October 29th 2016: Turkey celebrates its 93rd Repubic day. Some foreigners refer to it as ‘National Day’, but one gets the impression that that is not quite etiquette. 🙂 The Turkish Republic’s founder Mustafa Kemal Atatürk proclaimed Republic Day as Turkey’s most important holiday and that was in 1923 and the Turks have been celebrating it with some gusto every since. Music plays an important part in the celebrations too by all accounts, which is always nice to hear, whereas some Islamic countries tend to shy away from the so-called evils of it.
Dignitaries, Turkish residents, friends were invited to dinner as such. H.E. Hatun Demirer (a good speaker) said a few words in English relevant to the ocassion as did her deputy Canan Ünal, who spoke in Turkish. The Bahrain Police band did there usual, most enjoyable renderings of some international well known favourites and we all tucked in to a substantial buffet which had a distinct Turkish Flavour of course. Oddly, www.whodoeswhat.tv rarely gets to try the cake at these events, but one suspects it wouldn’t be an event without one.