My father, an Anatolian village boy, came to Istanbul at the age of thirteen. My mother, from another Anatolian village, also came to Istanbul as a very small child. They had to make this long journey, meet in Istanbul and get married so that I could come into the world. The choice was not left […]
If Nasreddin Hodja was a real person, he lived in 13th century Turkey in and around Aksehir in the Konya area. In his time he was an imam (a religious leader), a judge and a professor in a medrese (Islamic college). But whether he was real or not Nasreddin Hodja embodied the folk wisdom of […]
When the Turkish people poured westwards from their Central Asian homelands in the 11th century, they came on horseback into Anatolia, the land which the poet Nazim Hikmet described as stretching like a mare’s head into the Mediterranean. The horse, which played a central role in Turkish life in the Central Asian steppes, was probably […]
Dating from 1718 to 1730, the Tulip Era of the Ottoman Empire was a momentary period that the Sultan and the public celebrated with music, festivals, ceremonies, and dances. Numerous tulips embellished the capital that most of them were poetically named such as Blue Pearl, Light of Dawn, The Divine Throne and Ruby Drop and […]
Until the mid-19th century, the angora goat was to be found only in Central Anatolia, particularly the province of Ankara, transcribed by Europeans from the earlier Turkish form Enguru. The export of these valuable animals having been strictly forbidden for many centuries, Sultan Abdulmecit made a gift of 22 goats to Queen Victoria in the […]
Today the Yoruk nomads are confined mainly to the Taurus Mountains, with their mist-shrouded peaks and vast high pastures. A people passionately devoted to their freedom, the Yoruk are like birds of passage. Until the early 19th century thousands of Yoruk nomads lived in the Ottoman territories of the Balkans and throughout western, southern and […]
“A camel driver an ass string of eight or nine camels! The monotonous tinkling of the bells bung around the camels’ necks heralds the caravan’s arrival… For years, this sound rang through the streets of Ayvalik during November, December and January, the months when the black juice produced waste during the oil extraction process flowed […]
Alcohol has been drunk in Turkey for thousands of years, which perhaps explains why the Turks have a more relaxed attitude to its consumption than people in some other Moslem countries. By the 17th century, there were 100 distilleries in Istanbul alone. Raki is the national drink of Turkey -where today more than 61 million […]
The road leading east from Tokat towards Almus runs through the valley of the Yesilirmak River, and at a small crossroads, 13 km from the city takes a turnoff into the mountains. Winding through deep valleys, over dry river beds and up steep slopes, it takes you to a medium-sized village set on a bare […]
When I walked into Hadji Bekir’s shop on Hamidiye Street near Istanbul’s Golden Horn, it was like entering a child’s dream. Wherever I looked, there were containers brimming with enticing confectionery… a dozen jars with polished brass lids stood on only counter packed with a kaleidoscope of bonbon, red, yellow, cinnamon and stripy ones. Nowhere […]
