The Ramadan memories of Türkiye’s non-Muslim communities

Andon Parizyanos, the 73-year-old native of Istanbul, has vivid memories of Ramadan just like any ordinary Muslim. 

As a child, Parizyanos loved going to his grandmother's three-storey house in Balat, which was once a mixed neighbourhood of different communities – Christians, Jewish and Muslims. Located in Istanbul’s central Fatih district, the neighbourhood still has many picturesque churches, synagogues and mosques. 

“During Ramadan, in Istanbul in the 1950s, there was a cannon fire every evening to let people know about the fast-breaking time [iftar]. My grandmother was instructing me to go outside the house to make sure when the cannonball was fired. When the cannonball was fired with a big boom sound, I would tell her and she would bring out food and desserts she prepared for her Muslim neighbours,” Parizyanos, a retired teacher and former head of the Greek Orthodox Christian community, tells TRT World. 

“There was a different Istanbul back in the day. There was a lot of respect. My grandmother had always warned us, saying 'be careful! There is fasting. Don’t eat outside on the streets. It’s not the right thing to do in Ramadan',” says Parizyanos, recalling his childhood days in Balat, where he was born. 

Parizyanos has other memories, too, particularly related to food. His most beautiful memory is about the Ramadan pide, a type of pita bread bakers bake across Türkiye, especially in the month of Ramadan. It's common to see people standing in long queues to buy hot pides from neighbourhood bakery shops as the iftar time draws closer. 

“My grandmother used to send me to the local baker to buy a hot pide. After I brought it to the house, my grandmother would rub the natural Trabzon butter inside the hot pide and also put a piece of cheese inside it. Both butter and cheese would melt inside the pide,” Parizyanos explains. Trabzon is a northeastern province in Türkiye’s Black Sea region, famous for its natural food like butter, cheese and other milk-based products. 

“I would eat the pide with its melted cheese and butter with great pleasure. I can not forget that taste after many years. That was great. Even today, as a family, we always buy Ramadan pides. Such a tradition was born due to Ramadan,” he says. 

Buying pide is something Türkiye's Jews also like to do during Ramadan. 

“We are not fasting in Ramadan, but we also feel and live the Ramadan spirit. We also live it somehow. When I go shopping, I buy pide,” says Moris Levi, a leading member of Türkiye’s Jewish community.

Levi was also the former president of the Quincentennial Foundation, a Turkish-Jewish organisation devoted to celebrating their arrival in the erstwhile Ottoman Empire in the 15th Century. Türkiye is home to approximately 200,000 Christians and Jews, according to Levi.

From strong media coverage of Ramadan to adjusting office hours with the Ramadan schedule and lesser Istanbul traffic during iftar times, he says it would be impossible not to recognise Ramadan.

Waiting for Ramadan as a Jew

Since his childhood, Levi has waited for the arrival of every Ramadan just like Muslims. 

“Ramadan’s indeed our tradition too. It says a lot about our lives in Türkiye. When you hear certain things during Ramadan, you compare them with your own religion, finding that a lot of things are common whether they be Muslim or Jewish,” Levi tells TRT World. 

“You are living in an environment where everyone speaks about Allah (God), faith, and doing good. At the same time, people judge their acts during Ramadan,” he says. 

As a result, the spirit of Ramadan inspires Jews like Levi to go for self-reflection, a psychological inquiry into their conduct, says the 65-year-old Jewish community leader. 

“It can’t be denied. I have to say that,” he adds. 

Levi also finds similarities between Ramadan fasting and Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, which is the holiest day of the year, according to Jews, who fast to observe the importance of the event. Yom Kippur happens in either September or October. 

While Islam says that fasting in Ramadan would purify a person from his or her past sins, Jews also believe that they would be forgiven for their sins on Yom Kippur. As a result, both communities commit themselves to intense prayers to become better humans.

Levi remembers an interesting coincidence his grandparents, who were also natives of Balat like Parizyanos’s grandmother, went through back in the day. From the 16th Century until the early 20th Century, Balat hosted one of the biggest Jewish diasporas across the world. 

“My grandfather told me a very important recollection from his time in the early 1950s when a period of an intense Jewish prayer time called Selichot, which is held just before dawn preceding Yom Kippur, and Ramadan happened to be at the same time,” Levi explains. 

During Ramadan, Muslims have their midnight meal, called sahur, prior to dawn and they also pray after they have their food. Jews also do both eating and praying during the Selichot prayers which precede Yom Kippur. During his grandfather's time, when both the Ramadan sahur and Selichot prayers coincided, both communities ate and prayed simultaneously.  

For a mixed neighbourhood like Balat, located in Istanbul's picturesque Golden Horne, things were unimaginably intertwined in the early 1950s. 

“My grandfather told me that Jews prepared big tables in the gardens of their synagogues and Muslims were coming to share their food with Jews, eating together prior to dawn,” Levi says.

Ramadan iftars for everyone

A reflection of Levi’s grandfather’s memory can be found in today’s minority iftars, which bring together different faith-holders, from Greek, Syriac and Armenian Christians to Jews, for  Ramadan iftars. Every year since the 2000s, one of Türkiye’s minority faith communities hosts an iftar, inviting Turkish ministers and other notable Muslims to their tables to eat together and share their food, says Parizyanos. Ankara also hosted minority faiths at its iftar table. 

“As far as I remember, a very nice iftar was given at Phanar Greek Orthodox College the last time, prior to the pandemic,” says Parizyanos. Phanar College is the oldest Greek school in Istanbul established in 1454. “I was a speaker at that iftar, speaking about love and quoting one of Paul the Apostle’s sayings. That was a nice atmosphere, which Muslims and non-Muslims shared all together.” 

When he spoke about his speech at Phanar College iftar, Parizyanos instantly remembered how his grandmother was invited to Ramadan iftars by her Muslim neighbours in Balat. “She would go and share food with them.” Like Levi’s grandparents, Parizyanos’s grandparents also had iftars with their Muslim neighbours. 

“We are also nearly fasting,” says Sait Susin, the President of Istanbul Syriac Orthodox Church Foundation, referring to the Christian Syriac community’s respect for Muslim fasting. “I am at iftar tables for almost more than 15 days during Ramadan,” Susin tells TRT World. “As Muslims feel Ramadan, we also feel it like them,” says Susin.

The Syriac community’s long 50-day fasting also coincided with this year’s Ramadan, he adds. “We will celebrate our feast on April 24 as you will do your own feast of Ramadan a week after us.” 

The 75-year-old Syriac-Turkish businessman also praises that more Muslims greet Christians on events like Christmas in what appears to be an increasing trend.

Unlike Western culture’s emphasis on individualism, countries like Türkiye with strong connections with eastern civilisations still feel a collective spirit that can bring hundreds of people together on an iftar table, according to Susin. 

“Despite being Christian-majority countries, many churches in the Western world are nearly empty. When it comes to fasting and worshipping, we live them to the fullest in the Middle East,” he says.