Ramadan (Ramazan in Turkish) started a few days ago here. It's a month of fasting that comes around once a year on the Islamic calendar. The Islamic calendar is lunar, so a year is 354/355 days. This means that every solar year (i.e. 2019 or 2020), Ramazan gets a 11 or so days earlier.
Fasting during Ramazan means refraining from eating or drinking between sunrise and sunset each day. Chewing gum and smoking are also refrained from. Pregnant and nursing women, children, the old and weak, and those travelling are exempt from fasting. Those fasting get up before sunrise to have a meal (sahur) before their fast starts and break their fast each day with iftar, a meal held straight after sunset, often a large celebratory meal shared with family or friends. For Muslims, it's the holiest month of the year and a time where they examine their lives and focus on their religion and God. Mosques are busier this month.
Not all of those who would identify as Muslim choose to fast but many do. Although this is our fourth Ramazan in Turkey, it's our first in the city we now live in. Different parts of Turkey vary vastly in how secular/religious they are, so foreign tourists who come to the very tourist-y areas of Turkey during Ramazan are unlikely to be impacted much. Istanbul has a mixture of more conservative and more secular areas. When we were in Istanbul, we lived in quite a secular area and walking down the nearby streets, cafes and restaurants would still be open and we'd see people in there eating and drinking in the day.Now we live in a more conservative city and so we assume that the majority of people around us are fasting.
Practically, that means this month we're avoiding eating and drinking out in public. We tried to do this while we were in Istanbul anyway, but we're more conscious of it here. Many cafes and restaurants are closed for the month, or at the very least have removed their tables from the pavements outside during the day. Cafes and restaurants that are still open may be closed during the day or have shorter opening hours, but then stay open much later at night, for those that want to eat out for their iftar meal.
To be honest, we don't go to cafes and restaurants much anyway - although there's something about knowing that you can't that makes you want to go more! Although children are exempt from fasting, I try to be sensitive and make sure that the boys have had their snack before they go to the park, rather than taking it to the park to eat there. We'll also avoid, for example, having a midday picnic at a picnic area at the weekend (and the picnic areas will be full quite early anyway, as people stake out a spot well in advance for an evening iftar picnic or barbeque).
We're also aware that the hour before sunset, traffic is often heavier as people are making sure they're home for the iftar meal - and drivers may be a little grumpier than normal if they haven't eaten or drank all day! So where we have a choice, we might try and avoid being out in the car at that hour.
One thing that we didn't know about before we moved to Turkey was the drummers. This is a long standing tradition in Turkey that drummers (sometimes wearing Ottoman-style clothing) go round neighbourhoods banging their drums to wake people up in time to have their pre-fast sahur meal. With the current sunrise time, we're hearing them about 3am each night. We heard them when we lived in Istanbul but they definitely seem louder here!
Fasting for a month from sunrise to sunset with no food or water is hard, especially in country like Turkey where in summer months it is hot and the daylight hours are long. I have a lot of respect for those who are fasting in the sincere belief that it will bring them closer to Allah and also sorrow that so many people are doing their best to earn their salvation through works such as fasting when I believe that there is no way to earn our salvation. I also hope and pray that as many people use this month to think on spiritual matters and to try to draw close to God that they would truly come to know God through the One he has sent.
