Editions
Editions: Documented Event Records
The first edition of Atatürk Cuisine Week took place on 19–25 May 2024 in Washington, D.C., the capital of the United States.1 The event was the first application of the institutional commemorative week declared by the World Turkish Cuisine Academy and the Turkish Cuisine Movement through Decision No. 40, dated 16 May 2024.2
◆ First Edition · 2024 · Washington, D.C.
Event Details
| Edition | First Edition (I) |
| Dates | 19–25 May 2024 |
| Location | Washington, D.C. · USA |
| Menu | Atatürk's Kitchen |
| Chef | Tolgahan Gülyiyen |
| Inspired by | Atatürk'ün Mutfağı (Bardakçı, 2022) |
| Photography | Scott Schuman |
| Decision | No. 40 · 16.05.2024 |
The menu is a historical reconstruction of the table drawing on archive-based research and published testimony; the evidence type and limitation for each item are set out separately in the table below.
◆ Menu–Archive Concordance
Items on the first-edition menu are related to the sourced dish selection and documented findings. This relationship does not mean that every item has equally strong direct archival support. The table is based on the 2024 menu; the 2025 menu is a subset, and the source basis of each item is shown line by line.
| Menu Item | Basis / Source | Evidence |
|---|---|---|
| Tarama Salatası | Seafood entering the kitchen after 1926; recorded purchases of caviar, tarama and fish.3 | Archival Record |
| Zeytinyağlı Enginar | Records conflicting with the "never ate artichoke" legend; years of recorded purchases; eight ledger entries in late 1938 (personal consumption to be assessed separately).3 See myth ledger. | Corrected Legend |
| Ispanaklı Börek | Salonika style; his mother Zübeyde Hanım's recipe. A childhood dish prepared at Çankaya in the same manner. | Secondary Source |
| Yağlı Fasülye | The original name for kuru fasulye as recounted by Halit Atay: "yağlı fasulye".4 | First-Hand Testimony |
| Karnıyarık | Among the frequently preferred dishes in Tezcan's symposium paper (2001; presented 2000). | Secondary Source |
| Etli Bamya | The vegetable most frequently entering the Çankaya kitchen per the ledgers. (Frequency shows regular use; a medical-preference rationale would need a separate source.)3 | Archival Record |
| Midye / Karides Şiş | Expanding fish and seafood procurement in the Dolmabahçe period; canned seafood is recorded.3 | Archival Record |
| İrmik Helvası | One of the rare desserts preferred by Atatürk, who was otherwise distant from sweets; Fahrettin Altay's testimony from the Anatolian tour records his preference for irmik helvası during illness.4 | First-Hand Testimony |
| Rakı | Rakı is reported as a staple drink of the table; documented informal kitchen and table expenses are reported as having been met from his personal account.5 | Archival Record |
| Ayran | Present at every meal, mid-afternoon included; the habit of dipping bread in ayran carried from Salonika.4 | First-Hand Testimony |
| Turkish Coffee | An account reports a purchase entry for Moka coffee; regular personal consumption requires separate evidence, and full citation verification is still in progress.7 | Provisional Source Record |
Archival Record document-based · First-Hand Testimony chef/eyewitness · Secondary Source academic/compiled · Corrected Legend corrected by record · Chef's Interpretation edition choice
◆ Second Edition · 2025 · Arlington, Virginia
Event Details
| Edition | Second Edition (II) |
| Dates | 19–25 May 2025 |
| Location | Arlington, Virginia · USA |
| Menu | Atatürk's Kitchen |
| Menu Prepared by | World Turkish Cuisine Academy (WTCA) |
| Host Chef | Turgut Yiğit |
| Initiative | Tolgahan Gülyiyen · Founding President |
| Source | Institutional announcement · 8 May 2025 · tmdh.net |
The second edition is the continuity record of the document-based framework established with the first; the core of its menu comes from the first-edition selection, and the bases in the concordance table above apply to these items as well.
The second edition of the week took place on 19–25 May 2025 in Arlington, Virginia, in the Washington metropolitan area of the United States. The menu carries forward the core of the first-edition selection — zeytinyağlı enginar, ıspanaklı börek, yağlı fasülye, etli bamya, karides şiş, irmik helvası, rakı, Turkish coffee and ayran — and the menu document also includes the address to the Anzac mothers widely attributed to Atatürk and the reply of an Australian mother. Institutional announcement: WTCA–TMDH, 8 May 2025, tmdh.net
Edition records on this site are kept at the institutional and city level; host-venue and reservation details appear in the institutional announcements.
Call to Participate
Atatürk Cuisine Week is not a celebration owned by a single institution; it is a document-based cultural heritage programme. We invite restaurants, chefs, schools, cultural institutions and Turkish communities everywhere to set their own Atatürk's Kitchen tables on 19–25 May in future editions.
The core criterion is fidelity to the source and method principles: each dish should be tied to a traceable source or clearly identified as a modern interpretation. You may announce your participation at info@tmdh.net.
"We Will Continue to Say 'Atatürk Cuisine Week'."
Classification note. The 2024 and 2025 commemorative menus are not historical menus transcribed from an archive; they are contemporary reconstructions based on source-critical reasoning. Wording such as “favoured” or “often requested” in menu and card texts is testimony-level: a purchase record shows procurement, while personal consumption and any ranked preference must be assessed separately. The founding letter (16 May 2024) is an archival institutional record documenting the institution’s view and announcement language at that time; expressions in it such as “a world first” and “all the dishes he loved” are not used as an independent scholarly finding of this site or of the related academic study. The menu PDFs contain an image layer only; as they have no text layer they cannot be read by a screen reader, so their bibliographic details are given as text on this page.