The Return of Döner

Aylin Öney Tan

The issue of “döner” kebab keeps coming up again and again. Döner must be one of the most well-known tastes of Turkish cuisine, spread all around the world, sometimes disguised under different names. This time, German President Steinmeier tried to make a gastro diplomacy move by bringing 60 kilos of döner during his visit to Türkiye, but together with the huge meatloaf, that bona fide attempt brought many controversies along. While some circles were inclined to perceive this as a gesture of friendship displayed through gastronomy, there were others who remained skeptical, raising an eyebrow and accusing the German side of having an orientalist approach. One of the most humorous comments came from political scientist-journalist Sezin Öney (yes, happens to be my dear young sister) on the situation: “Bringing döner and döner masters from Germany was such subtle diplomacy that it was not understood. The message was supposed to be: 'Now that döner has become German food; you have become us, we have become you. I offer you döner from Germany, our national cultural item, one of our national dishes’ - but the message did not ‘return’ like döner.” On the pretext of this news, we decided to take a look at the connections between Germany and Türkiye through the lens of the rotating spit of meatloaf and have a peek into the journey of döner around the world.

Four years ago, the idea of creating an identity card for döner had been on the agenda. Nobody followed on that, and the idea faded away. This time, the brotherhood between Germany and Turkey is being envisaged through the famed kebab. There have been many speculative claims about the döner’s journey to Germany, like who started it first, how was it first served in Germany, etc, but the fact remains that there is now such a thing as Berliner Döner, quite different than what we eat here in Türkiye. Undoubtedly, döner went to Germany through Turkish workers. In the 1960s, workers who went to Germany were called Gastarbeiter, meaning bluntly Guest Worker. It was expected that they would remain for a while and then hopefully return home. However, this scheme did not work out and many became permanent, now there’s the third and even fourth generation of the Turkish community.

One of the predominant destinations of Turkish workers was Berlin. Almost like an isolated island located in the midst of East Germany, Berlin was a city that Germans did not prefer to work in. Without knowing where they were going, and since they were destined to live an isolated life in the work-home circuit, Berlin or any other city did not make much difference for the Gastarbeiters. At that time, the predominantly Turkish neighborhood was Kreuzberg, at the edge of the East Berlin wall, which was the poorest neighborhood where no one wanted to settle. But once the Turkish ghetto, the area was suddenly promoted from being a slum to a popular hub of diversity after the fall of the Berlin Wall in the 1990s. The neighborhood eventually became the most popular area in the heart of the city, home not only to Turks but also to artists, galleries, jazz clubs and people of all walks including the LGBT community. Of course, Kreuzberg was also a döner paradise, after all, it was the Turks who first embraced the area, and established their own eateries, and the very first döner joints such as İmren, Tadım, Hasır, Rüya and Vöner, a vegetarian döner version, were all born here. By the end of the 1990s, Berlin had become the new capital of the united Germany and döner had become Berlin's most typical street food. So much so that when I visited the city for an official visit to the Bundestag 25 years ago, I was both surprised and amused to find that guidebooks listed doner kebab as one of the city’s symbolic dishes.

Berliner Döner

One thing about the Berliner döner is certain. It definitely has its own style. For one thing, it is not usually made from scratch by stacking meat; most people buy it frozen from the factory in the form of a cone of pre-compressed minced meat and then place it in front of the fire. The 25-year-old Meva brand, which President Steinmeier brought with him, produces three different types of döner: minced meat, chicken and the traditional meat doner made with layers of stacked meat slices. In Berlin-style doner kebab, almost everything goes into the bread or pita bread. All kinds of salad ingredients, greens, milk, even French fries come into play. If you want sauce, salad, fried potatoes and everything else, you simply say “Komplett.” There are many Turks in Berlin who claim that I was the first one who thought of putting it in bread, it wouldn’t be served this way in Türkiye, but this is not true. Scholar Pierre Raffard, a French researcher who wrote a thesis on the diffusion of döner in Europe, is not the least convinced. He also claims that the Greeks who left the Ottoman Empire for France in the 1920s brought the first döner to Europe. Raffard’s study is not the only one. There are several other studies in regard to the Gastarbeitern. Professor Ayşe Çağlar (now in Vienna University) scrutinized the social status of Turkish workers in German society in her work titled “McDöner: Döner Kebap and the Social Positioning Struggle of German Turks”, delving into the history of the much-loved food in Germany and of course the identity issues of the German Turks.

Where was the first döner?

It is difficult to write the exact history of döner. The first expression similar to today’s döner is pretty much like the “cağ kebab” cooked horizontally. The famed Ottoman traveler Evliya Çelebi describes eating a horizontal döner in Crimea in 1666. Evidently, it was a first taste for him, he says that he saw this type of kebab for the first time and liked it very much, praising it as “as tender as a marrow,” giving a very detailed description: “They slaughter a fat sheep, cut the meat into slices and string them on an iron kebab skewer in such a way that the heads are thin and the middle is thick, like a single piece of meat”. It is normal that Evliya did not taste doner kebab in Istanbul because there is no record of döner kebab in the “Narh defteri,” official price-fixing books that list the foods sold on the streets in Istanbul at that time.

The oldest known photograph of a döner kebab was taken in Istanbul. Dated 1855, this photograph was taken by James Robertson, a Scottish man who worked for 40 years as the chief engraver at the “Darphane-i Amire” Imperial Mint at the entrance of Topkapı Palace. He also became interested in photography during this period and became a pioneer of photography in the Ottoman Empire. The makeshift döner seller he photographed has set up a very primitive kitchen on the street and is waiting for customers. If we look at the cookbooks, food historian Dr. Özge Samancı found that in a book titled “Ev Kadını” meaning Housewife dated 1883, döner is referred to as İzmir Kebab. In fact, she was so surprised that she read the Ottoman document over and over again, to make sure that there was no mistake. Apparently from Crimea or Izmir to Istanbul, döner was a good food idea that traveled in the Ottoman geography, and even beyond, later to faraway lands, under different names, whether it be gyros (meaning rotating) by the Greeks, or shawarma (from 'çevirme' in Turkish which weans rotating again) by the Lebanese or Syrians, or as far as Mexico as Al Pastor.

The breaking news in the midst of the döner controversy, Türkiye has taken a critical step toward gaining culinary recognition by applying to the European Union to enlist döner as a “traditional specialty guaranteed” quintessential taste of Turkish cuisine. It is announced in the EU Official Journal, and there will be a three-month objection before the product’s official recognition. Food travels, and any food that is tasty, eventually becomes global in this global village of ours. Food also unites people around a shared taste that is favored by the masses. In the streets of Istanbul, we see a lot of Berliner these days. No, it is not the Berlin-style döner as one would expect, it is the Echte Berliner, the fat-fried doughnuts filled with jam or cream. I’m so addicted to those, I cannot choose between the Aprikosen or Pflaumen jam-filled ones, or perhaps the “Herrlich” cream buns. I’m afraid I’ll become a Berliner myself, walking around as John F. Kennedy once said: Ich bin ein Berliner! In a different context. of course, fat and round as a Berliner…