Turkish delight is not a dessert. If you presented it to your guests after a meal, they would be offended. It’s too small.
You should prepare something like:
Baklava
Künefe
or Kazandibi
After that you should bring Turkish coffee together with Turkish delight:
Now we are done!
Editor’s note: This guest post was written by Nicolas Nicolaides, an Istanbul-born Greek who moved to Athens in 1988. Nicolaides is a Ph.D. student in history at the University of Athens whose research focuses on the Karamanlılar (Greeks from Anatolia).
Once a resort town on the outskirts of the Greek capital, Phaleron – only a few miles from downtown Athens – is now well incorporated into the city’s urban fabric. The area has remained an upscale neighborhood, but, sadly, it has lost its distinctive character: the sea is now polluted, the open-air cinemas have been turned into parking lots, and many of the stately mansions were demolished to make way for apartment blocks during the construction boom of the 1960s.
One thing does remain unique about the neighborhood: it is home to Athens’ largest concentration of Constantinopolitans, or Greeks of Istanbul, known as İstanbul Rumları in Turkish. Despite living for centuries under Ottoman and then for several decades under Turkish rule, the Greek community had long insisted on staying in their beloved city. Nevertheless, in 1964, amidst the Cyprus dispute, Turkey began deporting Greek nationals residing in Istanbul; soon, those holding Turkish passports also began to leave, following their relatives. In the years to come, the community was to shrink to no more than 5,000 people in a city of almost 13 million. Searching for a place in Athens that would remind them of the city they left behind, the migrants settled in Phaleron; the seafront there was the ideal backdrop for the nostalgic expats to relive long walks along the shores of the Bosphorus.
Without a doubt, what the newcomers missed most was the food. Over the centuries, Constantinopolitan women had developed a highly exquisite cuisine reflecting the city’s cosmopolitan heritage. East and West mingled in their kitchens, where French techniques were used to master traditional Ottoman dishes. The Constantinopolitans found the Athenian culinary scene rather bland; in their nostalgia, everything in Istanbul had simply tasted better, while the Greek equivalents were of disappointingly poor quality.
An accidental system developed; if someone was going back to Istanbul, the news would travel fast and people would call and ask the traveler to pick up their pension money and bring them limon kolonyası (lemon cologne) to rub their backs, holy water from the Church of Our Lady of the Spring (Balıklı Kilise) to heal their illnesses and save their souls and, of course, lots of glorious food and ingredients! Luggage was stuffed with yufka (paper-thin sheets of unleavened dough, similar to Greek phyllo), Turkish delight, baklava, wheat kernels and roses. Wheat is the main ingredient in kollyva, a dessert served in 
church after the memorial service for the departed; of course, wheat could be found in Greece, but the Constantinopolitans didn’t like it. Meanwhile, roses from Istanbul are edible and were used to make a superbly aromatic gül reçeli(rose jam).
The shop owners of Phaleron soon found themselves having to fulfill the demands of their new clientele. The owner of a butcher’s shop in the neighborhood even had to go to Istanbul to be trained in how to finely slice meat, as he could not stand the Constantinopolitans’ constant complaints that he was chopping meat too coarsely. Over the years, many Constantinopolitans opened businesses of their own, and Phaleron became known for its elegant patisseries.
Among these patisseries is Riviera, owned by Stelios Karapiperis, who was born in Istanbul in 1948 and has been in the pastry business since he was 13. Before being deported to Greece, he had a successful career as a pastry chef working for three prestigious Istanbul pastry shops: Baylan, Tilla and Tatlıcılar. “I was trained as a pastry chef during the golden age of the Istanbulite patisseries; in those days, renowned Swiss pastry chefs used to come to Istanbul to give seminars to the trainees,” Karapiperis recalls. He opened his own pastry shop in Phaleron in 1978 and his son, Yannis, has followed him into the business. When Paskalya çöreği (Easter brioche) is being baked in Riviera’s ovens, the scent of mahlep (an aromatic spice made from cherry seeds) and mastic (an aromatic resin) wafts over the entire block. Riviera also makes very good ekmek tatlısı (a syrupy toasted bread dessert) and excellent profiterole, a dessert that has a tradition of its own in Istanbul.
Kostas and Christos Lemoncoğlu, the owners of Divan Patisserie, have succeeded where others failed, by creating kaymak, a special type of clotted cream, in Greece. Producing kaymak is a risky business, as the recipe calls for water buffalo milk, which is extremely scarce in Greece. They nevertheless found a way to make kaymak using sheep’s milk, with a taste very close to the original. Besides its kaymak, Divan is also known for its excellenttavuk göğsü (milk pudding made with chicken breast), kazandibi (tavuk göğsü with a thin, caramelized crust) and crispy, syrupy baklava. “A business can be called ‘Constantinopolitan’ only if its owners were born and raised in Istanbul. My pastry shop will stop being Constantinopolitan when I retire and my daughters 
take over. They were born and raised in Greece; they go to Istanbul only as tourists, carrying the memories of their parents and grandparents of an era that has been irreversibly lost,” Kostas Lemoncoğlu says.
The Lemoncoğlu brothers can be proud of their kaymak success, as there have been many other attempts to produce Turkish specialties in Greece and they have all failed. It was determined to be impossible to achieve the creamy, gluey texture of an authentic Turkish delight or to make yufka so thin as to be transparent; the Constantinopolitans blamed the Athenian water for the mediocre results and decided that it was better to import these items. The demand for Turkish yufka in Phaleron is so high that a guy even began smuggling yufka into Greece using his own network in Turkey; Constantinopolitan ladies would place orders with him and he would wait for them at a certain streetlight to provide them with their precious sheets of yufka dough.
Benito’s Delicatessen also caters to Phaleron’s demanding clientele. Benito Sangioni’s Italian father settled in the western Turkish city of Edirne before World War I to work for the Ottoman railways, and stayed in Turkey after falling in love with a local Greek girl. When the family moved to Istanbul, Benito started working in a delicatessen, where he met his future wife, Eudocia. They moved to Athens in 1979 and now run a delicatessen of their own, along with their grown sons Liborio and Apostolo. Turkish delight, dil peyniri (string cheese), yufka, Turkish black tea, Efes Pilsen beer and spicy pickles are all imported from Turkey. Their sucuk (spicy sausage) and pastırma (spiced dried, aged beef) are in fact sourced from within Greece, as local charcuteries run by Armenians – themselves Ottoman-era refugees from what is now Turkey – make sucuk and pastırma of exceptional quality. Eudocia has also introduced her own line of products, 
including taramasalata (fish roe dip), savory pie made with pastırma, and yalancı dolma (rice-stuffed grape leaves); her silky baba ghanoush (eggplant dip), with its distinctive charred flavor, is renowned.
These days, Phaleron even has a new Turkish restaurant, Aialis, a little taverna opened about four years ago by Angelica Vingas, who emigrated from Istanbul in the early 1980s. To keep things authentic, she imports lakerda (pickled raw fish), yufka, red pepper paste and pickles from Turkey. Some of the traditional delicacies on Angelica’s menu are piyaz fasulye (bean salad), mantı(meat dumplings) and hünkar beğendi (“sultan’s delight”), an eggplant purée.
I was born in Istanbul and grew up in Phaleron myself; even though I moved out of the area a long time ago, each visit back to the neighborhood is an edible walk down memory lane for me. For us transplanted Istanbulites, memory goes hand in hand with food, as cuisine is so much a part of our identity. Every time we visit one of these shops in Phaleron, all these familiar foods are suddenly transformed into exhibits in our very own Museum of Innocence.
Riviera Patisserie Address: Tritonos 119, Palaio Faliro Telephone: +30 210 982 6670 Web: http://www.riviera.gr Divan Patisserie Address: Naïadon 51-53, Palaio Faliro Telephone: +30 210 982 1927 Benito Delicatessen Address: Thetis 22, Palaio Faliro Telephone: +30 210 983 7677 Aialis Café & Meze Address: Alkionis 24, Palaio Faliro Telephone: +30 212 100 3311 (photos by Manteau Stam)– See more at:
Vanessa AndrisLeadership and Organization Effectiveness Consultant; Executive Coach, World Bank Group
It is not at all unreasonable that any intelligent person trying to make sense of Greece’s recent maniacal antics is now desperately asking, “What is this, a banana republic?”
Well my friend, no, not exactly. This is a Baklava Republic.
Welcome to a country stuck in its own syrup. A place where a prime minister, Mr. Papandreou, calls for a public referendum on a bailout deal without even notifying the finance minister who has spent months negotiating the deal with the lenders and his fellow Greek ministers. A republic where one egomaniac, Antonis Samaras, can autocratically hold an entire terrified nation and trembling world markets hostage by refusing to sign an agreement- which he publicly says he agrees to.
Greece, a country which a year ago seemed centuries ahead of the Arab Spring is now regressing so quickly into the most hideous practices of Baklava Republics that any kind of spring for them seems light years away.
The Greeks have exasperated their supporters and all but exhausted even the EU, the stakeholder with maybe the most to lose from their demise. They have displayed such primitive responses to difficulties that no one in the global community really wants to deal with them anymore.
In one year, and particularly in the last month of unpredictable counter-productive episodes, the Greeks have virtually alienated themselves from the civilized world they themselves fathered centuries ago.
If you think that what Sarkozy and Obama said about Netanyahu while their microphones were on was bad, imagine what they and the EU and IMF might rightfully be saying about the Greeks. And note the Baklava parallels between the Greek and Israeli leadership, starting with a lack of transparency and ending with complete impossibility.
Since the debt crisis began, we have watched our beloved Greece, dizzy with fatigue and despair, teetering on the fulcrum of its future, leaning first northwest like an insecure sophomore posturing to fit in with the polished seniors of the EU.
Then suddenly like all people under stress, reverting to her primal training on how to survive. Swooning now east to circle around the Mediterranean tragically re-identifying herself with cousins from ancient civilizations that have made minimal progress in their development; Turkey, Iran, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Israel, Palestine, Jordan, Egypt, and even Libya.
These are the Baklava Republics, a continuum of countries related by variations on one pastry, characterized by a pathetic lack of process skills, rule of law as it serves individual agendas, leaders incapable and disinterested in self-regulation, and proud of their willingness to destroy any and everything in the name of defending their dignity.
A string of countries differentiating themselves from the rest of world with a combination of primary commitment to face-saving, a need to create drama, and a defiance of reality so insanely illogical and destructive that people world-wide see them as nuts.
Not sure whether a given country could be considered a Baklava Republic? Here’s a litmus test: Are the leaders instantly insulted by anything that can be construed as questioning their honesty or good intentions? Is their best defense acting as if they have been monumentally offended? Do they regularly elevate issues to fight or flight dramas?
From Samaras to Ahmadinejad, we see the masters of Baklava Republic tactics regularly enact a predictable but no less maddening three-act drama.
Act One: Outrage: A question about duplicitous behavior is met with incredulous anger; “You dare to question me?”
Act Two: Arrogance: “You have insulted me and anyone who would be so ill-mannered is so far beneath me that they are unworthy of my cooperation.”
Act Three: Threat: “I am a victim, rightfully volatile now because of your behavior. Either provide me a face-saving way to get out of this or I will sabotage this process, set fire to the whole country, commit mass invasions, and/or make my child a suicide martyr. It’s dignity or death.” (Additional Baklava Republic specialty: Add concocted conspiracy theory and implication that the alleged perpetrator is evil, sinful, or crazy to Act Two).
When I recently suggested a commonality among these countries to a senior IMF economist who had told me that Greece’s books were in worse shape than those of a Third World country, the idea of a geographic region of Baklava Republics was immediately dismissed. “No. Turkey is doing quite well.”
Huh? Boy does Ergodan have you right where he wants you…and right where the Greeks had you when they and you wanted them to join the EU.
Turkey under Ergodan has become the most sweetly disguised of the Baklava Republics. The reason that the world assumes Turkey has evolved from being a banana or Baklava state is because Ergodan controls the media, and therefore, in true face-saving fashion, manipulates the profile of Turkey that the outside world sees.
But once you cut through the honeyed layers, you see that Ergodan’s autocratic domination and disregard for rule of law is only degrees different from that of Gaddafi, Mubarak, Assad, Hussein, Ahmadinejad, and Samaras; just better polished to look more politically correct. In some countries Baklava is made with walnuts; in others pistachios or almonds. But nut varieties aside, baklava is baklava.
Park for a moment the notions that Ergodan has sold the world through his public relations campaign and ask three citizens on the streets of Istanbul what they think about Ergodan. All will tell you what they told me:
“We are afraid of him. Every day he is increasingly limiting the rights of individuals. Ergodan rule is replacing the rule of law with whatever suites his agenda from Islam tradition and his own ambitions. He is embedding human rights violations into our culture and using intimidation to prevent us from speaking up. Internet is controlled. He has been holding hundreds top level journalists, academics, and scientists in jails for over a year without even charging them.”
If that is not enough to convince you that Ergodan is deceiving world powers or seducing them enough to collude with him about the validity of his economic standing for their own purposes (one of which Greece did with the EU), here is the clincher I hear repeatedly from Turkish citizens: “Don’t believe that our economy is booming. Ergodan makes up the numbers, releases them to the press he controls, and here in Turkey things are not good.”
Independent data confirms that Turkey is not only not above any of the Baklava Republics but may be one of the worst. Asli Gurkan of the World Bank writes, “Despite Turkey’s successes in macroeconomic stability and poverty-reduction, the participation of women in economic life is abysmal. Turkey was among the lowest scoring countries in the 2010 World Economic Forum Gender Equality Gap Report and scored 126th out of 134th in the UNDP Gender Inequality Index. What is more worrisome is that women’s economic participation rates have been declining in the last decade.”
Research on domestic violence and violence against women in Turkey by the General Directorate of the Status of Women states that 41.9 percent of the women in Turkey face physical and sexual violence, 49.9 percent of women in lower income groups are being victimized and 28.7 percent in higher income families.
Last week Turkey’s parliament became the first national assembly to ratify the new Council of Europe “Convention on preventing and combating violence against women and domestic violence.” Now let’s hope that signing a treaty actually translates into change.
Turkey also needs to demonstrate greater respect for human right related to religious tolerance. After expressing concern about restrictions on freedom of expression, U.S. Vice-President Joe Biden, visiting Turkey this week stated that the continued closure of the Halki Theological School that trained generations of Greek Orthodox patriarchs “is an anomaly and an unnecessary mark against Turkey’s international image.”
The best that can be said about Turkey now is that it is in a state of opportunity with a leader who is competent in managing both internal and external affairs. Whether Ergodan will bring integrity to the image of Turkey he is projecting or just continuously improve his skill at hiding the truth remains to be seen.
On the other side of the Aegean, the only thing left separating Greece from the rest of the Baklava Republics is that Greece is not yet guilty of a history of violating human rights. Perhaps this is a line that the fathers of democracy can never cross. But if Greece does not remain in the EU and basic resources become acutely scarce, as may now be inevitable EU or no EU, the impulse to manage desperately violent people by means bordering on human rights violations will surface.
Time will tell if this will happen and if even approaching this boundary of behavior will shock the Greeks into gaining some self-control. Or if, since we are talking baklava, why bother avoiding the obvious metaphor, Greece will crumble into bite-size morsels to be eaten by duplicitous Turkey and others awaiting her demise.
By JOE PARKINSON And AYLA ALBAYRAK
ISTANBUL—Europe’s multibillion-euro bailout of Greece has been making headlines on a daily basis. Less noticed was a Turkish bailout last week of an Athens institution: sweet seller Baklavas Epe.
Greeks and Turks have bickered for centuries over which nation makes the better baklava, a sticky-sweet dessert of layered pastry devoured in huge quantities across the eastern Mediterranean and the Middle East. But for the past 10 years, Turkey’s best-known producer, businessman Nadir Gullu, has been supplying Greece’s closely held Baklavas Epe, which operated five stores in Athens. He provided about two tons of baklava and other Turkish sweets per month.
Old rivalries aside, Athenians lapped them up—until, that is, they ran out of cash.
Baklavas Epe’s most profitable shop is on Athens’s landmark Syntagma Square. Before the crisis, tourists and locals queued up in droves to buy the pastries. But as the government embarked on a severe austerity program to reduce its debt burden and qualify for international support, demand sank.
Baklavas Epe closed three of its five stores in Athens as sales dropped. Meanwhile, it ratcheted up close to €160,000 (about $226,000) in debt for deliveries of sweets from across the Aegean Sea, according to the company. Plunging revenue made it impossible for Baklavas Epe to finance baklava purchases from Istanbul.
“Baklava has become a luxury. Think about it: Three kilos of minced beef costs the same as one kilo of baklava,” said a company spokesman. (A kilogram is about 2.2 pounds.)
In Turkish newspapers, Mr. Gullu, the owner of Karakoy Gulluoglu, a well-known baklava shop near the shores of the Bosporus in Istanbul, said the Greeks should pay their debts within a year and the business relationship was in jeopardy.
With elevated wage costs and sporadic vandalism amid protests over austerity measures adding to its woes, Baklavas Epe said it needed more time. Besides, it said, Mr. Gullu in public comments had exaggerated the amount of the debt. In short, it didn’t look good for business and friendship in the Greek-Turkish baklava trade.
[BAKLAVA]
But after the partners met last week to discuss a possible resolution, they reported a deal that would preserve and even expand their business ties. Under terms of the deal, Karakoy Gulluoglu will continue to supply Baklavas Epe and extend its loan financing for three more years. The firms will also embark on a new joint-venture coffee shop in Athens, which is scheduled to open in September.
The thinking is that if Athenians can’t afford to buy a kilo of baklava to take home anymore, maybe they can afford a few pieces to have with a coffee, the Baklavas Epe spokesman said.
Mr. Gullu says his own business, which has expanded dramatically in recent years to sell baklava and Turkish sweets in 85 countries, including the U.S., is in a position to extend the loans. “I told them, ‘it’s OK, keep paying slowly,’ ” Mr. Gullu said in an interview. “We are doing this for our friendship and for Turkish moral pride.”
The Baklavas Epe spokesman said both companies remained positive about their relationship and about the potential for the Greek economy to bounce back. “I don’t believe that Greece will stay like this because Greeks love life,” he said.
Mr. Gullu’s decision to extend his partner’s credit line is indicative of an improvement in relations between Greece and Turkey, particularly in the business community, since a pair of earthquakes drew them together in 1999. Turkish-Greek trade increased steadily until it reached around $3.6 billion in 2008, falling back to $3 billion last year amid the global economic slowdown, according to figures from the Turkish statistics agency Turkstat.
Mr. Gullu says Turks are no strangers to the pains of austerity, having negotiated their most recent International Monetary Fund bailout package in 2002 after a banking crisis the year before roiled the economy. Turkish businesses could use cash flow from their country’s booming economy to invest in Greece if it makes business sense, he added.
“We’ve suffered economic crises here in Turkey before so we understand the problems Greeks are going through….We will find a solution to this sticky situation,” he said.
via Baklava Bailout: How Turkey Helped Greece’s Sweet Tooth – WSJ.com.
