In the Press
Turkish festival bridges cultures -- 05-23-2010
Turkish festival bridges cultures
BY JOHNATHAN L. WRIGHT
JWRIGHT@RGJ.COM MAY 23, 2010
The European Union named Istanbul, Turkey's largest city, a 2010 European Capital of Culture. Travel glossies Tout turkey as a hot destination, celebrating its mingling of East and West. Food-forward restaurants are attracting international attention. Even U2 is playing Istanbul next month.
Some of this Turkish buzz has reached Northern Nevada in the form of the Reno Turkish Festival, which took place Sunday in Wingfield Park with food, traditional crafts, singing and dancing.
"Every year, it's getting bigger," said Ismail Ozdemir, president of the Sierra Foundation, the organizer of the festival, which is now in its third year.
Ozdemir estimated that at least 1,000 people would have sipped bracing cups of Turkish coffee, browsed intricately gilded glassware or watched the child whirling dervishes by the time the fete finished its six-hour run.
Members of Northern Nevada's small but vibrant Turkish-American community started the foundation in 2004 and stage the festival, Ozdemir said, to promote understanding and friendship and "to share our rich culture with people of Reno." Besides the festival, the Sierra Foundation presents Turkish dinners, organizes seminars and trips to Turkey and conducts community service.
'Stretchy and sticky'
Food ranked among the most popular attractions.
The line for Turkish kebabs stretched across Wingfield Park. The kebabs were wrapped in flatbread, with sidecars of hummus and tabbouleh.
Eduardo Reyes of Reno waited with his family, the kebabs conjuring memories of street food he'd eaten in Turkey. Reyes said he was enjoying the festival's slice of Istanbul on the Truckee.
"I really like the community engagement." Sema Cabuk, wearing a kaftan embroidered with gold whorls, sat on a Turkish carpet and made "gozleme," addictive Turkish flatbreads that were filled with feta, then blistered on portable griddles.
Did she ever get bored, rolling out dozens of flatbreads from a simple water, flour and salt dough? Not at all.
"I like to make them," Cabuk said, smiling.
Mustafa Koroglu smiled, too, as he twirled ice cream cones stuck to a long spatula above the outstretched hands of laughing children.
The cones adhered to the spatula, explained festivalgoer Erol Kozoglu, because they incorporated a powder with glutinous properties, one made from ground Turkish flower seeds.
"The powder makes it tasty, stretchy and sticky," he said.
Images afloat
Turkish crafts were plentiful, too.
Bahay Gulle demonstrated the traditional art of "ebru," or water marbling, in which earth pigments and horsehair brushes attached to rose twigs are used to create images that float on liquid. The images resemble the swirling patterns of marble or other stone and are transferred to paper or fabric.
Horsehair is used, Gulle said, "because it doesn't absorb all the pigment," rose twigs "because they don't become moldy, and they are easy to dry."
Before mass printing, the endpapers of books were often water marbled.
Eray Idil created modern Turkish calligraphy -"a mix of old French calligraphy and Arabic calligraphy," he said - on plates and cards.
One booth offered a mini-bazaar's worth of goods. There were embroidered scarves, tatted tablecloths, ceramics, jewelry, wooden worry beads awaiting fingering and piles of throw pillow covers embroidered with "evil eye" symbols.
"They're to protect you from bad thoughts," said Chelsea Hahn, a festival volunteer.
Universal spin
A performance by child whirling dervishes seemed especially popular with attendees.
Ritual whirling has a long history among certain Sufi Muslims. The whirlers rotate with one hand skyward and one hand downward to symbolize the expanse "from God to the people," said Suat Mercan, the vice president of the Sierra Foundation.
The whirling, he continued, also is symbolic.
"They represent the universe because everything in the universe is revolving."
Read it at RGJ
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