195. Today in 1920s Turkey: 10 August 1927 (What Day Should the Weekend Be?)
Türkçe
Tatil Cuma mı iyi, Pazar mı? İşittiğimize göre İstanbul ticaret odası hafta tatili olan Cuma’nın Pazar’a geçmesini isteyecekmiş. Çünkü Avrupa ile iş yapan piyasamız Cuma günü kapalı olmak yüzünden çok zarar ediyormuş. Bize de kalırsa bütün medeniyet dünyasının Pazar olarak kabul ettiği tatili bizim de kabul etmemize bir engel yoktur. Maksat haftada bir gün istrahat etmektir. Onun ismi ha Pazar olmuş ha Cuma. Pazar’ın adını Cuma koyarız. Olur biter. Gün değişmez isim değişir, ne şiş yanar ne kebap! Madem ki işte fayda var. Öyle değil mi!!
English
Is a Friday or Sunday Holiday Good? According to rumor the Istanbul Chamber of Commerce is going to request that the weekly holiday should be changed from Friday to Sunday. Because our market, which does business with Europe, suffers major losses for being closed on Fridays. We also think there is no reason we shouldn’t accept Sunday — the day considered by the rest of the civilized world as a holiday — as our day off. The point is to have one day a week for rest. What difference does it make if its name is Friday or Sunday. We can just rename Sunday as Friday and that would be it. The day doesn’t have to change, just its name, no harm no foul! Since there is benefit in this matter. Isn’t that right!!
Comments:
This short snippet introduces the notion of changing the weekend from Fridays to Sundays. Friday, was and still is the weekend in many Muslim-majority countries, as it is a day for public prayer at congregational mosques. In Christian-majority countries the main weekend day is Sunday. This text tactfully and deliberately omits the religious connotations of changing the weekend in Turkey, which was part of a larger secularization project pushed under the new Republican administration in the 1920s. Instead, it cites economic and vaguely “civilizational” reasons for supporting such a shift in addition to stressing the mere functional need for a single “day of rest” every week. Indeed, holidays or weekends are times in which business and commerce slow down or halt altogether and according to Karagöz, the cost of not doing business with European countries on Fridays is too great to ignore. Thus, the paper makes a largely economic plea in favor of this change.
Money and its prioritization over immaterial pursuits is a recurring theme in this issue of Karagöz and one that is typical of late 1920s nationalist rhetoric in the Turkish press. Indeed, post #6 (covering another snippet featured on the same page as this one) promotes a similar message when it applauds a young boy for working a job and earning a living as a paperboy instead of unproductively “playing in the streets.” In this way, this single page from an issue of Karagöz encourages people to modify religious and recreational practices alike to make room for unfettered capitalism in their lives. In the case of the present blurb, Karagöz downplays the significance of the pan-Islamic weekly holiday of Friday by suggesting that the name for Sunday (Pazar) could simply be changed to Friday (Cuma) to smooth over the transition and appease anyone with a sentimental attachment to the name… Of course, this is an oversimplification of the matter as such a measure would have Turkey’s Muslims performing their Friday prayers out of sync with the rest of the Muslim world.
In the end, although this change was first proposed in 1927 it was not until 1935 that this shift would become law and observed across the country. Of course, Friday prayers are still performed on Fridays, but to this day Sunday is the official weekend holiday in Turkey (along with Saturday, full/half). Such major changes were typical during the early years of the Turkish Republic (est. 1923) which saw the changing of weights and measures as well as calendars and time-keeping. You can read more about this particular genre of reform in 1920s Turkey post #171.
