Over sixty guests from various Turkish organizations as well as Turkish professionals attended to TAA’s Ramadan dinner that was organized for the Turkish community in DC metro area on Wednesday, August 15th. There were distinguished guests from the Embassy of Republic of Turkey including Deputy Chief of Mission, Timur Soylemez, Attache for Cultural Affairs, Mesut Ozbek, Commercial Counselor Abdullah Koten, Social and Religious Affairs Counselor, Dr. Yasar Colak. President of ATA-DC, Demet Cabbar, a visiting scholar at the Carnegie Endowment, Bayram Balci, President of Turkish Coalition of America, Lincoln McCurdy, Dayton Ahiska Community Center’s Director, Islom Shakhbandarov, US Representative of TOBB, Neslihan Kaptanoglu, as well as members from Turkish Airlines and Turkish Media attended the Iftaar.
After listening “Call to prayer” guests broke their fasting. Then, Dr. Faruk Taban warmly welcomed guests and underlined the importance of iftaars in the month of Ramadan. As he said, this is an opportunity to come together with each other in everybody’s busy days. Dr. Taban told about two important iftaars which he attended in the passing days; those are Iftaar at the White House on August 10th, and Iftaar at the Department of Homeland Security on August 14th.
Dr. Taban then, invited Mr. Timur Soylemez to the podium in order to give a few remarks. Mr. Soylemez expressed his gratitude to Dr. Taban for organizing the iftaar, and to guests for their presence in here. He made a joke in order to emphasize the friendly atmosphere of the night by saying that as diplomats you have to greet everyone and to be very careful in terms of missing anyone, but in here, I can save time by saying just friends. Then, he extended Ambassador Namik Tan’s greetings to the guests of the evening.
With the coming of Ramadan we share same table and have dialogue with each other. As we are not satisfied with the success of the Turkish American community, it seems clear that you are also not satisfied with your success. That shows the Turkish American community is doing great achievements that are in continuity. However, we should come together sometime and celebrate those achievements with each other. In brief, we forget to celebrate our own success – Mr. Soylemez said.
Then author of the “Yes I would love another glass of tea” book, Katharine Branning’s talk on Turkish tea was shown to the guests. At the same time, guests enjoyed their Turkish tea as it had been expressed by Katharine Branning. Drinking tea part of the iftaar continued with live Turkish music by Sinan Yasar with Ud and Batyr Odeyev with Dutar. Watching the Capitol Hill at the TAA’s rooftop part of the evening was an opportunity for guests to continue their uncompleted conversations.
