Everything about Culture Of Turkey totally explained
The
culture of Turkey is diverse, combining elements derived from
Ottoman,
European, and
Islamic traditions.
The nation was
modernized primarily by
Mustafa Kemal Atatürk. As he transformed a
religion-driven former Ottoman Empire into a modern
nation-state with strong
separation of state and religion, a corresponding increase in the methods of artistic expression arose. During the first years of the republic, the government invested a large amount of resources into fine arts such as paintings, sculpture and architecture. This was done as both a process of modernisation and of creating a cultural identity.
Because of the different historical factors defining a Turkish identity, the culture of Turkey combines clear efforts to be "modern" and
Western, with a desire to maintain traditional religious and historical values.
People
The question "Who are the Turks?" doesn't have an easy answer. At the turn of the 20th century the Ottoman Empire was a multinational state extending over three continents. This page limits its discussion to the borders of the Republic of Turkey (founded in 1923). The location of the pictures are given with the name of the city or as a region, in case the source doesn't mention it.
Turkish culture has undergone profound changes over the last century. Today, Turkey may be the only country that contains every extreme of Eastern and Western culture (along with many compromises and fusions between the two). The Ottoman system was a multi-ethnic state that enabled people within it not to mix with each other and thereby retain separate ethnic and religious identities within the empire (albeit with a dominant Turkish and Southern European ruling class). Upon the fall of the empire after
World War I the Turkish Republic adapted a unitary approach, which forced all the different cultures within its borders to mix with each other with the aim of producing "Turkish" national and cultural identity. This mixing, instead of producing cultural homogenization, instead resulted in many shades of grey as the traditional Muslim cultures of Anatolia collided with (or had imposed upon them) the cosmopolitan modernity of Istanbul and the wider West. Thus, Turkish culture in many ways represents a continuum that bridges past and present, East and West.
Music
Turkey is a
Eurasian country on the eastern shore of the
Mediterranean, and is a crossroads of cultures from across
Europe,
North Africa, the
Caucasus and South and Central
Asia. The music of Turkey includes elements of
Central Asian folk music,
Arabic,
Persian classical music, ancient
Greco-Roman music and modern
European and
American popular music. Turkey, rich in musical heritage, has developed this art in two areas, Turkish classical music (similar to Greco- Roman) and Turkish folk music (Similar to Central Asian). The biggest Turkish pop star of the 20th century was probably
Sezen Aksu, known for overseeing the Turkish contribution to the
Eurovision Song Contest and was known for her light pop music.
European
classical composers in the
18th century were fascinated by Turkish music, particularly the strong role given to the
brass and
percussion instruments in Ottoman
Janissary bands called
Mehter who were the first marching military band in History.
Joseph Haydn wrote his
Military Symphony to include Turkish instruments, as well as some of his operas. Turkish instruments were also included in
Ludwig van Beethoven's
Symphony Number 9.
Mozart wrote the "Ronda alla turca" in his
Sonata in A major and also used Turkish themes in his operas. Although this Turkish influence was a fad, it introduced the
cymbals,
bass drum, and
bells into the symphony orchestra, where they remain.
Jazz musician
Dave Brubeck wrote his "Blue Rondo á la Turk" as a tribute to Mozart and Turkish music.
Turkish
pop music boasts numerous mainstream artists with wide followance since the
1960s like
Ajda Pekkan and
Sezen Aksu, and younger pop stars like
Sertab Erener,
Tarkan and
Mustafa Sandal.
Underground music and the genres of
electronica,
hip-hop,
rap and
dance music saw an increased demand and activity following the
1990s.
Turkish rock music, sometimes referred to as
Anatolian rock, initiated during the
1960s by individuals like
Cem Karaca,
Barış Manço, and
Erkin Koray, has seen wide-range success and has grown a considerable fan base. A few of the more mainstream Turkish
rock bands include
Mor ve Ötesi,
Duman, and
maNga. Individual rock performers like
Şebnem Ferah,
Özlem Tekin, and
Teoman have substantial fan-bases. Turkey also boasts numerous large-scale rock festivals and events. Annually held rock festivals include
Barışarock,
H2000 Music Festival,
Rock'n Coke, and
RockIstanbul, during many of which internationally renowned bands / artists frequently take the stage together with Turkish artists.
In
2003, a Turkish singer
Sertab Erener won the
Eurovision Song Contest with her song
Everyway That I Can.
Literature
tanzimat period, artists began to use western structures. The republican period is dominated with western forms of literature.
Turkey's first
Nobel Prize winner,
Orhan Pamuk, is a leading Turkish
novelist of
post-modern literature. He is hugely popular in his homeland, but also with a growing readership around the globe. As one of Europe's most prominent novelists, his works have been translated into more than twenty languages. He is the recipient of major Turkish and international literary awards. The most recent of his novels is "Snow." Pamuk won the
Nobel Prize for Literature in 2006, with his melancholic point of view to various cultures in
Istanbul.
Poetry
Poetry is the most dominant form of literature in modern Turkey.
The
folk poetry tradition in Turkish literature, as indicated above, was strongly influenced by the Islamic Sufi and Shi'a traditions. Furthermore, as partly evidenced by the prevalence of the still existent aşık/ozan tradition, the dominant element in Turkish folk poetry has always been song. The development of folk poetry in Turkish—which began to emerge in the 13th century with such important writers as Yunus Emre, Sultan Veled, and Şeyyâd Hamza—was given a great boost when, on 13 May 1277, Karamanoğlu Mehmet Bey declared Turkish the official state language of Anatolia's powerful Karamanid state;[4] subsequently, many of the tradition's greatest poets would continue to emerge from this region.
There are, broadly speaking, two traditions of Turkish folk poetry:
the aşık/ozan tradition, which—although much influenced by religion, as mentioned above—was for the most part a secular tradition;
the explicitly religious tradition, which emerged from the gathering places (tekkes) of the Sufi religious orders and Shi'a groups.
Much of the poetry and song of the aşık/ozan tradition, being almost exclusively oral until the 19th century, remains anonymous. There are, however, a few well-known aşıks from before that time whose names have survived together with their works: the aforementioned Köroğlu (16th century); Karacaoğlan (1606?–1689?), who may be the best-known of the pre-19th century aşıks; Dadaloğlu (1785?–1868?), who was one of the last of the great aşıks before the tradition began to dwindle somewhat in the late 19th century; and several others. The aşıks were essentially minstrels who travelled through Anatolia performing their songs on the bağlama, a mandolin-like instrument whose paired strings are considered to have a symbolic religious significance in Alevi/Bektashi culture. Despite the decline of the aşık/ozan tradition in the 19th century, it experienced a significant revival in the 20th century thanks to such outstanding figures as Aşık Veysel Şatıroğlu (1894–1973), Aşık Mahzuni Şerif (1938–2002), Neşet Ertaş (1943– ), and many others.
Ottoman Divan poetry was a highly ritualized and symbolic art form. From the Persian poetry that largely inspired it, it inherited a wealth of symbols whose meanings and interrelationships—both of similitude (مراعات نظير mura'ât-i nazîr / تناسب tenâsüb) and opposition (تضاد tezâd)—were more or less prescribed. Examples of prevalent symbols that, to some extent, oppose one another include, among others:
the nightingale (بلبل bülbül) — the rose (ﮔل gül)
the world (جهان cihan; عالم ‘âlem) — the rosegarden (ﮔﻠﺴﺘﺎن gülistan; ﮔﻠﺸﻦ gülşen)
the ascetic (زاهد zâhid) — the dervish (درويش derviş)
In the early years of the Republic of Turkey, there were a number of poetic trends. Authors such as Ahmed Hâşim and Yahyâ Kemâl Beyatlı (1884–1958) continued to write important formal verse whose language was, to a great extent, a continuation of the late Ottoman tradition. By far the majority of the poetry of the time, however, was in the tradition of the folk-inspired "syllabist" movement (Beş Hececiler), which had emerged from the National Literature movement and which tended to express patriotic themes couched in the syllabic meter associated with Turkish folk poetry.
The first radical step away from this trend was taken by Nâzım Hikmet Ran, who—during his time as a student in the Soviet Union from 1921 to 1924—was exposed to the modernist poetry of Vladimir Mayakovsky and others, which inspired him to start writing verse in a less formal style.
Another revolution in Turkish poetry came about in 1941 with the publication of a small volume of verse preceded by an essay and entitled Garip ("Strange"). The authors were Orhan Veli Kanık (1914–1950), Melih Cevdet Anday (1915–2002), and Oktay Rifat (1914–1988). Explicitly opposing themselves to everything that had gone in poetry before, they sought instead to create a popular art, "to explore the people's tastes, to determine them, and to make them reign supreme over art".[21] To this end, and inspired in part by contemporary French poets like Jacques Prévert, they employed not only a variant of the free verse introduced by Nâzım Hikmet, but also highly colloquial language, and wrote primarily about mundane daily subjects and the ordinary man on the street. The reaction was immediate and polarized: most of the academic establishment and older poets vilified them, while much of the Turkish population embraced them wholeheartedly.
Just as the Garip movement was a reaction against earlier poetry, so—in the 1950s and afterwards—was there a reaction against the Garip movement. The poets of this movement, soon known as İkinci Yeni ("Second New"[22]), opposed themselves to the social aspects prevalent in the poetry of Nâzım Hikmet and the Garip poets, and instead—partly inspired by the disruption of language in such Western movements as Dada and Surrealism—sought to create a more abstract poetry through the use of jarring and unexpected language, complex images, and the association of ideas. To some extent, the movement can be seen as bearing some of the characteristics of
postmodern literature. The best-known poets writing in the "Second New" vein were Turgut Uyar (1927–1985), Edip Cansever (1928–1986), Cemal Süreya (1931–1990), Ece Ayhan (1931–2002), and İlhan Berk (1918– ).
Outside of the Garip and "Second New" movements also, a number of significant poets have flourished, such as Fazıl Hüsnü Dağlarca (1914– ), who wrote poems dealing with fundamental concepts like life, death, God, time, and the cosmos; Behçet Necatigil (1916–1979), whose somewhat allegorical poems explore the significance of middle-class daily life; Can Yücel (1926–1999), who—in addition to his own highly colloquial and varied poetry—was also a translator into Turkish of a variety of world literature; and İsmet Özel (1944– ), whose early poetry was highly leftist but whose poetry since the 1970s has shown a strong mystical and even Islamist influence.
Prose
The style of current novelists can be traced back to the "Young Pens" (Genç Kalemler) journal in the Ottoman period. Young Pens was published in
Selanik under
Ömer Seyfettin,
Ziya Gökalp and
Ali Canip Yöntem. They covered the social and political concepts of their time with the nationalistic perspective. They became the core of a movement which will be called the "national literature."
With the declaration of the republic, Turkish literature became interested in folkloric styles. This was also the first time since the 19th century that Turkish literature was escaping from Western influence and began to mix Western forms with other forms. During the 1930s
Yakup Kadri Karaosmanoğlu and
Vedat Nedim Tor publish
Kadro, which was revolutionary in its view of life.
Orhan Pamuk is a leading Turkish
novelist of
post-modern literature. His work has been translated into more than twenty languages. He is the recipient of major Turkish and international literary awards. The most recent of his novels is "Snow." Pamuk is the winner of
Nobel Prize for Literature in 2006.
Cinema
Turkish film directors have won numerous prestigious awards in the recent years.
Nuri Bilge Ceylan won the
Best Director Award at the
2008 Cannes Film Festival with the film
Üç Maymun (Three Monkeys). Turkish film director
Fatih Akın, who lives in Germany and has dual Turkish-German citizenship, won the
Golden Bear award at the
2004 Berlin Film Festival with the film
Head-On. In
2007 Fatih Akın won the Best Director Award at the
Antalya Golden Orange Film Festival and the
Best Screenplay Award at the
2007 Cannes Film Festival, as well as the
Lux Prize by the
European Parliament, with the film
The Edge of Heaven. Another famous Turkish film director is
Ferzan Özpetek, who won the Golden Orange Award at the Antalya Film Festival and the Italian National Syndicate of Film Journalists Silver Ribbon Award with the film
Il Bagno Turco, the first movie which brought him international fame. One of his latest works,
Facing Windows, won the David di Donatello Award (Best Film), Scholars Jury Award (Best Direction), Italian National Syndicate of Film Journalists Award (Best Original Story), Karlovy Vary International Film Festival Crystal Globe Award (Best Direction), Bangkok International Film Festival (Best Film), Foyle Film Festival (Best Feature), Rehoboth Beach Independent Film Festival (Audience Award, Best Feature), and the Seattle International Film Festival (Best Film) awards.
Sport
Soccer (
Turkish:
futbol) is by far the most popular sport in modern Turkey. The four most popular football clubs in Turkey are
Beşiktaş J.K.,
Galatasaray S.K.,
Fenerbahçe S.K. and
Trabzonspor, all collectively referred to as the "big four". Galatasaray won the
UEFA Cup 1999-00, beating
Arsenal F.C. 4-1. The
Turkish national football team were also the 3rd best team in the
2002 FIFA World Cup, having just been defeated 1-0 by
Brazil in the semi-finals. Nevertheless, that was the furthest Turkey had ever progressed in a World Cup tournament.
Like all major soccer teams, their popularity has been heavily commercialised, resulting in the creation of just about anything colored in one of the "big four"'s team colors.
Despite soccer's much larger popularity, oil wrestling (Turkish:
yağlı güreş) is Turkey's national sport. The wrestlers are referred to in Turkish as
pehlivan (plural form:
pehlivanlar). Oil wrestling is also very popular, and a tournament (
Kırkpınar) is held annually in
Edirne. It is the oldest continuously running, sanctioned sporting competition in the world, having taken place every year since
1362.
Basketball is also very popular, with the team colloquially referred to in popular culture as
12 dev adam (12 giant men). Turkey will be hosting the
2010 FIBA World Championship.
Turkey hosted the
2005 Summer Universiade in
Izmir, and is scheduled to host the
2011 Winter Universiade in
Erzurum. Turkey is currently a candidate to host the
2018 Winter Olympics in
Bursa.
Architecture
Classical Turkish architecture is best shown in its mosques. The
Blue Mosque and
Suleiman Mosque, for example are two of the most popular and beautiful structures in Turkey.
The various other non-
Turk population also follow their own different customs aside from the regional.
Cuisine
Turkish cuisine inherited its
Ottoman heritage which could be described as a fusion and refinement of
Turkic,
Arabic,
Greek,
Armenian and
Persian cuisines. Turkish cuisine also influenced these cuisines and other neighbouring cuisines, as well as western European cuisines. Ottomans fused various culinary traditions of their realm with influences from
Middle Eastern cuisines, along with traditional Turkic elements from Central Asia such as
yogurt. The Ottoman Empire indeed created a vast array of technical specialities. It can be observed that various regions of the Ottoman Empire contain bits and pieces of the vast Ottoman dishes.
Taken as a whole, Turkish cuisine isn't homogenous. Aside from common Turkish specialities which can be found throughout the country, there are also region-specific specialities. The
Black Sea region's cuisine (northern Turkey) is based on corn and anchovies. The southeast—
Urfa,
Gaziantep and
Adana—is famous for its
kebabs,
mezes and dough-based desserts such as
baklava,
kadayıf and
künefe. Especially in the western parts of Turkey, where olive trees are grown abundantly,
olive oil is the major type of oil used for cooking. The cuisines of the
Aegean,
Marmara and
Mediterranean regions display basic characteristics of
Mediterranean cuisine as they're rich in vegetables, herbs and fish. Central Anatolia is famous for its pastry specialities such as
keşkek (kashkak),
mantı (especially of
Kayseri) and
gözleme.
The name of specialities sometimes includes the name of a city or a region (either in Turkey or outside). This suggests that a dish is a speciality of that area, or may refer to the specific technique or ingredients used in that area. For example, the difference between
Urfa kebab and
Adana kebab is the use of garlic instead of onion and the larger amount of hot pepper that kebab contains.
Further Information
Get more info on 'Culture Of Turkey'.
|
External Link Exchanges
Do you know how hard it is to get a link from a large encyclopaedia? Well we're different and will prove it. To get a link from us just add the following HTML to your site on a relevant page:
<a href="http://culture_of_turkey.totallyexplained.com">Culture of Turkey Totally Explained</a>
Then simply click through this link from your web page. Our crawlers will verify your link, extract the title of your web page and instantly add a link back to it. If you like you can remove the words Totally Explained and embed the link in article text.
As long as your link remains in place, we'll keep our link to you right here. Please play fair - our crawlers are watching. Your site must be closely related to this one's topic. Any kind of spamming, dubious practises or removing the link will result in your link from us being dropped and, potentially, your whole site being banned. |
