Besides our history and cultural heritage, it is the Turkish cuisine that is one of our greatest richness.
However, unfortunately, Turkish cuisine is one of the richest in the world, but is not adequately known internationally.
For instance, this sentence is not frequently used abroad: “Let us eat Turkish food tonight,” whereas in big cities around the world, the French, Italian, Spanish as well as Chinese and Japanese cuisines are all popular.
The Peruvian cuisine that we did not know of until recently has become a global trend with its “ceviche.”
I have always thought that the state should act like a conductor for the promotion of our cuisine that has separate tastes in different regions.
I have shared my thought with several top officials including former Culture and Tourism Minister Ertugrul Gunay because we know that the international promotion of famous cuisines including French and Italian are always supported by their state.
Despite the lack of required strategy for the promotion of the Turkish cuisine, there has been an interesting activity recently in our gastronomy world. Famous chefs as well as those cities that are known for their tastes are on the lead.
Chef Mehmet Gurs of one of Istanbul’s best restaurants Mikla has been able to make it to the top 100 restaurants of the world three years in a row. Mikla was 96th in 2015; it was 56th in 2016; and this year it is in the 51st place.
Gurs is a chef who has created the “New Anatolian Cuisine” using local tastes of Anatolia, working with anthropologists from time to time.
Izmir University of Economics’ Department of Culinary Arts and Management International Coordinator Sırma Güven is a person who has made İzmir be included in “Delice Network Good Food Cities.”
Delice will enable the Aegean cuisine to meet the world.” As a matter of fact, the “Artichoke Festival” at Izmir’s Urla district has been held as part of Delice Network Good Food Cities.
Izmir seems to be ready to go international with its gastronomy that it has enriched for centuries with Sephardic and Levantine cuisines and the cuisine of the islands.
Another example is Gaziantep, from the other side of Turkey. This city has registered its “baklava” years ago; last year it was able to enter UNESCO’s Creative Cities Network in gastronomy.
It is the ninth city to make it to this category in the world up to now.
Istanbul is a city where a gastronomy festival was held for first time in Turkey. The city is the center of where the Ottoman cuisine is best represented, also with tastes of Armenian and Greek cuisines.
This festival is held under the name “Restaurant Week” between April 20 and May 8, when celebrations will be held at several restaurants.
Famous chefs will offer menus with reasonable prices. On the other hand, this past weekend, “101 Tastes of Istanbul Festival” was held.
This month, the “Cappadox Festival” was held between May 18 and 21 in Cappadocia, where gastronomy has a significant place alongside music and modern arts.
Thanks to those who made gastronomy enter all fields of our lives, I guess this time Turkish cuisine is ready to challenge the world.
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Showing posts with label Cappadox Festival. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Cappadox Festival. Show all posts
Tuesday, 23 May 2017
TURKEY: Cappadox Festival Attracts Tourists To Cappadocia, Reina Nightclub Demolished
The tourism crisis has naturally also hit one of Turkey’s first touristic regions, Cappadocia. I was in Cappadocia to see a close friend’s newly-bought house in one of its villages, and to participate in the Cappadox Festival.
The Cappadox Festival spreads to Uçhisar, Avanos and Goreme with concerts, shows, contemporary art activities and open-air hikes. It has brought dynamism to the region for four days.
The festival was organized by Pozitif of Doguş Group. The group three years ago partnered with Argos in Cappadocia Hotel in Uçhisar, which was a meeting point for famous CEOs, business people and artists.
The 51-room Argos in Cappadocia has been elected the “Most beautiful Historic Luxury Hotel in the World.”
One of the small partners of the hotel for 15 years, Mehmet Ozkılıç, spoke about tourism in Cappadocia. He has been a tourism executive and an investor for 40 years. He knows the history and mythology of the region very well.
Ozkılıç said Cappadocia went under the West’s spotlight with the drawings of French travelers in the 19th century of fairy chimneys. It was discovered in the 1960s again by the French.
The first Club Med in Turkey was opened in Cappadocia in 1968. Also in those years European hippies transited in Cappadocia after their first stop in Istanbul on their way to Katmandu.
The film Medea,directed by Italian director Pier Paolo Pasolini featuring Maria Callas in the 1970s, has boosted tourism here,Ozkılıç said. After the shooting of this film, Cappadocia became a favorite for many famous directors.
Ozkılıç himself played the role of a taxi driver about 20 years ago in a film directed by French director Clause Lelouch in Cappadocia.
Just as many popular Turkish TV series, the film “Winter Sleep” by director Nuri Bilge Ceylan, which won many film awards, was shot in Cappadocia.
No doubt, Cappadocia is a tourism brand in the world and in Turkey.
However, today most of the hotels function below 50 percent of their capacity. The Kistar Hotel, which only has 12 rooms and has a wonderful view of fairy chimneys, has a 30-percent rate of occupancy, for instance.
Cappadocia is a brand but we are not using it well. I would have expected it to pass the tourism crisis with much less damage.
The tourism of Cappadocia, which grew an average 8 percent annually between the years 1985 and 2015, is at a standstill now, Ozkılıç said.
As a person who has been in the tourism business for 40 years, Ozkılıç criticized that Cappadocia did not have a master plan. “The biggest advantage of the region is that there has been tourism here all year round. We cannot use this advantage because we do not have a master plan. The cultural assets inventory of Cappadocia is not complete. We do not know how many churches there are exactly,” he added.
We always hear about 400 churches, but it is of course surprising that it is not known as the true number.
According to Ozkılıç, one reason for the fluctuating crisis in tourism is investments done without any coordination. “Goreme has a population of 2,000; the number of hotels is almost 300. There are 56 travel agencies and 25 hot air balloon agencies.”
The unfortunate hot air balloon accidents that came one after the other in the past months are undoubtedly a reason for this uncoordinated growth.
Cappadox Festival is a new breath for the region, Ozkılıç believes. “The most important part is that Doğus Group introduced to the region the know-how of how such activities should be held.”
Istanbul’s famous Reina nightclub, in which 39 people were killed in an Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) attack on Jan. 1, was demolished on May 22.
In a statement, the Istanbul Municipality said some parts of the nightclub had been built against the law.
A demolishment decision by the Istanbul Municipality Board has been made for the entertainment venue Reina, located in the Ortaköy neighborhood of the Beşiktaş district, as some parts of it were built against the law.
In accordance with the board decision, the demolition process was completed today for the parts of the building that were breaching the law, it said on May 22.
A source close to Reina expressed surprise at the demolition.
This is an unexpected situation for us too. The demolition process took 45 minutes. They demolished it and left, the source said early May 22.
ISIL staged the attack on the famous nightclub at the heart of Istanbul in the early hours of 2017.
Uzbek-origin Abdulkadir Masharipov, the attacker, escaped from the scene following the attack.
He was captured on Jan. 16 in Istanbul’s Esenyurt district, along with four other people, including a man of Kyrgyz origin and three women.
Not long after the attack, one of the co-owners of the nightclub said he no longer wished to provide entertainment in a place in which a total of 39 people died.
Because of the villains, we sent bodies all over the world. I don’t want to sell entertainment in a place in which many people died. There are also many wounded people,Ali Unal said.
The Cappadox Festival spreads to Uçhisar, Avanos and Goreme with concerts, shows, contemporary art activities and open-air hikes. It has brought dynamism to the region for four days.
The festival was organized by Pozitif of Doguş Group. The group three years ago partnered with Argos in Cappadocia Hotel in Uçhisar, which was a meeting point for famous CEOs, business people and artists.
The 51-room Argos in Cappadocia has been elected the “Most beautiful Historic Luxury Hotel in the World.”
One of the small partners of the hotel for 15 years, Mehmet Ozkılıç, spoke about tourism in Cappadocia. He has been a tourism executive and an investor for 40 years. He knows the history and mythology of the region very well.
Ozkılıç said Cappadocia went under the West’s spotlight with the drawings of French travelers in the 19th century of fairy chimneys. It was discovered in the 1960s again by the French.
The first Club Med in Turkey was opened in Cappadocia in 1968. Also in those years European hippies transited in Cappadocia after their first stop in Istanbul on their way to Katmandu.
The film Medea,directed by Italian director Pier Paolo Pasolini featuring Maria Callas in the 1970s, has boosted tourism here,Ozkılıç said. After the shooting of this film, Cappadocia became a favorite for many famous directors.
Ozkılıç himself played the role of a taxi driver about 20 years ago in a film directed by French director Clause Lelouch in Cappadocia.
Just as many popular Turkish TV series, the film “Winter Sleep” by director Nuri Bilge Ceylan, which won many film awards, was shot in Cappadocia.
No doubt, Cappadocia is a tourism brand in the world and in Turkey.
However, today most of the hotels function below 50 percent of their capacity. The Kistar Hotel, which only has 12 rooms and has a wonderful view of fairy chimneys, has a 30-percent rate of occupancy, for instance.
Cappadocia is a brand but we are not using it well. I would have expected it to pass the tourism crisis with much less damage.
The tourism of Cappadocia, which grew an average 8 percent annually between the years 1985 and 2015, is at a standstill now, Ozkılıç said.
As a person who has been in the tourism business for 40 years, Ozkılıç criticized that Cappadocia did not have a master plan. “The biggest advantage of the region is that there has been tourism here all year round. We cannot use this advantage because we do not have a master plan. The cultural assets inventory of Cappadocia is not complete. We do not know how many churches there are exactly,” he added.
We always hear about 400 churches, but it is of course surprising that it is not known as the true number.
According to Ozkılıç, one reason for the fluctuating crisis in tourism is investments done without any coordination. “Goreme has a population of 2,000; the number of hotels is almost 300. There are 56 travel agencies and 25 hot air balloon agencies.”
The unfortunate hot air balloon accidents that came one after the other in the past months are undoubtedly a reason for this uncoordinated growth.
Cappadox Festival is a new breath for the region, Ozkılıç believes. “The most important part is that Doğus Group introduced to the region the know-how of how such activities should be held.”
Istanbul’s famous Reina nightclub, in which 39 people were killed in an Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) attack on Jan. 1, was demolished on May 22.
In a statement, the Istanbul Municipality said some parts of the nightclub had been built against the law.
A demolishment decision by the Istanbul Municipality Board has been made for the entertainment venue Reina, located in the Ortaköy neighborhood of the Beşiktaş district, as some parts of it were built against the law.
In accordance with the board decision, the demolition process was completed today for the parts of the building that were breaching the law, it said on May 22.
A source close to Reina expressed surprise at the demolition.
This is an unexpected situation for us too. The demolition process took 45 minutes. They demolished it and left, the source said early May 22.
ISIL staged the attack on the famous nightclub at the heart of Istanbul in the early hours of 2017.
Uzbek-origin Abdulkadir Masharipov, the attacker, escaped from the scene following the attack.
He was captured on Jan. 16 in Istanbul’s Esenyurt district, along with four other people, including a man of Kyrgyz origin and three women.
Not long after the attack, one of the co-owners of the nightclub said he no longer wished to provide entertainment in a place in which a total of 39 people died.
Because of the villains, we sent bodies all over the world. I don’t want to sell entertainment in a place in which many people died. There are also many wounded people,Ali Unal said.
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