Tag: turk

One Year in Adana

M's Adventures

Now that I have lived in Adana for a year, what do I think of it?

A mocktail overlooking the paradise that could be…

Well, I think it is not as hot as people told me it would be. Last summer it was as hot as people told me it would be. It was 109 F (43 C) in the shade. But this summer was not as hot. The weather is a favorite topic here. But that is true of many places.

After a year here, what has surprised me is the live and let live attitude of this “village” of two million people. It was a nice surprise. Also, I am thankful for google translate, but often, I do not use it anymore. Smiles and charades often do enough communicating. And there is always tea. Always say yes to the tea. It is not about the caffeine or the liquid. It is about the offer to be welcomed by the person who offered the tea. Always accept the tea.

Always say hello and good morning/day. They do not like rudeness here. Say thank you. Please. Pardon. These few words go a long way.

Is it cheap here? Steadily less so. Breakfast can cost ten bucks. Or three.

The people? Generally amazed that I live here. Generally friendly. Most are downright polite and helpful.

As I mentioned before, I like that Adana is full of contrasts. I love that I can walk everywhere but I don’t love the bad sidewalks or lack of them. I love the chattiness and friendliness of the folks I meet. I like that there is charity here and little homelessness. I like the taxis. I love that everyone will serve you Turkish breakfast and that it is a thing one does. Always with lots of tea. I like that the sun shines most days.

I got a doner wrap for les than three dollars here.

Also, I love that there are few tourists here. Tourism would be good for the city, but… I like the lack of vicious tourism that happens in big places.

How much do I like it here? It often depends on how much I am sweating.

A Gutsy Wife

M's Adventures

Did I mention that I quit my Turkish language class? Well, I did. My classmates and the teacher wanted to get serious about grammar and homework… NO. I want to talk about food!

A Karin sheep intestine in front.

Anyway, although I am no longer taking formal classes, I have not quit learning random Turkish phrases. I learned a punny one the other day.

The four common types of intestine offered here.

Adana is famous for various dishes like the Adana kebab, but the one that is also famously from Adana is the şirdan. But this is not the only part of the sheep’s intestines that gets eaten. I learned the name of this other part when I was discussing Halloween costume plans for this year. I could go as a kebab, or a sirdan. Last year, I planned to go as a glass of ayran, the Turkish yogurt drink, but decided last minute that it was too hot to wear a costume with padding (as I had planned a cascade of cotton padding to mimic the bubbles of freshly shaken ayran). So then what to do this year? It will still be hot at the end of October — probably around 88 F (31 C) so I need something lightweight and cotton… no, not a cotton ball… as that has padding.

Back from my aside… I wanted to go as a sheep’s intestine. But the famous one is too “rude” in the British sense of rude. So maybe I could go as the round sheep intestine. It’s shaped more like a haggis. But, in Turkish it is called a “karin” which is hilarious because “karin” is also “your wife.”

Maybe I will go as a “karin” and hold an inflatable “husband” next to me…

But it also sounds like it would require stuffing. And that would be too hot.

Is All This for Free with My Meal?

M's Adventures
At Kebapci Euup Usta, this is the standard free salads/mezze with a kabob meal.

When you order Adana kebab, or any kind of kebab, you will be given some free dishes. This is how it is supposed to be. If a place charges you for these salads that they bring to you, don’t go there again. Also, don’t go back if the place charges you too much (Recently I was charged 3,000 Turkish Lira for a mixed grill for two people — that is too much!).

These free salads or appetizers will arrive before your meal but you can continue to eat them during your meal to use in your sandwich. Most kabobs are eaten as a handheld wrap. There will usually be salt and red pepper powder on the table as well. Some places include grape molasses which alongside the lemons allow you to create your own dressing for the sandwich or salads. Most of the salads area already dressed with grape molasses or sumac. Most places will include a plate of herbs and lemons. Always parsley, often mint, and sometimes dill too. Many Turks will eat parsley straight up while waiting for the rest of the food. Sort of treating parsley like a breadstick.

At Han Kebap, they give you individual salads and “cig kofte” wraps.

Really basic places will give you smaller portions or simply the herbs and the onion salad. And large places will give you lots of salads including the basics, some with shallots only, cooked onion salads, and some even include baked “pizza” items like pide or lahmacun.

At Han Kebap, their spicy wet salad is excellent.

The thing with kabobs is that they are customizable and completely up to you how you want to eat it. I usually use a fork and knife. Many places will give you a fork and a spoon only. Many Turks use a spoon to eat the salads. I personally quite like eating things that only require a spoon.

At Hand Kebap, they serve mini pide with cheese. Yummy.

If you order a kabob, it will be served with bread, usually a flat or flatter bread like pita/pide, or a lavash/tortilla style bread. Some places have rice that you can order as well.

Chicken kabob.

Another thing is that all kabobs are served with a grilled chili pepper and a bit of tomato. This chicken kabob meal including the salads, an ayran yogurt drink, and tea cost me 540 Turkish lira. I’m told that it was a bit pricey but that I was paying for the view of the hospital… and the English speaking waiter.

The Realities of Life in Adana

M's Adventures

So I wrote about the great things about living in Adana. Now, here are the things that are not so great.

The hot summers: It gets up to 110 F (44 C) almost every day for a few weeks and the rest of the three or so months (mid-June through mid-September) the temperature will be above 90 F (32 C) during the day for months on end. This heat is not too sticky but it’s not completely dry and you still sweat. A lot. There is one good thing about this heat and that is that there are minimal outdoor activities or anything outdoors during this time. And there is lots of air conditioning.

The smoking. They smoke. A lot. Even inside restaurants.

The traffic. Yes, it’s bad. In the city. The roads are in bad condition. Not everyone follows the rules. Is the traffic worse than Dhaka? No.

Chaos but no animals in the streets.

The flies — well that ONE fly that goes straight for my mouth when I step outdoors. Or buzzes around our food at the breakfast places. Ugh. Usually it is not a big fly. But after I bought the electric fly swatter, life changed. Now I just have to figure out a way to attach the fly swatter to my face…

The lack of international items other than Japanese sushi rolls. No real Indian food. None. There is pasta with curry or rice with curry but it’s nothing like curry.

The language. It’s hard.

Other parts of Turkiye look down on this city. Many treat it like the ugly step child… It seems like lots of people come from Adana but have left.

But, even with all these negative things about Adana, I like this city. Maybe because it’s the underdog.

The Good Things About Life in Adana

M's Adventures

As I have done for all the places I’ve lived these past 15 years, I write about the pros and cons. This is the good stuff about living in Adana as a foreigner.

It’s a chill place even though the weather is hot in the summer. People are fairly relaxed here about dress code, lifestyle, smoking, drinking, etc. Live and let live. Cover your hair if you want. Wear shorts if you want. Hijabs next to mini skirts.

There are lots of coffee shops open late into the evening so that one can go out without going to a club.

Cups for sale.

There are thousands of restaurants in all price ranges. Every place will serve Turkish breakfast (kahvalti). Just ask.

A local eatery.
A fancier restaurant.

The locals are friendly. Everyone has a phone so they can use a translator app.

There are no tourists. I mentioned that already in another article.

The great things about living in Adana are that it’s a vibrant city full of people going about their lives. Food is fresh and good. People are friendly. Taxis are cheap.

When a Father Becomes a Real Father

M's Adventures

A man is not really a father until he has a daughter. This is what a Turkish man told me. Maybe it was a translation thing. I don’t know. But I thought it was an intriguing thing to say. I do not think that it meant that one should not have sons, but that one should also have a daughter. Sweet thought.

Turkiye is undergoing a downward trending birth rate. Less than the replacement rate. The birth rate has dropped by half from 1960 when it was three children per woman. Now, 1.5 per woman. The Turkish government has tried to encourage their citizens to have more children, but the cost of living is stopping people from having more children. The government called 2025, the “Year of the Family” and started paying money to families who had more children. But still, as one Turk said to me, “Who can afford it?” When I asked about his thoughts on having children.

As for the comment about having a daughter to become a “real father” — others have told me that this is not true. In Turkiye, there is still a preference for boys, so maybe this comment was a personal opinion?

There is a set price for bread.

Yes, the Turks also celebrate Fathers’ Day on the third Sunday in June. The first one was in 1910 in the United States. The Turks started celebrating a few decades ago. The Turks often celebrate Ataturk as they consider him the father of the nation. So maybe “every day is fathers’ day!”

Turkey, Should We Give It A New Name?

M's Adventures

Türkiye, the nation, had the UN officially recognize the spelling of its name in English as Türkiye (tur-key-YAY) in 2022 to have the spelling match the pronunciation in Turkish. But it is still hard for some people to call it that. Even for the Turks, many of whom called it Turkey for decades and then had to change in 2022. By now, most remember. If one slips up, no one comments. They are forgiving.

But until then, why did the place and the bird share the same name?

The land was called, “the land of the Turks” = Turkey. Pronounced, tur-key-YAY, but in English the Y at the end doesn’t have that “yay” sound. The land, whatever its name, has had humans living on, in, it for a long, wait, really long, time. More than 12,000 years. That’s considered a long time in human history. One of the many names was “Asia Minor,” or “Anatolia” which derives from the Greek term for where the “sun rises” or “levant” which means to “rise” or “sunrise” and before that, “the Land of the Hattians.” So, even over here in Adana, all roads lead to Rome. But more about that some other time.

So how did it become “Turkey?” For that we move forward to 1077 when the Seljuk Turks set up their nation and called it the “Sultanate of Rūm” referring to the area being considered “Eastern Rome” and today rūm refers to Orthodox Christians who were in this part of the world since Christianity arose. Keep in mind that St. Paul was born in Tarsus, less than an hour’s drive from Adana. With the fall of Constantinople in 1453, Sultan Mehmed II declared himself, “Kayser-i-Rum” or “Caesar of the Romans” or Emperor. So all roads do lead to Rome… by the 12th century, Europeans, west of the Balkans, started using the term, “Turchia” which is what the modern Romans, Italians, call Türkiye. So even though the first of the Turkic groups to rule modern day Türkiye, called it something else, from this point on, the land started becoming more and more Turkish.

Chicken wing, chicken breast, and liver kebab.

Now, to the bird. By the way, as an aside, the way that the Turks give the bird is quite dramatic and done with flourish. More on that another time.

The bird, the Meleagris gallopavo, is indigenous to the Americas. When the Europeans encountered the bird, they called it guinea fowl or turkey cock/hen as they had seen pheasants and guinea fowl from Africa that looked similar. But, maybe not as big. In 1550, an Englishman William Strickland, who had introduced the bird to England (the first turkeys in Europe were taken to Spain by the Spanish from Mexico), was given a coat of arms which included the “turkey-cock in his pride proper.” Turkeys were introduced to North America by the English in the 17th century.

The bird was named after the country. Why? This article explains it well. Basically, when the birds were being traded for food, a confusion arose between the bird from the Americas with a bird from Africa…

But was it a fair trade? And should we re-name the bird? Call it the Mexican fowl? Or “huexolotl”? That’s the sixteenth-century Nahuatl, language of the central America, name. So for Americans who celebrate Thanksgiving or “Turkey-day”, they could say, “Happy Huexolotl!”

That said, here in Adana, they do not eat so much turkey. Mostly chicken.