Culinary Memory of Multicultural Istanbul

December 2022 - July 2023
ISTANBUL

Istanbul is an ancient city that dates back to centuries and has hosted many civilizations. The richness in the physical and cultural structure of this city, where different civilizations inspire and influence each other, is unfortunately not visible enough. The standardization policies in the nation-state process caused irreversible damage to the multi-layered structure of the city. Despite such policies, which have largely destroyed not only the demographic structure of the city, but also its tangible and intangible cultural heritage, many ethnic groups such as Armenians, Jews, Greeks and Bulgarians continue to live in Istanbul and keep their own cultures alive. The multi-layered structure and culture of Istanbul, which emerges as a result of many cultures feeding each other, contains many invisible and hidden stories. Based on the multicultural and multilingual nature of Istanbul, the documentary about the culinary memory of multicultural Istanbul visits the cuisines of different communities resident in this city. The documentary reflects how different communities keep their cultures alive and pass traditions on from generation to generation despite the standardizing state policies. With interviews held in people's native languages, the documentary brings together not only traditional dishes and recipes, but also an alternative history of Istanbul, based on people's life stories.

Narod Avcı

Narod Avcı works in the fields of cultural heritage and oral history. She has worked as an undergraduate scholar in the oral history project "Diasporas in Turkey: The Case of the Peoples of the North-West Caucasus". She worked as one of the section editors of the book "Hafızam Çerkezce” (My Memory is in Circassian), which was prepared as a project output. She has conducted oral history interviews within the scope of the project titled “70TK Tatavla’dan Kurtuluş’a” (70TK from Tatavla to Kurtuluş) by the Association for the Protection of Cultural Heritage and produced a documentary for the exhibition prepared within the scope of the project. In 2018-2021, she worked as the Cultural Heritage Project Coordinator at the Hrant Dink Foundation and coordinated the 'KarDes: Multicultural Memory Tours Guide' application. She compiled two books titled Sessizliğin Sesi, Sivas Ermenileri Konuşuyor (The Sound of Silence, the Armenians of Sivas Speak), and Sessizliğin Sesi, Kınalıada Ermenileri Konuşuyor (The Sound of Silence, the Armenians of Kınalıada Speak), published by the Hrant Dink Foundation. She is currently working on Armenian history, oral history and the intangible cultural heritage of Western Armenians.

This page is published on 19 January 2023.