Tag: MERG

By Yousef Abdo

Tea and Coffee: The Soul of Turkish Hospitality

During my recent visit to Turkey, I delved into the captivating world of Turkish tea and coffee, guided by insightful interviews with Professor Alexis Wick and Anna Beylunioğlu from Koç University. Their expertise illuminated the deep cultural roots and modern expressions of these beloved beverages, enriching my journey through tea shops, bustling bazaars, and everyday Turkish life.

Turkey’s tea and coffee culture is a testament to the nation’s rich history and vibrant social fabric. Tea, despite its relatively late introduction in the 1920s, has become an indispensable part of daily life, especially in the Black Sea region where plantations flourish. It’s fascinating how tea has woven itself into the very essence of Turkish hospitality, present at every occasion, from casual meetups to professional gatherings.

Professor Wick’s reference to the Pera Museum’s exhibitions, including “The Red Sea in Search of a Lost Space” and the narrative of coffee as the “Ottoman drug,” traced coffee’s journey from the Mamluks’ era through its colonial expansion to Java. This historical backdrop highlights how coffee, once a symbol of Ottoman sophistication, continues to be a cherished tradition.

The Rituals and Traditions

Professor Anna Beylunioğlu’s insights offered a more intimate look at how these beverages are integrated into Turkish households. The tradition of serving coffee with salt to the groom by the bride or without sugar at funerals showcases the nuanced role coffee plays in marking life’s milestones. Meanwhile, tea is the cornerstone of the Turkish breakfast and a constant companion through the day, embodying warmth and community.

What struck me was the mention of specific practices, like drinking coffee from tea glasses in certain regions and the unique terminology for coffee in different cities. This diversity within the culture speaks to the local adaptations and personal preferences that enrich the overall tapestry of Turkish tea and coffee traditions.

Beylunioğlu’s candid admission of being a coffee drinker, despite the pervasive tea culture, and her exploration of international teas, reflects the personal journeys within this collective culture.

Both interviews touched on the contemporary scene, noting a resurgence in specialty coffee shops like Velvet Coffee and a growing interest in herbal teas. Yet, there remains a strong allegiance to traditional flavors and methods, with a universal preference for black tea in households and a noted divide between tea and coffee drinkers.

By Leo Deener

Kurdish people have lived in what they call “Kurdistan” for thousands of years. Due to colonial divisions of the map, the Kurdish homeland now falls in the borderlands between Turkey, Syria, Iraq, and Iran. There are millions of Kurds within Turkey, and they make up 20% of the total population of the country, yet they have been oppressed since the formation of the republic immediately after World War I. The Turkish Republic is an example of a state created as a result of post-war nationalist liberation, where a group is liberated in the form of creating its own nation-state. In Turkey’s case, this is the ethnically Turk, Turkish speaking, Muslim people of Anatolia. Despite being Muslim, Kurds are ethnically “other,” and have been seen as a threat to the unity of the “nation-state” from the beginning. Often referred to as Mountain Turks by the government, they have faced efforts at ethnic cleansing, population transfer, and general second-class citizenship.

On our trip to Istanbul, I explored the Kurdish status in Turkey from a sociolinguistic standpoint. Kurds have their own language that has no official status within Turkey and has endured varying states of legality depending on the political moment.

The main bastion for Kurdish culture, history, and language in Istanbul is the Kurdish Research Association. I had the incredible opportunity to interview some associates from this organization who detailed their work and the pushback they face at times.

My conversation was with the co-chair of the association who is a Kurdish woman from the Kurdistan region of Turkey who, like many Kurds, learned her language orally from her parents but did not learn how to read and write in the language until she came to the association as an adult. She spent years formally mastering the language before it was shut down by the government following the attempted coup of Erdogan’s regime in 2016.

She explained that the Association reopened a few years later, and she came back to work there and eventually became co-chair. We discussed the associations’ work publishing material in Kurdish, teaching beginner and upper-level courses in Kurdish, and generally being a safe center for Kurdish life in Istanbul – a city that a Turkish Professor described to me in a different interview as “the biggest Kurdish city in the world.”

She is proud of the work but knows the association could be shut down at any moment if the political situation shifts. I got a sense of this socio-political pushback form a different conversation I had with an ultra-right wing Turkish nationalist who is in the fringe “Victory” Party.

But the co-chair of the association feels she has no choice but to continue her work in the name of her people, history, and culture, by means of her language. Sitting in her office filled with Kurdish literature in a small slightly dilapidated building on the European side of Istanbul, I could feel the unrelenting passion she had for her people and the work she’s doing. It was inspiring to see the Kurdish people fight state erasure by means of linguistic persistence and resilience. I could not have gained this first-hand sense of the Kurdish movement without being in Turkey and visiting the Kurdish Association there, and for that, I am grateful.

By Dani Steinberg

On one of the first days I was in Istanbul, I was exploring the neighborhood around our accommodations and I happened to pass a really neat book store. There were two small tables on the outside of the bookstore and when I peered through the windows, I saw the shelves were lined with feminist novels and art books in many different of languages. Since my project centers around art books and literature in Istanbul, I became very intrigued.  

After this first encounter, I knew I would have to come back to learn more about this interesting institution. This bookstore, Frankestayn Kitabevi, as I would later learn, was opened by Asye Tumerkan in 2022 when she realized there was no place in Istanbul that carried novels centered around feminism and queerness. As one of the only bookstores in Turkey, and definitely Istanbul, that centers around selling books related to feminist and queer literature, Frankestayn connects writers and readers with books they might not have otherwise encountered. Asye told me during our interview that one of the most important parts of opening this bookstore was that it was a place not only for people to be exposed to new and radical forms of literature, but that the bookstore could host events by and for the queer community of Istanbul. 

In comparison to the rest of Turkey, Istanbul is a relatively safe place to be queer and feminist, however, there exist very few places that allow for queerness and community to be built around literature in such a public and open way. Through poetry readings, open mic nights, book clubs, and other events, Frankestayn Kitabevi helps the queer community of Istanbul have a place they can meet gather and learn together. It is also one of the only places in Istanbul where one can buy small-print run artist books by various local independent publishers and artists.  

Being able to interview Asye and learn more about her experiences and life within the publishing realm helped me learn more about art, literature, publishing, and community in Istanbul in a way that was very nuanced. 

By Yara Hamdan

We began our day at Sultanahmet with a classic Turkish breakfast, savoring the flavors of simit, kaymak, and olives among the area’s historic beauty. We continued our adventure in Karaköy with a meze feast, where I had the opportunity to get to know my other Tufts colleagues better. We traveled to Kadıköy by ferry over the Bosphorus, where we enjoyed delicious street cuisine and sweet pastries while taking in the lively environment. The day ended with a stunning view from Terasse Nuit, with the city’s lights glimmering below, perfectly capturing the essence of friendship, food discovery, and Istanbul’s ageless charm.

It was helpful to meet the vice president of the DiSK labor union in Istanbul, as it highlighted the important role that women play in Turkey’s workforce. I learned more about the difficulties and advancements in the cause of women’s rights and equality in the workplace from our conversation. It was interesting to learn about the programmes run by DiSK to support women’s involvement in a variety of industries and to empower them; these efforts underscore the continuous efforts to make Turkey’s workplaces equitable and inclusive. He also gave me internal reports made for women’s day this year with helpful information for my research project.

Through interviewing a female American sociology professor at Özyeğin University, I learned important information about women’s roles and obstacles in the Turkish workforce. She shed light on the complex issues surrounding gender equality, discrimination, and opportunities for women in a variety of areas through her knowledge and experiences. My understanding of the systemic obstacles and struggles many women face, despite advancements in some areas, has increased as a result of learning about the socioeconomic and cultural influences on women’s participation in the labor. Her viewpoint emphasized the continued significance of advocacy, education, and policy reforms to establish more equal and encouraging work settings for women in Turkey.

By: Martynas Ramanauskas

After landing in Istanbul, we found ourselves in the middle of Galata – a lively, central neighborhood of this massive city. Having had enough time to explore and get a feel for Europe’s largest city, I started researching Turkey’s policies towards the Russian invasion of Ukraine and how this compares to the locals’ attitudes, and how the war as a whole has affected Turkey.  

Residing in one of Istanbul’s more international neighborhoods, I couldn’t help but notice the plethora of languages being spoken by passers-by in the streets – the most common of which is Russian. Due to travel restrictions imposed by the EU, more Russian tourists than ever before have set their sights on Turkey, resulting in a huge surge of visitors. But not all of the Russian speakers I’ve overheard are here temporarily. There were tens of thousands who voted in the Russian presidential election at the Russian embassy.   

Anecdotally, speaking to a Russian expat working in a restaurant I visited, I learned that, to the best of her knowledge, most of the Russians in Turkey are representatives of the numerous ethnic minorities within the world’s largest country. These people, while Russian citizens, predominantly live outside of the largest cities of Moscow and St. Petersburg, and are said to be receiving draft orders at a much higher rate than the inhabitants of Russia’s richest metropolises. They have to move to Turkey with their families to avoid being sent to the front lines. Because the Russians who have moved to Turkey come from extremely diverse backgrounds – their unifying quality is their citizenship, which they embrace while living abroad to find community, even though it differentiates them in their homeland.