N16Life Winter 2017
Italian cuisine coupled with a variety of other dishes from Europe We pride ourselves in producing high-quality food as well as creating a memorable experience for our customers. Come down to our restaurant in Wood Green today to see what all the talk is about! 185A High Road, Wood Green, London N22 6BA 020 8352 2486 • info@ezraskitchen.co.uk www.ezraskitchen.co.uk
COMMUNITIES OF HACKNEY Beyond kebabs: Hackney’s Turkish speakers by YASEMIN BAKAN Our part of London is home to a Turkish-speaking community more diverse than you might think. Two centuries-old faiths with links to Islam are practised here in vast numbers. The term “Turkish community” is widely used to describe the thousands of Turkish speakers who live in London today. But it is in fact an umbrella term that covers mainland Turks, Turkish Cypriots and Kurds – the latter of whom also speak the Kurmanji dialect of Kurdish – and nowhere in London better represents the capital’s Turkish-speaking diversity than Hackney. The first to settle in this part of the city were the Turkish Cypriots, who migrated here for work between the 1930s and 1950s. In the decades that followed, their presence expanded from Hackney to other regions, including Haringey and Enfield. Migration to the UK from mainland Turkey – in particular, the Anatolian peninsula – was barely noticeable until the 1970s, when increasingly larger number began to leave because of military interventions in Turkey. A further military coup in 1980, the deteriorating economic situation and, particularly from the 1990s, a rising conflict in southeast Turkey meant that many Kurdish-speaking Turkish citizens looked to Britain as their new home. Intellectuals, journalists, opposition figures, artists and poets were among the cream of Turkey’s Kurdish society who made the move to Hackney and other major European areas. Around 25,000 people in Hackney described themselves in the 2011 Census as speakers of Turkish as a main language, but the real number of speakers is sure to be higher. Over the past half century this community has overcome the largest barrier in its path – that of language – to set up its own businesses, community centres and associations. The Turkish-speaking community is particularly visible on Hackney’s Kingsland Road. From Stoke Newington to Dalston there are mosques, hairdressers and barbers, florists, estate agents, supermarkets, restaurants, law firms and other businesses that make the area feel like a little Turkey. But most of the owners of these businesses live outside Hackney, in places like Southgate, Enfield and Chingford. In the 1980s and 1990s, when Hackney was an important area for textiles, Turkish speakers had a major presence in the factories both as owners and as workers. It was after these factories closed down that the community began to concentrate on the food and drink sector instead. The community is also diverse on the question of faith. It is widely assumed that the vast majority – 98 per cent, by some counts – of Turkish speakers are Muslims, but this isn’t quite the entire picture. After Sunni Islam, one of the main religious groups is Alevism, which accounts for around 15-20 per cent of Turkey’s population. In Hackney, a majority of Turkish speakers are members of the Alevi faith. They are followers of Ali, the Prophet Muhammed’s brother-in-law, and practice a mystical faith that blends Islamic, Shaman and Sufi traditions. Unlike many other religions, they do not have many strict laws; instead, they observe love among humans, tolerance and the passing of knowledge from one generation to another by means of poetry. 19
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Italian cuisine coupled with a variety<br />
of other dishes from Europe<br />
We pride ourselves in producing high-quality food as well as creating a<br />
memorable experience for our customers. Come down to our restaurant<br />
in Wood Green today to see what all the talk is about!<br />
185A High Road, Wood Green, London N22 6BA<br />
020 8352 2486 • info@ezraskitchen.co.uk<br />
www.ezraskitchen.co.uk
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