Piling out the side of the Student Activities Office before a celebration of Turkish culture, many Boston University students said they wished they had made prior reservations to catch a glimpse inside the gymnasium, filled with balloons bearing the red and white colors of Turkey’s flag.
The BU Turkish Student Association’s first Turkish Culture Night drew more than 100 people from BU and the Boston community who came to enjoy Turkish food, music and dancing.
“The hope for this event is to represent and display our culture,” said TSA founder Mehtap Yilmaz, a Graduate School of Arts and Sciences student. “We believe that there is a lot of misconception about Turkey since we are the only secular Muslim country, and we would like to demonstrate the modern place of Turkey for students and the community.”
While attendees ate kisir salads and feta-cheese- and parsley-filled borek, artists performed traditional and new-age Turkish music and dance, closing the celebration with a classic belly-dance performance. Mavi Dance, a nationwide cultural dance company based in Boston, performed group dances in Turkish attire to represent Turkey’s past.
“We make sure to be as accurate as we can when we perform dances at cultural events,” said Mavi Dance member Giorgi Shanidze of Georgia after the event. “I know that it was mostly Turkish people in the audience today, but hopefully, there were some people who enjoyed a kind of dance they had never seen before.”
TSA raffled off items, including Turkish Delight and free haircuts at Leeba’s Salon in Boston.
Musical performers Kivanc Oner and Emre Yilmaz also played guitar in a style popular in modern Turkey.
“I really enjoyed the guitar music we heard tonight,” said College of General Studies sophomore Tabitha Ozturk. “I had to wait in line for a while because I did not make a reservation beforehand, but in the end, it was definitely worth it.”
Yilmaz said she hopes the culture night will be larger next year.
“There are a lot of Turkish students at BU and in the area, and we hope that they will all make it out next time,” she said. “We did our best posting flyers around town and using Facebook to promote the event, but our hope is that next year, we can be sure everyone knows that this is happening.”