In times past, for the local Greek-Orthodox communities in Istanbul, the three weeks preceding Great Lent was a time of carnival as they donned masks and costumes and celebrated with their neighbors until the great festivity of Clean Monday (Kathara Deutera). This carnival, called “Apukurya” by Turks, would start with a parade that proceeded from Galata and Pera to the Church of Saint Demetrius, and conclude with a street party in Tatavla. Following the carnival, which was also called “Baklahorani”, literally meaning “to eat beans” due to the Orthodox tradition of abstention from the consumption of meat. After this day, which the people of Istanbul call the "Bakla Horani" day, the Greeks would stay in their homes, spend time with fasting and worship, waiting for the Great Easter to come.
The "Apokries" carnival, which was organized by the Greek Orthodox residing in old Istanbul before the 40-day "Great Fast" (Easter), and where everyone who participated in the past had fun by dressing up and wearing masks, started with a parade in the streets of Galata and Pera. The entertainment ended with a huge fair held in "Tatavla" - today's "Kurtuluş".
The Tatavla Carnival welcomed all residents of the city, and the tradition of festivities persisted until 1941. Today, this important heritage of Istanbul’s culture of festivity and music is revived once again to evoke memories of Tatavla, the carnival that marked an early beginning to spring.
In the Byzantine Rite, i.e., the Eastern Orthodox Great Lent (Greek: Μεγάλη Τεσσαρακοστή or Μεγάλη Νηστεία, meaning "Great 40 Days" and "Great Fast" respectively) is the most important fasting season in the church year.
The 40 days of Great Lent includes Sundays, and begins on Clean Monday and are immediately followed by what are considered distinct periods of fasting, Lazarus Saturday and Palm Sunday, which in turn are followed straightway by Holy Week. Great Lent is broken only after the Paschal (Easter) Divine Liturgy.
The Eastern Orthodox Church maintains the traditional Church's teaching on fasting. The rules for lenten fasting are the monastic rules. Fasting in the Orthodox Church is more than simply abstaining from certain foods. During the Great Lent Orthodox Faithful intensify their prayers and spiritual exercises, go to church services more often, study the Scriptures and the works of the Church Fathers in depth, limit their entertainment and spendings and focus on charity and good works.
Baklahorani (alternatively, Bakla Horani; Greek: Μπακλαχοράνι) or Tataula carnival (Greek: Αποκριές
στα Ταταύλα) is
a carnival celebrated
annually in Istanbul, Turkey, by members of the local Greek-Orthodox community on Shrove Monday,
the last Monday before Lent.
The traditional celebration began in 19th century or earlier,[1] and
ceased when it was banned by the Turkish authorities in 1943. However,
beginning in 2010 there has been a revival initiative.[2]
For almost five centuries, the local Greek communities
throughout Istanbul celebrated pre-Lent festivals with colorful events that included bawdy parades
and parties held indoors and in the street. These lasted for weeks before the
40-day Lent period.[2] Baklahorani,
on Shrove Monday, the last day of the carnival
season before Lent, became the culminating event in the mid-19th century.
The name of the event literally translates as 'I eat beans', a
reference to Lenten dietary restrictions.[3] Although
the event was led by local Greeks, the celebrations were not limited among the
Greek community of the city, but were open to everyone. It was also an
opportunity to bring together people from various neighborhoods, while they
gathered for the final celebrations.[3]
It started as a masked parade that proceeded through Istanbul's Greek neighborhoods, beginning with the elite area of Pera and gathering people along the way.[1][4] A masked parade marched the route dancing tsamiko and Anatolian folk dances, accompanied by various traditional instruments, including drum, zurna, clarinet and mandolin. Residents from Bakırköy, Samatya, Fener, Balat crossed the Golden Horn on the Galata and Unkapanı Bridge, and joining those from Pera they gathered dancing in the large square outside Saint Demetrius Church in Kurtuluş, a neighbourhood in Şişli district at that time known as Tataula and nicknamed Little Athens.[5]
Meanwhile
another group of people from neighborhoods at Bosphorus, Şişli,
Kemerburgaz gathered in front of the Pangaltı Catholic Cemetery and
marched through the main street to the same square, where the celebrations
culminated.[6] Young
Greek men often wore the traditional fustanella costume,
put on fake beards or moustaches, and painted their faces with flour or coal
powder. Women often dressed in low-cut garments.[7]
Maria Iordanidou described
Bakalahorani in her 1963 novel Loxandra, which tells the story of a
young Greek woman of Constantinople in the earliest years of the 20th century.
According to her description, people "from all over Istanbul"
gathered in Tatavla, singing folk songs along their route. She wrote that:
"Groups of young girls sang songs and children swung on gondolier swings
or ride merry-go-rounds decorated with bands and flags. The young men of
Tatavla would give displays of their unique dances and games."[8]
The carnival reached its peak of popularity after World War I,
during the years of the Allied Occupation of the city (1918–1922).
It continued after the establishment of the Republic of Turkey until World War II.[5]
Baklahorani was one of the most famous festivals by the
Christians in Istanbul until its last celebration in 1941. After that, Greeks,
along with the city's other non-Muslim communities, were subject to social and
financial discrimination.[2] A law banning
people from wearing masks ended the original Baklahorani
carnival in 1943.[9]
In 2010, nearly 70 years after the last celebration, the
historical carnival was revived by a celebrating group of Greeks and Turks who
sang, danced and paraded in costumes through the streets of Şişli district.[6] Principal
organizers of the festival's reincarnation were Hüseyin Irmak, a researcher who
was born in Kurtuluş, and Haris Theodorelis Rigas, a Greek who now lives in
Istanbul, where he plays music in taverns, specializing in a
"near-extinct" style of music blending Greek and Turkish influences.
Irmak and Rigas consider the reestablishment of the carnival to be an
opportunity for people to rediscover Turkey's multicultural past, while adding
"colour" to people's lives.[10] Due
to concerns about security, the 2010 celebration was conducted on a small scale
without advance announcements, but the 2011 celebration was a
"full-scale" public event.[2][6]
1.
^ Jump up to:a b "Baklahorani
Carnival". Greek Minority of Istanbul. Archived from the original on
1 November 2013. Retrieved 13 January 2012.
2.
^ Jump up to:a b c d Yackley,
Ayla Jean. "Istanbul
celebrates carnival after nearly 70 years". Reuters.
Archived from the original on
13 March 2011. Retrieved 1 November 2011.
3.
^ Jump up to:a b Mullins,
Ansel (27 February 2011). "Reviving
Carnival in Istanbul". The New York Times. Retrieved 1
November 2011.
4.
^ Andrianopoulou, Konstantina. "Tatavla
(Kurtuluş)". Εγκυκλοπαίδεια Μείζονος Ελληνισμού. Archived
from the original on
30 April 2012. Retrieved 1 November 2011.
5.
^ Jump up to:a b Didem
Danis, Ebru Kayaalp. "Elmadag: A
Neighborhood in Flux" (PDF). Institut Francais D'Etudes
Anatoliennes, Georges Dumezil. p. 19. Archived from the original (PDF) on
1 March 2012. Retrieved 16 December 2011.
6.
^ Jump up to:a b c Ziflioğlu,
Vercihan. "Greek
carnival enthusiasm on Istanbul streets". Hürriyet Daily News. Retrieved 1 November 2011.
7.
^ "Tatavla
Karnavalı" (in Turkish). Tatavla. Archived from the original on
16 December 2011. Retrieved 28 December 2011.
8.
^ "From
Tatavla to Kurtulus; Social Events and Daily Life". Museum of
Architecture. Archived from the original on
30 May 2012. Retrieved 16 January 2012.
9.
^ Athanasiasis, Iason. "Istanbul
revelers revive a Greek bacchanalia". globalpost.com.
Retrieved 1 November 2011.
10. ^ "Greek
carnival saunters back to life". Hurriyet Daily News.
Turkey. Retrieved 1 November 2011.
Baklahorani Carnival, which is one of the rare times when the Greek community, which we are accustomed to commemorate with its bitter experiences, took the stage in a pleasant way in its own geography, is actually an extraordinary event beyond being entertaining in terms of its historical process and roots. So much so, from Ancient Greece, which introduced nudity to art for the first time, the expression of bourgeois dignity; A ritual adapted to Greek-Orthodox Istanbul… As a matter of fact, it is a tradition that the Greek upper class did not embrace, even despised from time to time, despite the participation of a large part of the Greek society, for this reason, they spent the Baklahorani period by holding a ball at their home.
According to some sources, the beginning of the celebration of Apocries coincides with the period when the church was extremely repressive. In this period, which coincided with the middle of the 19th century, Apokries, which emerged as a manifestation of the need to have fun, rebelling and breaking the imposed rules, was celebrated in two ways. Carnivalists (mascaras) make nightly visits to the homes of friends and acquaintances, and during the night there were licentious, fun conversations with drunken, low-waist jokes and mutual taunts. In the second form, carnivalists went out into the street and wore costumes and masks and had fun with songs, dances and various mise-en-scènes. According to the testimony of Bertrand Bareilles, one of the Levantines of the period, the mascaras gathered in the great Pera Street used to descend from today's Kalyoncu Kulluk Sokak to Dolapdere and from there to Tatavla, to the square in front of the Aya Dimitri Church. There they were greeted by peddlers, street musicians, acrobats, clowns, organ organisers, and the amateur firefighter class of the time, the “tulumbacılar”
We can base another testimony regarding the carnival on an article in one of the Greek newspapers, "Proodos", published in 1918. In the news, the following reference is made about the Apokries carnival entertainment of Istanbul's hayta firefighters, that is, the firefighters: "The dances, in which the welcome played the leading role, started in the ward, accompanied by the zurna player Kör Haciki and drummer Yovanaki from Edirnekapı. Instead of champagne, there was plenty of soda and lemonade. Mascaras from every district try to make people laugh by putting forward a different mise-en-scène. When a carnivalist who was put in a coffin and pretending to be dead suddenly jumped out of the coffin, masculine men disguised as pregnant women were given birth by mascara disguised as doctors”. SOURCE
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