Did You Know

Interesting Facts about Turkey

Trivia, oddities, and curious tidbits about Turkey.

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Did You Know?

16 curious facts about Turkey.

When a child loses a tooth, if their parents want to them to grow up to graduate from school, they might bury my tooth in the garden of the university. If the parents hope they will become a doctor, they bury it in the garden of a hospital, or they could bury it in a soccer field so the child will be a good soccer player.
There is a first tooth ceremony. Whoever finds the first tooth becomes one's Godmother. After finding the tooth she buys the child a new outfit to celebrate.
There is a tradition that when babies start to have first teeth a kind of pilaf consisting of wheat is prepared and delivered to neighborhoods.
Istanbul is the only city in the world that lies across two continents. The larger part of Istanbul lies in Europe, while Istanbul's suburbs are in Asia, across the Bosphorus Straits.

Among the reforms carried out by Mustafa Kemal was a law in 1935 that required all Turks to register an official surname. Before that time, most Turks were known by their given name and their father's name (for example, Mehmet, son of Ahmed). Mustafa Kemal himself chose the surname Atatürk, which means “Father of the Turks.”
In some rural areas, it is possible to identify the region that a woman is from by her clothes. The traditional form of dress for women is baggy trousers (called salvar) or skirts, and a long blouse. Turkish village women wear head-scarves (called basortusu) to cover their heads.
Every man after high school or university has to do 18 months of military service
Ankara used to be known as Angora. The goats in this area produced the famous fine Angora wool known as mohair.
A favourite children's game in Turkey is called sek sek, a game similar to hopscotch.
People with psoriasis often go to a healing centre at a spring called Kavak near Kangal in central Turkey. The waters of the spring are said to be antiseptic, and the fish that live in the spring nibble at the wounds on the skin and help to heal them. No one can explain why the fish do this, but many people claim to have been healed by them.