Gastronomy bridges gap between Greece, Turkey

Gastronomy bridges gap between Greece, Turkey

Culinary arts have helped to close the political gap between Turkey and Greece.

Maria Ekmekcioglu, a Greek native of Istanbul, hosts two cooking shows, one in Greece and the other in Turkey. [Facebook/Maria Ekmekcioglu]

Rich moussaka enjoyed on a picturesque island is one memory a growing number of Turkish tourists take home from holidays in Greece. Meanwhile, Istanbul increasingly draws Greek visitors seeking the tastes, smells and ambiance of Anatolia, recounted by generations before them.

Food is just one way that people-to-people ties are overcoming divides created by political differences between Athens and Ankara. Through tourism, social networks, booming trade and exposure to each society's mass culture, citizens of Turkey and Greece are building a more harmonious future.

In Greece, a milestone in sparking interest in east-of-the-border cuisine was the 2003 box office hit "A Touch of Spice," which weaved together images of Istanbul, a family's tradition of cooking and Greek-Turkish relations, on both a personal level and in terms of past political upheavals.

Turkish-born director Tassos Boulmetis said he wrote the screenplay in 1994, "at a time when I didn't know anything about so-called 'lifestyle cuisine.'"

Nevertheless, he said, the film's success at the box office appears to have influenced Greek moviegoers' appetites.

"I believe that the film did, in fact, create a trend. I've been told that after seeing the film many people would leave the movie theatre and seek out [Greek] politika restaurants. The film apparently increased their appetite," Boulmetis told SETimes, using the term that age-old Istanbul cuisine is known by in Greece...