Don’t miss an extraordinary journey that will immerse you in the magic of dance and the splendor of Anatolia. “Fire of Anatolia,” Turkiye’s premier dance ensemble, is touring the United States in celebration of the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Republic of Turkiye. Experience the elegance and dynamism of Anatolian dance like never before.
October 28, Saturday
Washington DC / Lisner Auditorium
Seats are filling up fast! Purchase your ticket today>
Don’t miss out! The Turkish Festival is this Sunday, October 15th.
It’s free to enter!
For more information visit: turkishfestival.org
*Turkish Festival is brought to you by the American Turkish Association of Washington DC
Join Us at the Festival: We’re Creative Edge Media Group, and we’re honored to be a Gold Sponsor of the festival. Make sure to visit our tent!
Networking Table: Don’t forget to bring a stack of business cards to our Business Exchange table. Leave yours and take a moment to pick up others’ cards—it’s a simple and effective way to broaden your professional connections, all at no cost!
I’m half Azeri and half Turk, is it a good idea for me to move to Glendale, California where the Armenian population is large?
Glendale has about 200K population. Armenians make up the single largest ethnic community accounting for 40% of the city population. So, that means you statistically have a higher chance of encountering a non-Armenian than an Armenian but clearly you will inevitably stumble upon them.
Of course, not all Armenians hate Azerbaijanis and Turks. I have heard some Azerbaijanis and Armenians making friends or at least maintaining good relationship in LA though such cases are much fewer and rarer than in Moscow, for example. Yet, generally, the Armenian diaspora in the US is known for harboring more animosity towards Azerbaijanis&Turks than other groups of Armenians. Therefore, chances are very high that your car dealer, servant in the restaurant, cashier in the mall, agent at DMV might raise his/her eyebrows as soon as he/she knows you are an Azerbaijani/Turk. Especially, given the war of the last year, within both Azerbaijani and Armenian communities, emotions still run very high. (In July of 2020, Armenians protesting in front of the Azerbaijani consulate in LA had attacked a small group of Azerbaijanis having gathered for a counterprotest. In the same period, some Azerbaijanis living in LA had received threatening messages in their socmed accounts).
If you are a single person, you can still overlook these things and live even though you might find yourself in a row with some locals esp if you are a man. Glendale is considered one of the safest, cleanest places to live in the LA area. However, if you have a family and your kid should attend a local school, then, I would be very worried. The youth branch of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation – Armenian Youth Foundation is quite active within the Armenian-American diaspora. Through their activities, they help channel ethnic hatred to the young Armenians (though they are not the only channel of hatred transmission). That might mean most likely bullying for your kid at school. I would no way take that risk.
All in all, I wouldn’t feel comfortable knowing I am surrounded by some people who don’t like me just because of my ethnicity. LA is gigantic. Sure, there are many other districts to settle in.
Mount Athos is a peninsula in northern Greece (in the geographical region of Macedonia). It is home to 20 Orthodox Christian monasteries and administratively it is an autonomous polity, governed by a Holy Community consisting of representatives of those monasteries. Civil authority is represented by a Civil Governor appointed by the Foreign Ministry of Greece.
A fresco with Saint Mercurius and Artemius of Antioch.
In terms of culture, however, Mount Athos retains many Byzantine traditions & items and indeed some commentators have stated that it is like a place ‘frozen in time’. The Mount operates under a charter granted by Emperor Ioannes Tzimisces in 972. Byzantine cultural and religious practices are retained in those monasteries, most of which were built between the 10th and 15th centuries and are scattered over the heavily forested, hilly peninsula. They posses many medieval art treasures, including liturgical objects and vestments, Christian texts, Byzantine imperial chrysobulls (decrees), icons and holy relics. As such, one can say that Mount Athos is still Byzantine in a way.
Didem Korkmaz on Quora answers the question as follows:
Some Turkish people are big admirers of the Ottoman Empire and in fact would prefer to bring it back. I’m thinking of a large portion of the current Turkish government Akp’s supporters. They often carry a flag of the Ottoman sultan’s tughra, call themselves Evlad-ı Osmanlı (the child of Ottoman) and fully or partially reject the Republic of Turkey. Oddly enough these people are also the ones who know the least about the Ottoman Empire or simply refuse the truth they know. Just to give one example, 8 out of 10 Evlad-ı Osmanlı I come across are xenophobic nationalists and/or totally intolerant of different religions and/or dislike “the West” and what they call “white Turks.” But the Ottoman Empire was much more multicultural than Turkey is today, there were a lot more people from different religions, and a pretty high number of the Sultans they admire had European genes, so they were white Turks. In other words they don’t love the real Ottoman Empire, they love what they created in their minds as the Ottoman Empire which is very different than the reality.
For the rest, the Ottoman Empire is history; we like and feel grateful for some things they have done for paving our way, enjoy some stories from that era, cherish the architecture and inventions (personally speaking, especially food.) We also dislike some other things they have done and wished it was different.
In the end, it’s history. The Ottoman Empire was doomed to fall like every other empire. Our grandfathers and grandmothers built a more modern, democratic country from the ashes of the Ottoman Empire and I’m proud to call myself one of the Cumhuriyet Çocukları, the children of the Republic.
