Turkey is rife with urban legends about the kebab maker who slips donkey meat into his mince to lower costs or the sausage maker whose sucuk (spicy beef sausage) is actually made of horse meat. Turns out these tales are not just the product of the Turkish imagination, with recent inspections made by Turkey's Ministry of Agriculture indicating that several products found on supermarket shelves contain some very troubling ingredients.
The ministry's investigation first took aim at three brands of honey, which were selling at prices that seemed too good to be true. It turned out that what was being offered as honey was actually mostly glucose syrup. But the investigators' further discoveries were even more disturbing, turning up a "beef" product made of horse meat and several other meat products made with a kind of "white slime" (chicken bone and skin). From Today's Zaman:
The Food, Agriculture and Animal Husbandry Ministry has named six companies that its audits have discovered are deceiving customers by providing misleading information about the ingredients of the products.
In a written statement before the weekend, the ministry said laboratory analysis of the companies’ products had revealed that there was vegetable oil in “tulum” cheese, horsemeat in “fried beef,” white meat in “100 percent beef bologna” and undefined tissue as well as internal organs in “skinless sausages.”
Has the White House inadvertently stepped into one of the Mediterranean's oldest unresolved conflicts, namely: which country in the region gets to claim itself as the inventor of baklava?
The issue has been heating up over the last few years. In 2006, for example, Turkish makers of the flaky dessert were outraged when European Union tourism posters featured baklava as a, gasp, Cypriot invention. But the baklava battle has opened up a new front after a March 22 White House dinner in honor of Greek Independence Day. Although it was a closed affair, Maria Loi, a New York-based Greek chef who prepared the evening's dinner, told a Greek-American publication that President Barack Obama "loved baklava." Picked up by the Turkish press, the story became one of the President saying how much he loved "Greek baklava," leading to angry denunciations from columnists who suggested Obama brush up on his Balkan culinary history and that Loi's entire menu for the affair -- moussaka, stuffed grape leaves, Greek salad and the offending baklava -- was comprised of nothing more than Turkish dishes dressed up as Greek ones.
Worried about the Greeks claiming other cross-border staples as their own, some Turkish foodmakers are now taking preemptive action. Reports Turkey's Cihan news agency:
The İstanbul Simit Tradesmen Chamber has launched a process to get an international patent for the number one Turkish street food, the simit, a ring of chewy bread coated with toasted sesame seeds.
As previously reported on this blog, the discovery of what could be very large reserves of natural gas off the coast of Cyprus has led to increasing tension between the Greek Cypriots, who would like to reap the benefits of these finds, and Turkey, which says Cyprus cannot take advantage of its good luck until negotiations with the Turkish Cypriots over the divided island's status are resolved. The fact that the Cypriot find abuts a large gas field discovered by Israel, whose relations with Turkey have worsened dramatically in recent years, and that the energy company drilling in the Cypriot waters is American- and Israeli-owned, only complicates the picture.
Considering the potential for conflict surrounding the gas issue and inability of the Greek and Turkish Cypriots to make any progress in their reunification talks, the International Crisis Group has released a new report that suggests ways to prevent things from spiraling out of control. From the ICG's report:
A paradigm shift is needed. The gas can drive the communities further apart and increase discords, or it can provide an opportunity for officials from all sides, including Turkey, to sit down and reach agreements on the exploitation and transportation of this new find....
....Cooperation on the exploitation of significant gas finds, which Greek and Turkish Cypriot leaders agree are a common heritage, can help build confidence without prejudicing the eventual outcome of comprehensive talks. If the sides continue engaging in unilateral actions, tensions will rise, accidents will become more likely, and Turks and Greek Cypriots will be on course for a head-on collision in the eastern Mediterranean.
As anyone who has visited Turkey knows, the fruits and vegetables there taste, well, simply more like what fruits and vegetables should taste like. To anyone used to the mealy, flavorless tomatoes sold in American supermarkets, their first taste of a vine-ripened Turkish tomato is likely a revelation.
But a new report by Greenpeace's German branch could make that tomato and other Turkish fruits and vegetables a little less appetizing. From the Green Prophet blog:
Of 76 different fruits and vegetables recently evaluated, Turkish peppers contained the most excessive and dangerous amounts of pesticide chemicals, according to Food Without Pesticides, a new 26-page guide to European food released this week by Greenpeace Germany.
Turkish peppers topped the list of “most contaminated” produce in the guide, with an average of 24 chemical substances found in the specimens analyzed. In second place, with an average of 10 chemical substances, were Turkish pears. Nine chemical substances were found in Turkish pears, on average, putting them at third place.
Eleven different Turkish crops were rated, using 582 samples. The guide used a green/yellow/red light system to show its ratings, with a red light meaning that more than one-third of the samples had dangerous levels of chemicals in them.
After being grounded for several months following an unspecified digestive tract illness and subsequent surgery, the normally on-the-go Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan was back in action this week, with a trip that took him first to South Korea and then Iran. In both cases, the question of nuclear power -- that of Turkey and of others -- was high on the agenda.
While other issues, namely Syria, are on Erdogan's plate during his visit today to Tehran, the question of Iran's controversial nuclear program will clearly dominate his talks with the Iranians (among others, the Turkish PM is meeting with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and parliamentary speaker Ali Larijani). In the past, Erdogan had been accused of being too quick to defend the Iranians and the intentions of their nuclear activity, but there was some indication that time around he was coming to Tehran with a sterner message. Initial reports out of Iran, though, found Erdogan voicing support for a "peaceful" Iranian nuclear program. “No one has the right to impose anything on anyone with regards to nuclear energy, provided that it is for peaceful purposes,” Erdogan said during a press conference with Iranian First Vice President Mohammad Reza Rahimi.
The annual report of the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF), released this week, contained some fairly bad news for Turkey. The commission, a bipartisan federal watchdog that monitors religious freedom around the world, this year put Turkey on its list of "countries of particular concern" (CPC). That puts the NATO member, European-Union aspirant and stalwart NATO ally in the company of repressive countries such as Burma, Iran, Saudi Arabia, North Korea, and Uzbekistan, a "who's who of dictatorships and closed societies," as one report put it. “It’s no coincidence that many of the nations we recommend to be designated as CPCs are among the most dangerous and destabilizing places on earth,” USCIRF Chair Leonard Leo said in a statement. “Nations that trample upon basic rights, including freedom of religion, provide fertile ground for poverty and insecurity, war and terror, and violent, radical movements and activities.”
Needless to say, Turkish officials were not pleased with the USCIRF's downgrade (Turkey was previously on the commission's less damning "watch list"). Reports the Washington Post:
Turkey’s ambassador in Washington decried the decision.
“Any unbiased eye will immediately realize that that’s not where Turkey belongs in the USCIRF annual report,” said Ambassador Namik Tan.
Perfectly timed to coincide with the arrival of the Persian New Year celebration Nowruz (also called Nevruz in other parts of the region), the cooking and travel magazine Saveur has published a great article by chef Annisa Helou about a recent trip she took to Iran. From the article:
Iranian cooking is legendary in the realm of Middle Eastern food, and many dishes across that part of the world can trace their roots to Persian precedents: For example, take Morocco's fragrant tagines, relatives of Iran's khoresht stews, or the sweet-tart savory dishes whose distinctive flavor is achieved by cooking meat with fresh or dried fruit, which originated in Persia during ancient times. Persians brought their cuisine to the Indian subcontinent in the Middle Ages, and to this day the Persian and Hindi names for many dishes are nearly identical. (Persia is what the country was long known as in the west; in 1935, the Shah asked the international community to use the country's native name, Iran.)
The Persian Empire, which spanned with some interruptions from 550 BC to AD 651, was the greatest of the early civilizations; there were well-built roads from one end of the empire to the other, and caravansaries, or roadside inns, at regular intervals to provide shelter and food to travelers. Herodotus, the Greek historian, wrote that he was seduced by Persian food, and King Croesus of Lydia, an ancient land that is now part of Turkey, advised Cyrus the Great to lure troublesome tribes with "the good things on which the Persians live." Between the middle of the eighth century to the mid 13th century, the Abbasid Caliphate, an Arab-Muslim dynasty that encompassed swaths of the Middle East, North Africa, and parts of Spain and Portugal, hired Persian chefs to cook for the heads of state. As Islam tightened its hold on the region, Arabs adopted and adapted Persian cuisine.
As pointed out in a previous post on this blog, despite the March 12 release from jail (pending trial) of Nedim Sener and Ahmet Sik -- two high-profile journalists who had been imprisoned for over a year on coup-plotting charges -- serious concerns remain regarding freedom of expression and freedom of the press in Turkey.
Several news items from today only seem to highlight those concerns. In a very useful article, the Bianet website gives an excellent rundown of how many journalists in Turkey are still in jail (104 according to the article) and what they are charged with. As the article makes clear, most of the journalists are in jail due to Turkey's vague anti-terrorism laws which give prosecutors the ability to charge almost anyone with assisting or being part of a terrorist group. Case in point is today's news that Prof. Busra Ersanli, a respected political scientist who has been in jail for several months in connection with an investigation into Kurdish political organizing, will face charges of "leading a terrorist organization." The indictment against Ersanli also calls for charging Ragip Zarakolu, a well-known publisher who was jailed at the same time as the professor, with "aiding" a terrorist group. Both could face more than ten years in jail if convicted.
Throughout the Middle East and Mediterranean, donkeys are known as rugged, though stubborn, beasts of burden. But as a source of milk? According to Today's Zaman, the owner of Turkey's only donkey farm wants to get permission from the state to turn his stables into a dairy:
“Donkey's milk is the closest to breast milk and I have applied to the Health Ministry for permission to sell donkey milk for babies whose mothers do not have enough milk to feed them,” says the owner of the only donkey farm in Turkey.
According to an article in the Vatan daily, there is only one donkey farm in Turkey and it is in the northwestern province of Kırklareli. The farm is home to 180 donkeys, 172 of which are female donkeys. The owner of the farm, Ufuk Usta, who is also an instructor at Trakya University's Faculty of Medicine, says the fact that donkey's milk is the closest to woman's milk has been proven by scientists. “In Italy, [people] are allowed to sell donkey milk at markets. We have applied to the Health Ministry for permission to sell donkey's milk,” said Usta, highlighting that cow's milk may cause a baby to develop an allergy to protein. Yet, donkey milk has no such danger and since it is less fatty, it is easier to digest, he noted.
With financial sanctions against it getting tighter and tighter and the drums of war beating louder and louder, Iran appears to be getting proactive -- at least on the food front. As Reuters reports, Tehran is busy stockpiling grain in anticipation of the sanctions' effect on daily life. From the Reuters report:
Vessels carrying at least 360,000 metric tonnes (396,832 tons) of grain are lined up to unload in Iran, Reuters shipping data showed on Thursday, a sign that Tehran is succeeding in stockpiling food to blunt the impact of tougher Western sanctions.
Iran has been shopping for wheat at a frantic pace, ordering a large part of its expected yearly requirement in a little over one month and paying a premium in non-dollar currencies to work around toughened Western sanctions and avoid social unrest.
Food shipments are not targeted under western sanctions aimed at Iran's disputed nuclear program, but financial measures have frozen Iranian firms out of much of the global banking system.
Since the new year, some vessels had turned away from Iran without unloading after Iranian buyers were hit by a trade finance squeeze, but Thursday's data appears to show that shipments are now arriving successfully.
Meanwhile, this stockpiling is having the unintended consequence of helping American wheat growers and the US economy. As Reuters notes in another article, Iran's stockpiling includes buying large amount of wheat from the land of amber waves of grain:
