The Ramazan Ads

Ramazan is one of the most important religious observances in Islam which is why, much like Christmas, advertisers have managed to milk every last drop of sentiment possible.

Turkish commercials are rarely risqué, usually showing young people goofing around or housewives accosted on the street about their detergent preferences, but the possibility the product might lead to sex is never entirely dismissed (why else would you need clean sheets?). Such is not the case with Ramazan ads, which instead follow a specific formula as far removed from sex as Santa Claus.

So… Christmas is about a fat man and his harem?

This formula is set in stone and must abide by at least two or more of the conventions listed below:

Family dinner

The most important part of the Ramazan fast is the part when you can eat again, and so all ads incorporate food, even if they are pitching flavored food-like substances.

Notice the most important part is not the food itself but how iftar dinners bring together families, coworkers and friends. The message here is, “People might come together for the feast, but they get along because of the product. Any other product leads to fighting and might give grandpa a heart attack.”

Bonus theme: If a table is being prepared at home, it is important to have the women do everything. This is part of a national policy to lower the standard for male domesticity to the point where Turkish women orgasm if they ever see a man setting a table.

Inter-generational love

Ramazan is a month of family togetherness, and the easiest way to relate that on film is by making young and old people interact. Ideally, a photogenic child should be doing something adorable enough to soften up a stern grandparent.

Having children and seniors enjoying each other’s company serves to reinforce the idea that your product is magic.

Mosques

You should put a mosque in the background (or at least a cardboard cutout), to remind viewers this is a Ramazan ad and not just someone accosting a housewife in her kitchen about her margarine preferences.

This ad is nearly thirty years old, proof that Ramazan advertising is a time-honored tradition that hasn’t changed since the ancient times or at least the 1970s.

Shared tradition

If one feasting family sells your product, then multiple families should sell even more. Spread these families out over various locations and you’re implying we are really all one big family united by shared belief and a commercial product.

Bonus theme: If your ad requires you to shoot in locations like Manhattan that don’t have picturesque mosques strewn around, you can substitute Middle Eastern melodies instead. In fact, most Ramazan commercials will feature gentle Middle Eastern music as an ad with techno or metal would most likely break your fast prematurely.

Being nice

Ramazan is about being nice: nice to family, nice to neighbors, nice to strangers. If your ad cannot attain a level of saccharine reserved for children’s educational programs and Hello Kitty products, it might be considered too edgy for Ramazan.

The baby spends the whole ad surprised over his father not honking, his brother helping the grandparents with groceries and just generally how nice everyone is. Towards the end he “wishes everyone behaved like they do this month,” which offers a tragic glimpse into the living hell he must witness during the other 11 months.

The more themes you combine, the more your product will sell. If you come up with an ad where adorable twin boys help an elderly man into a mosque amidst Middle-eastern music then ran home as their grandmother brought plates to the family dinner table, you could even sell sand in the desert and people would buy it.

And for those who might say that there is no room for commerce in religious affairs, they seem to forget Mohammed was a merchant long before he talked to God.

The Holy Month

“Ramadan is the month during which the Quran was revealed, providing guidance for the people, clear teachings, and the statute book. Those of you who witness this month shall fast therein.” – (Qur’an, 2:185)

Ramazan (Turkish for Ramadan) starts today, kicking off a month of fasting and religious sentiment where even white Turks remember they are Muslims.

Fasting during the month of Ramazan is a fundamental tenet of Islam where a person must abstain from food, beverages, cigarettes and sex from sunrise to sunset, all while reminding everyone they aren’t eating, drinking, smoking or having sex from sunrise to sunset. Typically, one wakes up before dawn for breakfast (sahur) then resumes their regular daily activities until a feast at sunset (iftar).

Fasting during Ramazan is compulsory in Islam, but in Turkey where religion is not obligatory, the month has developed into something that would both disappoint the devout in other Muslim countries while still remaining “exotic” enough to creep out Europeans.

Sin-postponement

In Turkey alcohol and sex are legal, even though the Qur’an places them somewhere around theft and Christianity as things to never do.

Just looking at this picture during Ramazan makes angels cry

Many Turks carry on with their sin-filled lives, though most try to be a bit more discreet and respectful as it is considered poor taste to have fun near someone being religious.

Regardless of whether they fast or not, most try to curb their vices during the month or at least get as many out of the way beforehand. It is not uncommon for someone to solicit a prostitute in preparation for a month without pornography or binge-drink to make up for a month of being nice to your family. Ramazan is all about sacrifice.

Ramazan Drummers

Dawn is really early (4.30am this Ramazan) and fasters have to wake up a couple hours earlier to eat their sahur breakfast. As roosters are notoriously inept at religious affairs, the Muslim world evolved the Ramazan drummer: males volunteering to wander the streets beating drums waking up faster and non-faster alike, then dropping by homes during the day asking for tips.

Surprisingly, grown men beating drums outside your window seemed redundant after the invention of the alarm clock and many districts have banned the practice and some concerned citizens have even began shooting them. Turkish Ramazan drumming is a tradition that might not stick around once every home has an alarm clock, or once we kill all the drummers.

Fast-breakers

Fasters are very concerned that something might accidentally invalidate their fasts and so the government maintains a comprehensive FAQ asking such questions as whether one can have “wet dreams,” bathe or use perfume while fasting, to which the state-theologians’ respond, “just don’t swallow it.”

Meanwhile, the media is wheeling out experts each year to provide some hard-hitting answers, like if its okay to end your fast at iftar with sex or alcohol or whether lipstick, nicotine patches or seeing girls in bikinis break your fast (yes, no and “only if you stare” respectively, links Turkish).

Mosque Lights

Unlike the drummers which can be seen in Muslim communities throughout the world, Mahya is a uniquely Turkish practice. For nearly 400 years, lights have been strung up between the minarets of mosques offering inspirational and uplifting messages in honor of Ramazan, like “Greetings oh Month of Ramazan,” “the Sultan of the Eleven months” and “Fast and be healthy.”

Because really, not fulfilling God’s orders might warrant His anger, but forgetting which month you are in just earns His derision.

The Sexy Geologist

Yesterday was the 10th anniversary of the Izmit earthquake. One of the worst disasters in Turkish history, it not only killed 17,000 but also spurred an industry of sob stories and doomsday prophecies.

Earthquakes have always been a part of Anatolia’s history: as far back as 4th century BC entire cities were being levelled, like the Ionian (fancy word for Greek) city of Priene. So common were earthquakes, the Greeks decided to save time by just erecting ruins instead, many of which are still standing today.

In any given month Turkey suffers hundreds of earthquakes, most too sensitive to detect without powerful equipment or powerful drugs, but the Izmit earthquake was particularly memorable with ample suffering to cover. By the tenth anniversary the media had plenty of material for stories like “10th year of the great pain,” “Accounts of those who witnessed ‘that pain’,” “Lives ruined by the earthquake,” (links Turkish).

The other lesson the Izmit earthquake taught, besides that people don’t like having their houses fall on them, was that every segment along the north Anatolian fault breaks over the course of several centuries (see below), and the only part that hadn’t broken was under Istanbul; Istanbul was due for a major earthquake at any moment.

Experts put the likelihood of a major Istanbul earthquake (link Turkish) in the next thirty years at 62 percent, and in the next fifty years at 90 percent. And so an industry of geologist-prophets emerged warning of the earthquakes imminence and how bad Istanbul was going to suffer: between 20 thousand and 90 thousand fatalities and at best 50,000 destroyed buildings (links Turkish).

Seismologist Prof. Ahmet Mete Işıkara (right), head of the main earthquake research institute in 1999 (and so comforting he was declared the sexiest man in Turkey [link Turkish]), has predicted Istanbul was at risk of an earthquake in 2000, 2004 and 2005, 2006. Currently, his estimate is either before 2010 or, if not, between 2010 and 2014, and also expresses “concern that nothing has happened since 2003” (links Turkish). Sure the people listen, but no one really does anything about it.

The situation is quite similar to California’s anticipation of the “The Big One,” an earthquake that is supposed to devastate major population centers and is talked about frequently, but still has yet to come. Being California they’ve even made a movie, The Big One: the Great Los Angeles Earthquake, where a seismologist played by Joanna Kerns (left) tries to warn city leaders of an imminent earthquake and is promptly ignored, probably because noone declared her “the sexiest man in Turkey.”

So millions will continue to live in Istanbul and Los Angeles, fully expecting the eartquake, meanwhile seismologists will keep on monitoring the earth with the hope of attaining the highest honor a scientist can acheive, the right to tell the people “I told you so.”

The Conspiracy Theory Pt.1

Drama is interesting, underdog stories are exciting, and both are staples of the Turkish imagination. But combine the two into a tenuous conspiracy pitting an evil authority against an innocent population and you’ll win over Turkish minds.

For those who have never heard of John F. Kennedy or the Jews, conspiracy theories argue that evil clandestine networks manipulate the lives of everyday people, and it is only the theorist who can uncover them, or at least rant angrily about them on the internet.

So secretive are these networks and so intricate their plots, one cannot actually prove they don’t exist; and Turks just can’t resist the certainty of being right with the inability to be proven wrong.

Seeking ulterior motives behind minor details is a pastime in the mid-east; the region was once run by the Byzantine Empire, a word that has become synonymous with elaborate scheming and intrigue.

While Turks enjoy some of the world’s more popular conspiracy theories, like Freemasons or how America controls everything, there are quite a few evil networks indigenous to Turkey.

In this installment, let us introduce some of the most popular religious conspiracies:

• Sabbataists: Sabbatai Zevi amassed many followers as the Jewish Messiah in the 17th century Ottoman Empire until he converted to Islam under the Sultan’s ‘produce a miracle, die, or accept Islam’ policy towards prophets. Some contend his followers didn’t really convert but instead continued their lifestyles underground. Now these “ex-Jews” control everything in Turkey and yet we still keep disappointing our mothers.
• Missionaries: “Covering Turkey like a spider’s web,” Christian missionaries trick and bribe Muslims to take over (link Turkish) Anatolia for Christendom, most likely because Christians are running out of space in their own countries what with all the Muslim immigration.
• Fettulahists: Turkish Muslim leader Fettullah Gülen runs a vast international network of followers who have infiltrated every institution in Turkey. These followers are all sleeper agents waiting to topple the secular republic and establish Islamic rule the second Fettullah issues the order, probably from an island shaped like a skull. His occasional sermon preaching “you must move in the arteries of the system without anyone noticing your existence until you reach all the power centers…” doesn’t calm suspicions, especially since he delivers them while laughing diabolically and stroking a cat.

With so many secret plots to destroy Turkey, our only option is to call James Bond, if only the British weren’t trying to secretly take over Turkey as well.