A Turkish friend recently invited me to attend a mevlit, one of the important Turkish death rituals, to be held for her mother. Her mum had been failing for months, going from being a chirpy chatty woman to a small silent figure swaddled in a now too large bed, who no longer spoke but always…
One the quirky features I love about Istanbul are tombs dedicated to dede or senior dervishes that turn up in the most unusual places. A dervish is a member of a Muslim religious order who has taken vows of poverty and austerity. Most often associated with the Sufi religious order, there are various orders of…
This pocket size guide to the essential customs and culture of Turkey is a must read whether you’re coming to Turkey for the first time or plan to live here for a while. Unlike the usual guide book or personal travel narrative, Culture Smart Turkey contains a carefully thought out wealth of information about the…
Extract about Ramadan in Kayseri “… I was living in Kayseri in central Turkey for my next Turkish Ramadan. It was 2002, and winter once again. The cold made me permanently hungry so food was of paramount importance. Knowing most of my colleagues and students would fast, I took a sandwich with me to work…
My family wasn’t religious, so when I was a little girl in primary school I was always slightly jealous of the other children at Easter. I’d see them emerge from scripture classes clutching Easter bonnets festooned with strips of paper, straw baskets filled with fluffy yellow cotton wool chickens and colourful pictures of the saints….
The Muslim religious obligation to fast for a month, known as Ramazan in Turkish, is held at a different time each year. The start is determined by the lunar calendar, and the first fasting day is around eleven days earlier each year. Muslims fast to show solidarity with those who rarely have enough food to…
I can vividly remember the first time I came face to face with the results of the feast known in Turkey as Kurban Bayram. It’s the traditional religious holiday when all Muslim are expected to commemorate the strength of Ibrahim’s faith by sacrificing a cow, sheep or goat (read more about the meaning of Kurban…
Living in Turkey for many years I’ve learned about a lot of different Turkish wedding traditions. Here are just a few. “Some years ago I lived in central Turkey. It was at the beginning of the 21st century and Kayseri, the regional capital of Cappadocia, was equipped with all the modern conveniences you would expect…
Written in memory of my father, born 14th of February 1930. He set off on his last trip on the 14th of December 2013 and lives on in my heart. As I sit by my father’s bedside in Australia, holding his hand and watching him lose his fight with cancer, I’m reminded of the way…
For my first Turkish Ramazan I was living in Istanbul. It was November 2000 and I was living in Erenköy, a leafy suburb on the Asian side of the city. At that time there were no natural gas connections so the air was thick with coal smoke from apartment heating systems, darkness fell around 5pm…