Baklahorani in Tatavla

Mavi Boncuk |From Greek Μπακλαχοράνι (Baklachoráni) | Turkish: Baklahorani‎, Baklahoran‎ | Russian: Баклахорани‎ (masc.)

An annual carnival celebrated on Shrove Monday[1]by the Greek Orthodox community in Istanbul. Bakla Horani[2] is actually, the Tatavla (Kurtulus) and Pera equivalents of the carnival that is celebrated everywhere in Greece and throughout the entire Mediterranean region as a celebration of the coming of spring. The name of the carnival, Bakla Horani, literally means, "I eat beans," and staying away from meat and eating beans is part of the ritual.

The history of Bakla Horani started in the mid-19th century, when the Greek community started moving into Pera (Beyoğlu) and its neighboring Tatavla. Since there was no highway separating Beyoğlu from Tarlabaşa back then, Tarlabaşa was just like another segment of Pera. But you could see a gradual hierarchy of class differences as the apartments went from spectacular to simple while having been built all within the same general style of architecture. The carnival would start as a procession from Pera on İstiklal Street with lots of people in masks each wearing the traditional dress of the rural area they come from. It would be an immensely colorful scene, with a great deal of sexual innuendo hinted at by the costumes and rituals. But, at the very front of the procession, there was the climax of the sexual gesture, so to speak, because the prostitutes of the community would be at the very front, on horseback in velvet and colorful outfits. And the pimps would walk beside the horses carrying the prostitutes. Can you imagine the scene? Isn't it incredible that this colorful festivity and procession was happening every year at the beginning of spring in İstanbul?  People dressed in masks and cross-dressed between men and women or mimicking regional characters would walk all the way from Pera, cheering and singing songs, down to Dolapdere, which was just as dangerous back then as it is now, and walk up the severely steep Akarca Yokuşu to the Greek church in Tatavla. Once they got there they would disperse, with the horse-riding prostitutes taking the lead of the procession all the way. Isn't that an amazing story about how İstanbul was in the past? It was simply a very liberal city, perhaps much more liberal than it is today. The carnival was banned for security reasons in the 1930s, with the last one probably being celebrated in 1936 and the reason or, let's say, the pretext was that it was not safe because people wore masks during the event.

Haris Theodorelis-Rigas[3] came across stories about how the Greek community used to celebrate Tatavla Bakla Horani festivals. According to Haris, if we were to make a comparison, what Hidrellez is for the Roma people and what Nevruz is for the Kurdish people, Bakla Horani is for the Greek people. Furthermore, it is the last chance to party before the 40 days of fasting that precede Easter. 

[2] It is a carnival of letting loose and having a lot of fun, along with many rites and rituals, including wearing the clothing of the opposite sex and eating and drinking certain types of food and drinks.  Bakla Horani used to be a wildly entertaining and indispensable part of İstanbul life when the Greek community used to live here and celebrate it. Bakla Horani used to be a wildly entertaining and indispensable part of İstanbul life when the Greek community used to live here and celebrate it before it was banned in the mid-1930s.



[1] Shrove Monday, sometimes known as Collop Monday, Rose Monday, Merry Monday or Hall Monday, is the Monday before Ash Wednesday every year. A part of the English traditionalShrovetide celebrations of the week before Lent, the Monday precedes Shrove Tuesday. As the Monday before Ash Wednesday, it is part of diverse Carnival celebrations which take place in many parts of the Christian world, from Greece, to Germany, to the Mardi Gras and Carnival of the Americas.

[2] Apokria is the three-week period before Great Lent. The Greek word Apokria derives from “apo” –which means from- and “kreas” –which means meat, meaning abstinence from meat.The equivalent English word is carnival which comes from the Latin “carnem levare” meaning “removal of meat-eating”The carnival period is also known as Triodion and it includes the four Sundays before the Great Lent.

The name derives from Triodion, an ecclesiastical book which initially contained three odes instead of the usual nine. It includes hymns which are sung from the first Sunday, which is known as that of the Publican and the Pharisee that is the day the carnival starts. The first script in Greek was printed in 1522 A.D.

The first week of the Triodion is known as Profoni (“announcement”) or Profonesimi, because in the old days it was announced that Apokria had begun. This week is also known as Sygkokali or Apolyti because the Wednesday and Friday fasting were not obeyed.

The second week is called Kreatini (kreas=meat) because this is the last week in which meat eating is allowed. The third and final week is called Tyrini or Tyrofagou (tyri=cheese) because only dairy products may be eaten during it. After this Sunday’s dinner and the celebration of the following day, Clean Monday, the joyful period of carnival comes to an end and the physical and soul preparation for the Easter starts.

[3] Haris Theodorelis-Rigas was born and raised in Athens and graduated from Athens College in 2000. He holds a BA Hons degree in Literae Humaniores (Classics) from St Johns College, Oxford University and a Msc in Development Studies from the London School of Economics. At LSE he defended his Msc Thesis under the title “Humanitarian Aid: Politics and Politicization in the 1990s”, in which he explored the ambivalent role of humanitarian organizations in the 1999 Kosovo conflict. Since then he has specialized in Identity Theory, Minority and Ethnicity politics and marginal social groups in the Balkans and the Middle East. Having won a scholarship from the Onassis Foundation, he is currently conducting doctoral research under the title: “Minority Politics as a three-level negotiation: Identity, institutions and collective action in Istanbul’s Rum community” under the supervision of Prof. Hakan Yılmaz and Prof. Paschalis Kitromilidis. For the past three years he has also been the instructor for Latin and Classical Greek in the Department of Western Languages & Literatures of Boğaziçi University.