By what logic did Greeks steal Turkish food?
Posted by reriser@reddit | AskBalkans | View on Reddit | 34 comments
Turkish food, authentic one, consists of steppe dishes, such as beşbarmak, made of mostly horse meat. Greek cuisine is nothing like that.
Renandstimpyslog@reddit
It's plagiarism. What they do is; they take a very stereotypical Turkish/Ottoman court-recipe (they are less knowledgable about regional dishes) and add the "Greek" epitaph to it without a single reference to its origins. If they have to elaborate; it's always the dish having Byzantine origins despite ingredients being tomatoes, potatoes, eggplants etc and us having steppe roots; conveniently forgetting that Ottoman court was big, rich and very invested in culinary arts. They do the same with very obvious middle eastern/arabic food as well.
Also, they almost always produce a lower quality, bland version of the original, it adds insult to injury. A very typical example is baklava and its cousin desserts. Greek versions are simply terrible.
Turkish cuisine is a small but important part of our culture and our brand as a touristic country, most of us don't like it when others poke their noses into it.
lo-Pear@reddit
I live in NYC and all the Turkish restaurants here are extremely low class and serve very mid food. Greek restaurants are high end/ fine dining with sophisticated plates and beautiful interior decor. So saying they are lower quality than the Turkish “originals” is a bit much. Also its obvious Turkish food has Greek, Persian and Arab influences
Special-Ambassador65@reddit
Turks aren't descended from steppe nomads in their majority. They have their own specifically anatolian blend of anatolian (and the surrounding regional peoples) and later arriving turkic nomads. So the anatolian turkish culture could just be what they produced in the 1000 years they've existed. I don't even agree with the greeks stole turkish food claim, but there's nothing inherent in it that's impossible because they're just steppe nomads. It could be what was produced in the Ottoman palace cuisine or whatever. But it's still a nonsense idea, 'stealing food'.
shogunlazo@reddit
Most people in modern turkey are not Turkic, but infact the locals, Greeks, Armenian, Romans, circassians, slavs ... Just Muslim, when you take a land it's the nobility and ruling class that changes, the people for the most part stay the same.
Special-Ambassador65@reddit
If you could read english that's in large part what I said.
trueitci@reddit
How do you even think those people ended up at Anatolia? If you are not a Hattian then you are not autochthonous in Anatolia and according to your disastrous argumentation one is not what they claim to be because they are actually a Hattian since the Hattians were the autochthonous people unlike the Turks, Greeks, Armenians and the others. Call the Turks and the others Hattic at least, that way you won't be self-contradictory even if you're still not right. The prevalence of this argument is one of the biggest realizations that people speak without really thinking.
shogunlazo@reddit
Yes the same people of the Hittites flower into the helenic period into the Roman into the ottoman ... I'm very aware of this
trueitci@reddit
First off I didn't mention the Hittites, it's the Hattians and they predate the Hittites. Secondly, what I did was simply showcase what your argumentation entailed. I didn’t mean that Turks encountered the Hattians (or Hittites as you say) when they arrived in Anatolia. Let me dumb it down for you:
This "reasoning" of yours is flawed in a logical sense since
1) Greeks and Armenians were once newcomers and they established their political structures just as Turks did.
2) You claim that "when you take a land it's the nobility and ruling class that change, the people for the most part stay the same." If we apply this exact reasoning to the people that you accuse Turks of being they shouldn’t be what they claim to be either (let alone the Turks) since they are not autochthonous to the peninsula.
3) Hattians were autochthonous people unlike all the others hence they didn’t take any land. They just stayed where they were all along until their absorption by Indo-Anatolian/Indo-European speakers.
4) All the people mentioned above should be originally and actually Hattic for all the "reasons" listed.
shogunlazo@reddit
Yes, it still stands what I said, one group into the other and so on and so on ... I'm really trying to understand what you're trying to argue here ?
trueitci@reddit
That you're contradicting yourself. This is what I have been saying. And not really interested in explaining it all over again. It's all written in the previous comment
Embarrassed_Egg9542@reddit
Well, the Greeks didn't even change the Turkish name in baclava, lukum, tzatzik, etc.
ayayayamaria@reddit
Cacik is an Armenian word
Angeronus@reddit
It is not completely illogical that we kept the Turkish names if you think about it. Especially the Greeks living in Asia Minor -the "Rums" as you call them very often- had Turkish as their first language, so they adopted the Turkish names for that food too. Under those conditions, i wouldn't be surprised that they would have chosen a Turkish name even if they were the ones who first made them (i am not saying that we made them first, just "if"). When centuries passed and we got our own country, those names were just too popular and widespread to be changed.
PS: Ironically enough, the names that you described as "Turkish" are not all exactly Turkish though, are they? Maybe baklava is, but lukum is Arabic and the origin of tzatzik is debatable. I am sure this is the case with other names too.
TwoFistsOneVi@reddit
Here are some Croatian dishes:
Zagrebacki odrezak - a version of Cordon Bleu
Pastasuta - a version of pasta e fagioli
Fritule - a version of venetian fritelle
Paprikas - a version of Hungarian paprikas
Kremsnita - a version of French mille feuille
Brudet - a version of Italian brodetto
etc.
Does this mean that Croatia stole all these dishes?
Of course not. Nobody stole those dishes. It just means that the local and regional cuisines were heavily influenced by neighbouring countries, which, at one point in history, also conquered those parts.
chunek@reddit
This reminds me of we can eat goulash with gnocchi and it feels very homely, familiar, and Slovenian.
Zealousideal_Cry_460@reddit
You have a crooked view of what Turkish food entails.
Turks were semi-nomadic. Not full nomadic. We still had cities, literature and intricate art & practices.
Which also includes agriculture and making of pastries.
Take Baklava for example. The origin of Baklava can be traced back to its ancient form which we call "Güllaç", today.
"Güllaç" was a more primitive form of baklava, in fact it was most likely even called "Baklağu" (the old name for Baklava) since "Güllaç" was the name persians coined for the dish by using the -laç suffix from Turkish.
And it was prepared using milk, a holy ingredient for Turkic peoples since it was vital for survival on the steppes.
Börek also was invented most likely in the steppes, just like "Kıbın" (also known as poğaça/mantı). There are lots of delicatesses and dishes that were invented in the steppes that are eaten by people outside of Turkey in central asia & siberia.
To suggest or insinuate that we couldnt have possibly invented those dishes ourselves because "look at us we primitive horde beings" is just disrespectful on a whole 'nother level.
Or take yoghurt for example.
Greek Yoghurt, which was called "Oxygala" btw, was a watery, sour tasting yoghurt.
They used to thicken it by mixing nuts & honey with it and to neutralize the sour taste.
İt is nothing like the yoghurt they sell today as "greek yoghurt" because "greek yoghurt", is just turkish yoghurt strained of its whey liquids.
Plus we have documentations of these things, why are we even arguing about Baklava & Yoghurt when records clearly say that Baklava was first made in the ottoman kitchens and high-fat yoghurt was brought by Turks?
Greeks have their very own cuisine thats backed by archives, why dont they stick to that? Thats the wuestion you should ask yourself.
So name me a dish that you think is unlikely for Turks to have invented it and İ'll explain how it came to be
Substantial-Poet4593@reddit
Veggie curry? :)
Zealousideal_Cry_460@reddit
Dammit
Embarrassed_Egg9542@reddit
Because they can.
Greece is in the EU, so they trademarked most of "their" products in the union. Turkey missed joining EU because of invasion of Cyprus, Islam and the typical Turkish policy to be friends with everybody.
YpogaTouArGrease@reddit
:D
AsterianosD@reddit
that's the entire trade mark argument. how different can something be to be classed as unique?
and if we are going to be nit-picky about what is Greek and what is Turkish from ancient / medieval times... can we also point out that Greece and Turkey didn't exist then ? it would have been either Byzantine/ Eastern Roman, Ottoman / Seljuk.
Substantial_Record_3@reddit
1 word, rembetykas
ChaosKeeshond@reddit
They didn't.
Borders are imaginary political concepts which move constantly. We just don't grasp that because we exist in a time where they've been slightly stable for a few decades.
Besides, the Greeks took baklava and added pistachios to it, which Turks then start doing as well. They've contributed enough to our food to be co-authors if they want.
Zealousideal_Cry_460@reddit
Nah
28483849395938111@reddit
Yah
Feidhlim_de_Rovno@reddit
Before 1921 there were lots of Greeks in Western and Northern Anatolia and lots of Turks in Thrace and Macedonia. How could they not intersect in their cuisines? The characterisation of Turkish food as steppe one is primitive: it probably had been up to 14th century, but has changed a lot since then. The food in different parts of Turkiye is quite different: ranging from Iranic (most kebabs, rice), Arabian (wrapped kebabs, humus, meze), Georgian (pide) or Greek (halloumi, salads, olive usage, filo pastry) influence. Many Greek dishes like gyros would never appear without Turkish influence too. And horse meat is far from prevalent in most regions of Turkiye
bennyblanco1978@reddit
🤣🤣🤣 wait till you learn Turk's also stole food from others
trueitci@reddit
Oghuz offshoots across the world dont consume horse meat. You have a stereotype in your mind about what steppe culture might be so you set that as your standard. Not to mention that you don't even consider the possibility of new foods being created within 1000 years. Turks didn't step into Anatolia last week.
As for your question the greatest indicators are that most or many of them:
1) Are present in Ottoman cultural sphere. 2) Have traces in Azerbaijan or Central Asia or early Turkic and Chinese literature. 3) Have Turkish names.
Potential-Tale2198@reddit
Mantı,shish kebab,börek also steppe turkish food you can also found these in china where uighur people livd
PlamenIB@reddit
That “Balkan food” topic is quite weird. How does the food has nationality? We all have the same dishes but prepare the different. Especially the salads- Shopska salad and Greek salad are basically the same thing but we put sunflower oil and the Greeks put olive oil, lutenitza and ajvar are the same thing but ours has lots of tomatoes and meanwhile the ajvar has lots of peppers. I still don’t understand that “national dish” concept. We live in the same region and we have the same producs.
TheSunflowerSeeds@reddit
Using an instinctive action called Heliotropism. Also known as ‘Solar Tracking’, the sunflower head moves in synchronicity with the sun’s movement across the sky each day. From East to West, returning each evening to start the process again the next day. Find out more about how this works, and what happens at the end of this phase.
kyzylkhum@reddit
Beşparmak is not Turkish. However Turkish cuisine is full of dishes that have their analogs in other Turkic countries all the way to the Uyghur country in China, whereas you can't find anything similar to Turkish food when you take one step outside the historically Ottoman influenced area. Imo Turkish cuisine has much more influence from Persian and Arab neighbors than any European country. Besides if you look into it carefully, you'll see we don't do name rebranding, a number of salt water fish have names of Greek origin in Turkish, and that should come across as no surprise, but you see that's about it
deleted_by_reddit@reddit
[removed]
osumanjeiran@reddit
I think you're reading too much into the internet bullshit. Nothing more natural than neighboring countries having similar food