Between Bayram and Uncertainty: Life Continues in Türkiye
Bayram in Türkiye arrived quietly this year.
As I write this, I am at home drinking tea, as I usually do during the day. It’s a rhythm I’ve come to understand more deeply over time, especially through the rituals I explored in The Culture of Çay: The Heart of Daily Life in Türkiye. The only real difference is that Gökhan is home because of the holiday. The only real difference is that Gökhan is home because of Bayram. Although it is a holiday in a traditional sense, holidays here have always felt slightly foreign to me. I have never quite related to them in the same way I do major holidays in the United States.
There are no signs or decorations announcing the occasion. No storefront displays or festive lights marking the arrival of the holiday. Instead, the days unfold much like any other. We wake up slowly, drink coffee or tea, play with our cats, write, take walks, and sit on the balcony watching the neighborhood move through its quiet rhythms.
The weather, too, feels slightly out of step with expectation. This year Ramadan—and therefore Bayram in Türkiye—arrived earlier, just on the cusp of spring. Because the holiday follows the Islamic lunar calendar, it shifts each year. This is my fourth Ramadan here, and I have watched it move gradually from the sweltering heat of summer into cooler, rainier days. The air now feels damp and fresh, with that uncertain feeling that sits between the last of winter and the beginning of spring.
The Subtle Rhythm of Bayram in Türkiye
In the United States, holidays tend to announce themselves loudly. Store windows fill with decorations weeks in advance. Music plays everywhere. Calendars are marked with anticipation. Bayram in Türkiye arrives almost quietly. The change is subtle. A few more people visiting neighbors. The occasional box of sweets exchanged between friends. The stillness of closed shops.
It took me several years to recognize that the celebration is not missing—it is simply expressed differently. It exists less in public display and more in private moments, inside homes, in visits with family, in cups of tea shared across small tables.
Bayram in Türkiye holds a quiet complexity. It feels both festive and reflective at the same time. There is reverence in it, but also gratitude, and a kind of collective pause after the long rhythm of Ramadan.
I felt something similar during my first Ramadan here, when I began to notice the stillness that settles over daily life in Ramadan in Türkiye: The Quiet Hours Before Iftar.
The streets grow noticeably quieter during these days. Many shops close entirely for a few days as people return to their hometowns to celebrate with their families. Yet in the days leading up to the holiday, the opposite is true. Airports, bus stations, roads, and hotels fill with travelers moving in every direction, each person making their way back to where they began.
Watching this migration unfold each year carries a quiet weight. Trains and buses fill with people returning to places that shaped them—childhood homes, grandparents’ kitchens, familiar streets that hold decades of memory. For many here, Bayram is less about the holiday itself and more about the act of returning.
I sometimes wonder what that feeling must be like. My own path has been different. Loss came early in my life, and the idea of a family gathering has long existed more as a memory than a tradition. As I watch people reunite with their families, there is always a bittersweet pause. I realize that I have no family left to return to. They all died young.
At the same time, something else has slowly begun to take its place.
Each year, as I experience both Ramadan and Bayram in Türkiye again, I find that I look forward to it in ways I didn’t expect. Gökhan and I spend more time together. The pace of life softens. There is space for reflection.
This year feels especially meaningful because Bayram in Türkiye arrives alongside the spring equinox, bringing with it the quiet sense of renewal that comes with the changing season.
Over the past few weeks, the uncertainty of the geopolitical situation has made everything feel strangely dreamlike. News moves quickly, conversations shift, and the world seems to carry an undercurrent of tension. Yet here, in the small details of daily life, things remain remarkably unchanged.
A few weeks ago I tried to get a ticket back to the United States. My flight was cancelled, I couldn’t get a refund, and ticket prices rose dramatically almost overnight. For a moment, I considered trying again. But in the end, I made the decision to stay.
Strangely, I feel safer here than I think I would back in America right now.
Instead, I’ve decided to take a short trip to Greece soon, simply to gain some perspective and distance. Traveling halfway across the world in the middle of uncertainty suddenly felt like adding an unnecessary layer of stress. My routine is here. My home is here.
It’s a realization that didn’t come all at once, but slowly, through the quiet work of adapting, which I explored more deeply in Adapting to Life in Türkiye: The Quiet Work of Belonging.
If anything, the events of the past few weeks have made that realization clearer.
Our days continue in their quiet rhythm. Tea in the afternoon. Long walks. Conversations that stretch into the evening. The small routines that slowly anchor a life.
Lately, I find myself wanting to deepen that sense of grounding even further. There is comfort in simple, tangible things—planting vegetables for the coming spring, starting a sourdough starter, building a more structured daily routine centered around well-being. In many ways, this is what simple living has come to mean for me here—something I reflected on more fully in Simple Living in Türkiye: Finding Comfort Without Convenience.
In uncertain times, these small rituals take on a different kind of meaning. They create stability where the outside world feels unsettled. They remind you that life continues, quietly and persistently, in the background of larger events.
And perhaps that is what this season has come to represent for me.
In uncertain times, these small rituals take on a different kind of meaning. They create stability where the outside world feels unsettled and remind you that life continues quietly beneath the noise of larger events.
And perhaps that is what this season has come to represent for me— Bayram in Türkiye is not just a holiday, but a pause. A moment to notice where you are, who you are with, and the life that has slowly taken shape around you.
In the end, it is often the smallest routines that remind us where we belong. It’s in these moments that I began to understand what daily life here really looks like, beyond the surface impressions I wrote about in Daily Life on Türkiye’s Aegean Coast: What No One Tells You.
