Turkey Public Holidays 2014 Calendar

Public holidays in Turkey fall into 2 groups: The ones which commemorate the important events from the foundation days of Turkish Republic and the religious holidays. There are only 2 religious holidays but they tend to be long, usually Turkish take a week long holiday during these holidays and business life almost stops.

If you are planning to visit Turkey, you should now this dates because many Turks travel within Turkey during long holidays and the hotel and flight ticket prices are quite expensive during these times.

Religious holidays for Muslim festivals and their date change every year since they are based on lunar calendar.

New Year Holiday  (Turkish Yılbaşı)
January 1st, 2014 Wednesday
Turkey celebrates Gregorian Calendar’s first year as new year and most of the time December 31st is also a half day holiday. Expect a very crowded and fully booked December 31st night.

National Sovereignty and Children’s Day  (Turkish Ulusal Egemenlik ve Çocuk Bayramı)
April 23rd, 2014, Wednesday
Grand National Assembly of Turkey has first opened its door at Ankara in 23 April 1920 and the day is a holiday for the commemoration of the event. This official holiday is dedicated to the children.

Labour and Solidarity Day (Turkish Emek ve Dayanışma Günü)
May 1st 2014, Thursday
This is May Day holiday, which was removed from the list of public holidays in 1981 by the military rulers of 1980 Turkish coup d’état. 28 years after, in 2009, May Day has been an official public holiday again. Since it falls on Thursday, expect Turks to attach it to next weekend with 1 day off on Friday and enjoy a 4 days long weekend.

Commemoration of Atatürk, Youth and Sports Day (Turkish Atatürk’ü Anma Gençlik ve Spor Bayramı)
May 19th, 2014, Monday
May 19th 1919 is a public holiday commemorating the beginning of national liberation movement initiated in 1919 by Atatürk’s landing in Samsun. The holiday is dedicated to the youth. In 2014, this public holiday will create a 3-days long weekend.

Ramadan Feast (Turkish Ramazan Bayramı)
July 27 2014 (half day) Sunday, July 28-29-30 2014 Monday – Wednesday

This religious holiday in Turkey (and in the rest of Muslim world) is Eid_ul-Fitr and one of the longest holidays in Turkey and if all these days are in weekdays, Turks tend to have a long 9 days holiday by merging this holiday with the weekends. Since July is summer time, many Turkish will flock to south coast for holiday and it would be difficult if not impossible to find hotel rooms and plane tickets during this time.

Victory Day (Turkish Zafer Bayramı)
August 30, 2014, Saturday

This holiday is for the commemoration of the victory at the final battle in Dumlupinar which has ended the Turkish Independence War in 1922 with a victory and it is dedicated to the armed forces.

Sacrifice Feast (Turkish Kurban Bayramı)
October 3rd 2014 (half day) Friday, October 4-5-6-7 2013 Saturday – Tuesday

This religious holiday in Turkey is Eid_ul-Adha and one of the longest holidays in Turkey and if all these days are in weekdays, Turkish tend to have a long 9 days holiday by merging this holiday with the weekends. It is very difficult to find tickets and hotel rooms around this time. This year, it seems like it wont be a 9 days holiday but a 5 days long weekend.

Republic Day (Turkish Cumhuriyet Bayramı)
October 28-29th, 2014 Tuesday, Wednesday
This 1.5 day holiday starts at 28th afternoon and October 29th is a full day holiday commemoration of the proclamation of the republic in 1923. This is a good opportunity to have a long 5-days weekend for many Turks.

Is it difficult to learn Turkish?

A couple of years ago, I have met with a Russian reporter who could speak many languages including Chinese. I have asked him how difficult was it for him to learn Chinese (at that time I was planning to learn Chinese). He told me, it was not as difficult as to learn Turkish :) I was surprised when he told this seriously but when I tried to teach Turkish to my wife later (she is Chinese and at that time she was taking Turkish language lessons), I have realized that he may be right!

Learning Turkish is difficult. The language, whose roots can be traced to Central Asia, belongs to a language family called Altaic (and interestingly in the same family with Japonic language families and the Korean language).

The most difficult aspect of Turkish language, and the aspect which makes it difficult to learn for many, is its extensive usage of agglutination (as you will see below). For example, below is the decomposition of a relatively extreme case of agglutination in Turkish language. Avrupalılatırabildiklerimizdenmisiniz is a single Turkish word which means Are you from the ones that we could make European !!!

A more common example of agglutination can be like this:

Question : Dün akşam neredeydin? (Where were you last night?)

Answer   : Odandaydım! (I was in your room!)

Now the composition is like this:

Oda                         : Room

Odan                       : Your Room (if it was odam, it was my room!)

Odanda                   : In your room

Odandaydi              : Was in your room

Odandaydim           : I was in your room.

But many people who start talking Turkish skip a lot of agglutination and they can be perfectly understood by the Turkish people. One of my friends wife, a Singaporean, speaks Turkish usually without all those suffixes and I can perfectly understand her and tolerate this because she is not a native speaker. But Turkish verbs without suffixes are usually used to give order and some suffixes make them polite so they actually would sound arrogant :)