Little World NYC: Turkey-Syria earthquakes bring New Yorkers together through donations (REPORT)
Image and story by Raja Abdullah
Three blocks past the bustle of the train station and its surrounding gyro trucks and tamales stands, the streets are lit in the glow of Memo Shish Kebab, a family-owned Turkish restaurant located on Kings Highway in Brooklyn’s Midwood area.
The restaurant has become an NYC staple, with a second location opening in Manhattan, and give the city an authentic taste of Turkey from people who know it best, a Turkish American family.
Muslum Avci first opened the restaurant over a decade ago, and now his sons, Yunus and Mehmet Avci, overlook the two locations while their father sticks to his love of cooking as a Chef at Kings Highway location.
“When we go back home [to Turkey], we eat this food every day,” said Yunus Avci, referring to the authentic variety of kebab platters, ranging from lamb to spicy beef, all served with a side of rice and salad. “My dad values his recipes too much to try to make them more American.”
Staying true to Turkish roots comes natural to the Avci family and following the earthquakes in Turkey and Syria on February 6th, the family is raising donations for the victims.
Memo Shish Kebab, along with several other restaurants, has taken initiative to help out by collecting goods for Eyup Sultan Cultural Center, a mosque that ultimately donates to their home country through the Turkish Consulate in Midtown Manhattan.
Although the Turkish community is spread out throughout Brooklyn, Memo Shish Kebab serves as a center-ground, and Avci thinks the restaurant’s prominence in the local culture is the reason New Yorkers are willing to trust it with the donations.
“We’re lucky enough to be in a position where we can help,” said Avci about his family’s efforts, “As Americans, we forget about the Middle East sometimes.”
The Turkey and Syria earthquakes come at a time when conflict in the Middle East is at an all-time high, from Turkey aligning with Western countries to Syria being under a dictatorship.
This has left the countries and their allies divided, which reflects onto the Middle Eastern community in New York City, with some thinking the support for Turkey is far greater than for Syria.
Asghar, although proud to be eating at an institution devoted to the cause, thinks that the average American’s view of the earthquakes is hazed by their lack of knowledge of the Middle East. “I hear people saying, ‘Earthquake in Turkey, earthquake in Turkey.’ Maybe they don’t know what Syria is,” Asghar said, grabbing a piece of the restaurant’s complimentary flatbread.
This detail is proven in a study conducted by Holiday Cottages, a UK based property booking service, that showed that only 28 percent of Americans were able to point out Syria on a map.
For Ahmet Kiranbay, the co-owner of Rana Fifteen, a Turkish brunch spot in Brooklyn’s Park Slope that’s also fundraising for Turkey, it isn’t about alienating the Syrian victims but more about being able to sympathize with the Turkish ones.
Kiranbay is a Turkish immigrant with close family still in the country, about which he said to Brooklyn Paper, “I put myself in their position and I can’t imagine how I would feel and what I would do if my loved ones were missing. My brother felt the earthquake and said it was very long, strong and scary.”
Avci, whose brother visited the country for weeks after the earthquakes to help out firsthand, agrees, adding that the size of the Syrian community in New York could be an indicator for the lack of donations.
For instance, on Apple Maps, there are only two restaurants labeled as “Syrian Cousine” in all of the city, while “Turkish Cousine” shows over a hundred options, with baklava as the one thing they have in common.
With origins going as far back as the Assyrian Empire in 800 BC, the many forms of baklava enjoyed today across the Arab and European worlds now came about during the Ottoman Empire. This is when Turkey, Syria and other nations that claim the dessert lived as one.
Du’a Zaid, a Yemeni American member of Baruch College’s Muslim Student Association, believes that the history of this multilayered dessert resembles the multilayered relations of the countries involved. “The Arab and Turkish cultures will forever be intertwined through that shared history, and our suffering goes hand in hand,” she said in an in-person interview.
She thinks Syria’s suffering during the earthquakes being ignored might be exclusive to Western communities because the Turkish and Syrian people in the homelands have shown up for each other more so than before.
Prior to the earthquakes, anti-refugee crimes against Syrians in Turkey had begun to rise. Zaid says the earthquakes simmered these tensions down by creating an understanding between the two communities in their homelands.
She said it’s different in the US because, “Western-orientalist ideas and the idea that there’s no way to save the Arab world definitely plays a factor… the way for them to fit it into their Euro-centric apologetic form is by focusing on the Turkish victims, when there’s Kurdish and Armenian victims too, and Syrian.”
This isn’t discouraging New Yorkers who are willing to help Syria, like Mamoun’s Falafel, a Middle Eastern restaurant chain across the US including the city, and Asiyah Women’s Center, a Brooklyn-based domestic abuse center run by Syrian American Dania Darwish.
No matter how divided the Turkish and Syrian communities might be, New Yorkers showed up for the victims of the earthquake. Ultimately, the aid for Syria is best described through Asghar discussing baklava: “It’s way better in my country. Here, it’s good but it doesn’t hit the same.”
