All over Turkey people are preparing for a double dose of festivity, New Year is nearly upon us and outfits are being bought, tickets to parties arranged and huge family meals planned. The second welcome break from the daily grind is Kurban Bayram/ Eid ul Adha which this year (being Lunar and therefore movable) falls on January 10th and grants most working folk a welcome four day holiday. While the population prepares to make merry though there are sections of society for whom, if they were prescient of it, Kurban Bayram would not be so welcome. Eid al Udha is the festival of sacrifice denoting the prophet Ibrahim’s willingness to sacrifice his son Ismail in accordance with God’s orders. When the fatal moment arrived God too mercy on Ibrahim and spared Ismail allowing Ibrahim to slaughter a sheep instead. The sheep’s name remains unrecorded but this year in Turkey as all over the Muslim world millions of his brethren and their bovine cousins will be put to the sacrificial knife and become halal kebabs and roast joints. The most bathetic sights of the year are these forlorn creatures held together in close quarters on roadsides and in market places waiting to be chosen and led away. Often to tempt customers the fattest most robust specimen will be tied up outside the pen, a red ribbon around his neck and the words ‘Kurban satılıyor/ Sacrifices for sale’ spray painted onto his wolly coat.

This is not a selfish festival though as the ephasis is very much upon giving and those with the means to purchase a sheep are quick to distribute the meat amongst friends and family and equally sure to give a third to the needy. Children receive presents and adults may give each other gifts although this is largely an urban and middle class (or above) behaviour. Where standards were once lax on areas where sheep could be killed the Turkish state now monitors (as best it can) the trade in Kurban. Sheep are vaccintaed, tested and tagged with special earrings to show their healthiness and there are official slaughterhouses and butchers for the final sacrifice. The proof in the pudding that times have changed is that should one choose to, one can buy one’s Kurban via the internet. Migros’s shopping site www.kangurum.com.tr allows customers in Istanbul, Izmir, Ankara and Antalya to choose the size of the animal they want and can deliver it either aliveand whole, dead and whole, in parts according to weight requested and even make a donation to charity for you.

These yearly ritualised killings are not however the only slaughter of animals that takes place in Turkey for there is also another tradition known as ‘adak’. This takes place when something good has happened, generally something that one has wished for like the healthy birth of a child, recovery from a serious illness or completion of a successful business venture and the intention is to show gratitude to God for his beneficience. While ecclesiastic law dictates that no-one from the family who made the wish may eat the adak meat and that it all be donated to the poor this ruling is often overlooked and as at Kurban the family share the animal between themselves and give a portion away. A recent front page story in Posta newspaper detailed an adak story that was the result of the successful sale by Turkish Airlines of 11 airplanes that had been withdrawn from the fleet in 2004.

It appears that upon the sale of the final 11th RJ-100 plane the head of technical services for the airline, Şükrü Can, decided that he would bring to bear the promise he had made if all the planes were sold and sacrifice an animal as an adak to God. Feeling that it would inappropriate to sacrifice 11 seperate animals (one for each plane) but that a single sheep would not sufficiently commensurate God for his benign influence he bought a camel and the highy decorated beast was led out onto the runway, to the front of the last plane to be traded, and slaughtered in the appropriate halal fashion. It’s meat was divided up and given away to the staff of Turkish Airlines. Although carried out with the best of intentions the ramifications for Şükrü Can have been entirely negative. He was pilloried by the press, it became apparent that he had not sought or received any permission from the airport authorities to carry out the rite on the runway and his employers in their haste to disassociate themselves from such an ‘old fashioned’ activity sacked him. Mr. Can would have been well advised to heed the words of the old Arab proverb ‘Trust in Allah but tie your camel’, ie believe in God but also make sure you do things properly yourself.

The camel incident is but one example of the actor’s adage ‘never work with animals or children’ and Kurban Bayram is often fraught with incidents of high drama and accident involving animals somehow turning the tables on humans. Last week Hürriyet newspaper reprted on a story where two men, Erkan Zengin and Ali Yılmaz from Ağrı, bought a bull from their village to sell it as a kurban in Izmir but were reduced to jibbering barely concious wrecks when the animal escaped from them and headed off in to the capacious tunnels of Izmir’s city drainage system. Not considering in any great detail exactly what they were heading into the two men pursued the receding rump of the animal for two kilometers underground before they were overcome by exhaustion and foul fumes and had to be rescued by the fire brigade. The bull was sedated and winched back above ground.

Kurban Bayram is bound to claim some human victims too if last year’s accident figures are anything to go by. On the first day of Bayram last year 2056 amateur butchers were admitted to hospital with varying knife injuries mainly to their hands, arms and bellies. Two men, Ekrem Ekinci (age 55) and Mehmet Sazak died of heart attacks while helping sacrifice sheep and one, Ahmet Güldü (age 66) also had a heart attack but was revived using elctro-shock therapy. The most accidents took place in Turkey’s urban heart, Istanbul, where one can only assume that people not faced with a live animal at any other time during the year decided the time had come to carve their own lamb chops. If Dr. Dolittle existed and was here in Turkey talking to the animals they would no doubt be reminding the Turks in the most un-Muslim manner of the Bible quote from the book of proverbs; ‘To do justice and judgment is more acceptable to the Lord than sacrifice." (Proverbs 21:3)