A Tale of Two Holidays

(Justin) The neat thing about Turkey is the co-existence of religious reverence and secular democracy. We experienced it firsthand this week: 

A local supermarket advertises options for your sacrifice holiday.

The Muslim world was geared up for Eid al-Adha, the Feast of Sacrifice, where Muslims celebrate Abraham's willingness to sacrifice Ishmael. (FYI-- Abraham's birthplace is located in modern southern Turkey.) Schools, banks, and other institutions were closed last week from Wednesday to Sunday (plus Monday, see below). To celebrate, families typically gather together from all over for a large meal. There is often a live animal slaughtered for the meal and also for ritual sacrifice. For example, there is a large place on the western outskirts of Ankara (and other parts of town) where cattle and sheep are sold for slaughter and you can either take the cow up to the hillside to be sacrificed or pay for someone to do it for you. Other people will simply buy meat for the meals from their local butcher. Families distribute some of the meat to the less-fortunate, and there are charities that collect money for the poor if you aren't distributing anything yourself. Children may get candy and other sweets. Here's a good post by an ex-pat woman who has often taken part in the holiday rituals. Those who don't have family obligations seem to travel to the beach or elsewhere for a nice vacation, which is what we did.

Because Muslim holidays revolve around the lunar calendar, the holiday moves around and this year buttresses October 29th, Turkey's Cumhuriyet Bayramı or "Republic Day," which commemorates Atatürk's declaration in 1923 that Turkey was officially a republic. This is one of the biggest secular holidays in Turkey and an important day for Kemalists, those who want to preserve the legacy of Atatürk and his principles to guide the country. There are typically ceremonies honoring Atatürk at all the schools (even though they are closed, students and faculty attend a ceremony in the morning), a ceremony at his grave with air force flyovers, and banks and such are closed.

Banners of Atatürk like this one and Turkish flags will be flown all over town on Monday.

However, this year there was some clash of political ideologies. The current ruling government is not the party of Atatürk and is more religious conservative. They have made some changes to how Turkish national holidays are celebrated. This has led to some restrictions on marches and other demonstrations were planned for Monday. Ankara's mayor sent out a notice for schools to remain closed on October 29th and not to celebrate Republic Day until October 30th (as part of their normal school day). However, the school I work at is very Kemalist and held Monday's ceremonies as planned (after all, everyone had already made their travel plans around being back at school for the 29th).

In any case, it was interesting to experience two of the biggest holidays in Turkey together over the course of six days.