I'm going to be in Istanbul for Thanksgiving this year. I wonder if anyone knew where I could get anything close to a traditional Thanksgiving dinner in Istanbul?

(I'm mildly amused, because in our timekeeping system at work we need to keep track of where we're physically performing our duties. My time in Istanbul is logged to "Turkey Time" which makes me smile...)

I don't have a good answer, but it reminded me of when I spent Thanksgiving in Ankara, Turkey back in '93. Was visiting a friend and his wife who worked for one of those vague U.S. Gov't agencies. The plan was to have dinner with a dozen friends of theirs who were also employees of another vague U.S. agency. Two days before Thanksgiving they went all over Ankara looking for a 10-12kg "Hindi", which was the local Turk name for what we call turkey. The Turks used the name "Hindi" because the animal originated from India (I never bothered to verify that, BTW).

Apparently finding a "Hindi" of any size that close to the U.S. Thanksgiving wasn't easy. Very few Ankara butcher shops stocked the animals and what little supply they had was sold out a week earlier. Finally the search was given up, and one of the attendees went out the local U.S. Army PX and bought a bunch of frozen pre-formed turkey roasts. Yum!

I'm here now and unfortunately haven't heard of anyplace doing a T-day dinner.

(I'll be back in NYC)

I wouldn't be surprised if the big 5-star hotels (Four Seasons/Hyatt/Hilton/Intercon) offered something.

Also, you could check out mymerhaba.com. It's a pretty site dedicated to ex-pats in Turkey. There might be some ads there.


btw, Craig, the people I know who are doing private parties actually now report being able to get full size Turkeys from the PX.

And there is lots written on the name of the Turkey and it origins - a quick google search finds some interesting facts.

Moving this thread to the Europe forum. Thanks for your understanding.

Jouy31
Travelbuzz moderator

Is Turkey in Europe?

Part of it is...

And most of Russia is in Asia, but it is still generally considered Europe. I think there are more than just geographical boundaries separating Turkey from Europe.

Well, the OP did mention Istanbul , but my Greek colleagues stil call it Constantinopoli ...

Well, I'm in Europe...

It's actually an interesting topic for a cultural discussion, but the fact is that most Airlines, Travel companies and multinational corporations etc. list Turkey under the Europe section of their websites, so it makes sense here as well.

I certainly associate Istanbul and much of Turkey more with Prague, Sofia, Moscow and other Eastern European cities than I would with Shanghai, Seoul, or Delhi, or with Kuwait, Tehran, or Beirut.