By Nazlan Ertan
In Turkey, tatil (holiday) is a prism through which one can observe culture, class, and politics. It conjures images of mosque courtyards and family dinners or bustling resort towns thrumming with booked-out hotels and overpriced beaches.
Last week, the country – and Turkey in Depth - paused for Kurban Bayramı, or the Feast of Sacrifice. Next week, schools close and summer holidays begin. Across Turkey, millions are either planning their escapes or calculating whether they can afford one at all. So, despite my wicked editor’s pointed suggestions that I take as my topic this week “Trial in Absentia” (as in Ekrem İmamoğlu) or “electric shock” (as in Manisa Mayor Ferdi Zeyrek, sadly) or “strike” as in İzmir, my mind is on the holidays (and my suitcase is on my bed as I try to finish packing).
So here is to tatil, an innocent word that has become a barometer of aspiration, affordability, and belonging - where faith meets fatigue, and tradition meets TripAdvisor.
THE REPUBLICAN IMPRINT
The modern concept of a structured, inclusive holiday emerged not from the Ottoman palace, but from the factory floor. The 1935 Ulusal Bayram ve Genel Tatiller Kanunu (Law on National Holidays and General Rest Days) was a foundational moment in Republican social engineering. It shifted the weekly day off from Friday to Sunday, aligning Turkey with the West, codified secular holidays such as Republic Day (October 29) and National Sovereignty Day (April 23) and enshrined two religious holidays into the official calendar. This wasn’t just a calendar reform—it was a civilizational choice. As one MP declared during the debates while arguing that Sunday, not Friday, was the day of rest: “Heaven does not ordain sacred days. They are set by men, by reason, and by need.”
HOLIDAYS AS POLITICAL BAROMETERS
Holidays have long reflected shifts in regime and ideology. In my teens, we marked May 27, the anniversary of the 1960 military coup, as Liberty and Democracy Day. Predictably, though somewhat ironically, that stopped after the 1980 coup, which erased the date from collective memory. The AKP, in turn, has created its own narrative holidays, most notably July 15, now Democracy and National Unity Day, commemorating the failed 2016 coup attempt engineered by Fethullah Gülen, once President Erdoğan’s estranged mentor. My parents, like many in their fiercely secularist generation, forget it’s even a holiday. Just as they still call the “July 15 Martyrs Bridge” by its old name: Boğaz Köprüsü.
ERDOĞAN’S HOLIDAY MINDSET
President Erdoğan and his AKP take holidays at their own stride and polarize them. The 20-plus years of AKP rule have minimized the visibility of secular-republican holidays and extended religious ones, bridging them with weekends to offer extended breaks. In 2025, Ramazan Bayramı (which secularists insist on calling Şeker Bayramı because the tradition is to offer candy, or şeker) was declared a nine-day holiday, with the hope that citizens, particularly those in Istanbul, would travel outside the city. Bad calculation: they remained in town to join the İmamoğlu protests. But the government, wisened, did not seek to extend the holidays last week. Result: an upsurge in traffic accidents by those who tried to have a quick holiday and make it to work through the congested return traffic.
In a nutshell, how many holidays you can have in a year is not a neutral decision. It reflects a worldview in which religion and political concerns structure national time, and secular memory (Republic Day, April 23 or Youth Day, May 19) is a battlefield. No wonder the secular opposition loves using them for large rallies.
TATİL OR NOT TATİL?
The modern Turkish holiday ideal, whether a Bodrum villa, a Black Sea yayla, or a Balkan tour to avoid the visa debacle of European tours, has become less attainable. According to a 2023 report from the Consumer Association Federation, 71.8% of Turkish households say they cannot afford to take a vacation, and only around 3% plan to travel abroad. Rising inflation and hotel prices have made domestic travel increasingly unaffordable for average families. So while tatil still dominates summer dreams, it has increasingly become a symbol of class divide—a privilege, not a right.
Whether it's a bridge-lengthened Bayram or a weekend spent with family in the ancestral village, tatil reveals the shape of Turkish society: what it values, what it remembers, what it leaves behind and what is imposed. Rest, after all, is never just rest. In Turkey, it’s politics by other means.
