KEBABBLE Food and puppets pull heart strings
By Fazile Zahir
FETHIYE, Turkey - Despite the gradual improvement in relations between Greece
and Turkey over the past decade, it seems that there is still much to squabble
about.
Both countries are laying claim to the origins of the shadow theater show known
as Karagoz (or in Greek Karagiozis) after the name of its main character.
Newspapers reported this week that the Turkish Ministry for Culture and Tourism
will be making a wholesale effort to repel Greek efforts to appropriate the
traditional Turkish drama which was popularized during the Ottoman period.
Their efforts will be part of their attempt to register Karagoz on the
planned 2009 United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization
(UNESCO) convention for the Safeguarding of Intangible Cultural Heritage. They
are planning a large range of actions including preparing a dossier of
historical research proving that Karagoz originated in Turkey, naming office
buildings, parks and public squares after him and encouraging TV producers to
make program about him and his sidekicks.
They will also be trying to revive the tradition of touring shadow theatre
companies performing across the nation by employing actors and training them in
the art of puppetry. A Karagoz Research Institute will be founded, a book of
Karagoz images published and his stories will be reprinted.
Karagoz - the puppet that everyone wants a piece of - has six or seven
centuries of history behind him; the Ottoman equivalent of Mr Punch (though
somewhat less violent) of the duo of England's Punch and Judy. The plays are
popularly thought to be based on the lives of two garrulous laborers - Karagoz
and Hacivat - whose comic chatter slowed down the work on a mosque construction
in Bursa, after their execution they became folk heroes.
Karagoz is the not-too-bright representative of the common man and Hacivat is a
low-ranking official of sorts. Generally, whatever scheme the two come up with
during the course of a play, Karagoz ends up ruining it through his buffoonery
and Hacivat ends up as a long suffering Oliver Hardy dealing with the
incompetent Stan Laurel.
The shows were incredibly popular in Turkey, but the advent of television has
almost wiped them out (except at cultural festivals). However the cinematic
release of the popular costume drama Who Killed Hacivat and Karagoz? in
2006 sparked a new interest in Turkey and across the sea in Greece.
Three months after the film came out, Turkish papers were reporting that
Karagiozi was playing to packed houses in Athens houses telling the story of
Greek suffering under the Ottomans. Turkish theater artist Emin Senyer said
that the Turkish governments unwillingness to invest in keeping traditions
alive was allowing the more active Greek government to present this particular
shadow puppet to the world as if it was their own.
In Greece, some are happy to accept that Karagiozis made his way to the county
via the Turks but there are also alternative theories that Greek merchants
brought shadow theatre from China or that a Greek created the folkloric art
during Ottoman rule to entertain the sultan. Despite these differences, experts
agree on two things, first, that in the 1880s the stories and adventures were
adapted for a newly independent Greek society by inventing numerous local
characters, and were mostly completed by 1910.
Karagiozis flourished from 1915 until 1950, a time of major tribulations for
the nation in the form of wars and social unrest. The puppet hero was a
continuous inspiration for the poor, an uncompromising protagonist who tried in
vain to change his fate and protest against social injustice. The character is
still regarded with great affection.
Of course these are not the only elements of culture that the two nations and
their peoples joust over. The comments under the recent news story make that
very clear: Enis Ilhan Icten (Let's not wake up to the danger too late,
we need to be ever vigilant) ... they've taken yoghurt, taken feta and baklava,
we lost doner and helva too, none of these are known as ours
anymore."
Should UNESCO choose to get involved in the intangible area of cuisine they may
never extricate themselves from the arguments. Several dishes are fiercely
contested:
Dolma/sarma - the Turkish word dolma means stuffed and can be
used to describe any vegetable with a mince and rice filling, whereas sarma
is used for vine leaf or cabbage leaf version (sarma means wrapped).
Called dolmades by the Greeks it's probably OK to infer that if the word
actually means something in Turkish the dish originated here. There are
variations of dolma throughout the Middle East and Eastern Europe.
Baklava - the Lebanese, Armenians and Greeks all claim they invented
this sweet sticky pastry and they probably derived the early variants. But the
form we know today, with its syrupy nutty filling, was devised in the kitchens
of the Ottoman court and the word means "diamond shaped" in Turkish.
On May 16, 2006, Turkish baklava producers held a demonstration and
press conference in Istanbul supported by the state minister for finance and
European Union chief negotiator, Ali Babacan. They were protesting Greek
Cypriot claims that baklava was their national creation. Their placards
read "Baklava is Turkish, we will not allow the Greek Cypriots to feed
it to the world."
Feta - the Greeks won this battle, not just over Turkey but against the
whole of the EU. Under a European Court of Justice ruling feta, like
Champagne and Parma ham is protected. As of 2007, producers of this crumbly
white cheese who do not actually make it in Greece cannot call it feta or
even feta-style cheese. Turks call their version of this beyaz peynir
- white cheese.
According to cookery expert and chef Hulya Erdal, "Feta cheese can only
be the creation of Greece and any other cheese that remotely resembles this
delightful fare is really only an imitation and cannot be called anything other
than white cheese."
Yoghurt - also known worldwide as Greek yoghurt - was probably a spontaneous
appearance caused by wild bacteria in animals' skin bags used for carrying
milk. There are records of 11th century consumption by nomadic Turks in the
Diwan Lughat al-Turk.
The Greeks call it yiaourti. The name may be derived from the Turkish yogurmak
which means "to knead", but the etymological link is tenuous. Hulya Erdal has
her own view, "If you know anything about food then you'll know that yoghurt
was without a doubt invented, cooked up, made, produced, however you want to
call it, from Turkey. Forget what anyone else tells you, it's an original
Turkish food product and always will be. Of course, that's not to say that
'Greek-style yoghurt' or 'French-style yoghurt' isn't original but notice the
clever use of words, let's make sure that we all understand, it's just a
variation on an old tried and tested Turkish recipe."
Doner - Outside of Turkey and Greece this roasted spitted meat dish
seems to be equally well known as a Turkish and Greek dish. In Britain and
Ireland it is predominantly recognized as Turkish; in Sydney, Australia, they
are Turkish doner but 800 kilometers away in Melbourne they are Greek souvlaki
and in Adelaide they are gyros (this means "rotating" as does the word doner).
In America they are mainly called gyros but in Canada doner. In
the Netherlands they call the Greek dish gyros ( pronounced geeros with
a Dutch, throat-searing "g") and the Turkish dish doner. In Moscow, it's
a sheverma.
Whomever first made the food - or created the puppet - seems by and large
irrelevant provided we can all enjoy them. It's not like putting meat (or a
puppet figure) on a stick ranks up there with the discovery of the Theory of
Relativity.
Still, the debate rages on. Take, for example, the cuisine of Cyprus: despite
the two ethnic groups here having had a long history in close proximity to each
other's kitchens each side still tries to distinguish one food or another as
their own.
According to chef Hulay Erdal, it's more complicated than that. "There are some
food items that sit on a fence, cross a very fine line and can cause nations to
come to blows over their ownership," Hulay Erdal said. "Cyprus, an island with
a troubled history and full of fascinating stories, has a culinary culture not
unlike a vast fruit bowl. It is extremely colorful and tasty, with recipes
originating from far and wide. The food derives from a blend of the Middle
East, Greece, Turkey, Italy and Africa."
The chef mentioned recipes such as molohiya, a green leafy herb, long
known to only grow in Cyprus and on the banks of the River Nile in Egypt. Or
the dish kolokas, a stew of a large brown-skinned yam that probably
started out in Sudan or thereabouts.
"The food of Cyprus cannot be laid bare for one nation or another to lay a
claim on. In fact, this is a cuisine that mixes old and new, and what makes it
truly unique is the fact that the recipes are available in both Greek, Turkish
and English," Hulay Erdal said.
Perhaps the best solution to some of these culinary quandaries is how the
European Union plans to handle the long-running Cypriot cheese debate. Last
year Nuno Miguel Vicente, in charge of Cyprus at the EU Directorate General of
Agriculture, made a statement declaring the best-case scenario for everyone
would be the bilingual registry as both hellim and halloumi.
Fazile Zahir is of Turkish descent, born and brought up in London. She
moved to live in Turkey in 2005 and has been writing full time since then.
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