Turkish traditions

The 15-acre Turkish cultural festival that began its weekend run at the Orange County Fair and Events Center on Thursday took six months and more than $1 million to create, organizers said, but the most important ingredient — the spice of the bazaar — is the people.

Walking through the gates of the festival and into the main staging area, you are surrounded by colossal blown-up photographs of historical locales from the region of Anatolia — the ancient region that is now modern-day Turkey. The pictures of famous mosques, palaces and villages are affixed to 3-D structures made of wood, vinyl and metal.

The exhibit was built over months in Turkey, shipped to California in 35 days and erected in 10 days with crews working around the clock.

Although the structures are the most distinctive element of the festival and the one that clearly took the most time and effort, the food and entertainment make the atmosphere.

Dozens of small booths with homemade Turkish cuisine made, sold and served by Turkish volunteers surround the main plaza.

The foods are exotic to a palette not accustomed to Middle Eastern cuisine, but the dishes are essentially the region’s equivalent of comfort food. A few of the signature dishes are kofte (ground meat and finely chopped onions rolled into a bulgur wheat dough and fried), gozleme (a moist, flat bread that is a staple of Turkish cuisine) and kebabs.

Orange County certainly doesn’t have a Turkish population the size of New York City’s, but there are a relatively large number of Turks in the county. About 10,000 of California’s 40,000 Turks live in the area, mostly in Irvine, according to Atilla Kahveci, the vice president of the Pacifica Institute — the nonprofit organization that put on the festival to showcase Turkey’s heritage.

On Thursday afternoon, many of the guests were Turkish, but Kahveci says the festival is also a big draw among Greeks, Armenians and other ethnicities from the same region of the world.

“All of these cultures are enveloped together. They share a lot of things,” he said.

For some Turkish transplants, the festival has a nostalgic feeling. Seren Senkaya, a master’s student living in Seattle, came down just for the event.

When Senkaya stood on the grassy field surrounded by the giant panoramic photographs of her native town Thursday morning, she was touched.

“There were many people that were in tears because they miss their cities,” she said.

Like the vast majority of volunteers, Senkaya is an amalgam of two very different cultures and has a strong desire to share her heritage with the passing crowd.

The amiable and hospitable woman wears a head scarf and has a strong accent, but speaks English with complete fluency and relishes the opportunity to teach people about Turkey.

At another corner of the festival, a group of musicians playing traditional instruments serenaded a small group of people dancing with arms locked.

The sour, exotic sounds of the zurna, a wind instrument that looks like a cross between a trumpet and a clarinet, cut sharply through the Eastern rhythms of the davul, a hand-held drum and the harmonies of a long-necked guitar-like instrument called a saz.

The Pacifica Institute hopes to make the event an annual ritual at the fairgrounds.

For more photos, click here.

IF YOU GO:

WHAT: Anatolian Culture & Food Festival

WHERE: Orange County Fair &Events; Center (enter through Gate 3)

WHEN: 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. today until Sunday

COST: admission $10, parking $5

Reporter ALAN BLANK may be reached at (714) 966-4623 or at [email protected].