. On Friday evening, they were both shooting separate commemorative events for the Nice attacks, not imagining that within an hour they would be covering the first bloody military coup attempt in their country in more than 30 years.

Both had close calls during the long night they spent on the streets of Istanbul, capturing the unfolding drama — Bulent got set upon by an angry mob while Ozan found himself in the crossfire between soldiers and police. And both agree that Turkey will be forever changed by the night. “Nothing will be as before.”

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AFP / Bulent Kilic

Losing their minds

Monday 18 April 2016

Idomeni, Greece, April 18, 2016 -- The striking thing about these refugees, the ones stuck for months on the Greece-Macedonia border, is that you can actually feel them slowly losing their minds.

I’ve covered this refugee crisis for years and in all sorts of places -- the refugees fleeing the war inside Syria, getting out of the war zone through barbed wire at the Turkish border, reaching European shores after dangerous journeys at sea on the Greek island of Lesbos. And now here in the Greek village of Indomeni, near the border with Macedonia.

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