POSTCARD N.143 - TÜRKIYE

Postcard sent on the 4th June; received on the 20th June 2024

Postcard image: Hagia Sophia
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And another country joins the fold, thanks to Ravindra's holiday trip. Thanks a huge lot, Ravi!

Istambul and Hagia Sophia, The cathedral that became a mosque and then a museum in the spirit of the  reformation of the state brought about by Ataturk’s vision of a modern secular Turkey, only to fall prey again to the winds of an ever stronger confluence between politics and religion....

Irrespective of it all, Hagia Sophia is one of the great religious monuments of mankind and I am glad to have had the opportunity to visit it on my tip to Turkey, several years ago, which gave me the opportunity of getting to know a bit more of a culture and a country which I knew nothing about.

I can't resist telling a story here: I was in Turkey during the Ramadan. On one of the last days (or was it the last, I can't really remember now) I was in Ankara and there was this fair in a local park, close to the hotel where we were staying. My wife and I went to visit the fair and at some point we noticed that people in the fair stalls were preparing to eat, breaking the day's fast.  We were passing by a stall where this very kind elderly lady call us by gestures and offered us with an obvious expression of kindness on her face slices of a bread and meat dish, akin to a minced meat pizza, which, of course, we accepted and thanked her for. We really felt warmed by her kind gesture. And it was delicious. 

Stamps :

Cheeses are good everywhere. In fact cheese is my nemesis... that is.. cholesterol.. oh, let's talk about stamps...

As with any milk producing country in the world, Turkey has its own cheeses, and I am sure they must be great, as there are no bad cheeses, (I am not talking about processed cheeses here....). In fact I think I can remember trying some white, a bit salty, cheeses at breakfast, that went great with the olives, another absolute must in a  Turkish breakfast.

On 17MAY2022, Posta ve Telgraf Teşkilatı (PTT), issued the  two se-tenant stamp set, each with a face value of 5 liras, used on the postcard, illustrated with a photo of  Turkish cheses... 

I have to say that this was a bold move by PTT, the Turkish Postal Services provider, though, since there are people who really do not like cheese at all and  I don't see any of them licking the back of the stamp, to use them as intended...  😉

The stamp with a shark, a remora, what looks like a grouper and some other fishes is the 2024 EUROPA CEPT issue  from Turkey, with a face value of 20 Liras, issued on 09MAY2024.

The postmark, sadly, is mainly illegible, but I can discern Istanbul, at least, which I presume was the place of posting.