Song of the Soil

Though she had never visited Mardin, a Turkish city of 87,000 near the Syrian border, Ebru Baybara Demir grew up listening to her father's memories of its labyrinthine streets and its melting pot of cultures. “When I was born, we moved to Istanbul to escape the pressure on my mother from his family for not producing a male heir,” says the entrepreneur as we meet in a square in Mardin. “That's a typical story here. A son is important as most people still work on the land.”

When Demir returned to her family's hometown in 1999, she did so with a mission. “We moved away because I was the third daughter in my family but I came back to try to change things for the women of this city,” she says with a laugh.

We wander across cobblestones in the direction of her restaurant, Cercis Murat Konağı, which is based in a large limestone mansion. A plaque next to the door reads simply, “It is more than a restaurant” – a hint of the many functions that the space fulfils.

Cercis Murat Konağı is a restaurant that paved the way for a social initiative, as well as an agricultural co-operative and shop. “For more than five years this building was empty, run down and uninhabitable,” she tells Konfekt as she climbs the stone steps to the entrance. Built in 1888, the konak (Turkish mansion), with its high ceilings and lofty arches, is a monument to Mardin's cultural heritage and a fine example of Artuqid architecture. Little of the Artuqid dynasty, which ruled over eastern Anatolia and parts of modern Iraq and Syria from 1098 to 1408, has survived.

“Let me show you this,” says Demir, turning into a private room, where she points at the stone carvings on an alcove. On the half-dome-like structure is an embossed peacock with angels on both sides, symbols of Christianity. “To pay homage to the cultures that came before ours is the ultimate respect we can show them,” says Demir as she touches a peacock clip in her hair. “I have a very talented jeweller, who is from one of the last 85 remaining Assyrian families here. He makes all of my jewellery.” She holds up her necklace, which is made from a string of oval-shaped, azure-blue stones. “These are Assyrian nazars [evil eyes],” she says. “The two holes in each symbolise a pair of peepers. It is customary to wear this and especially to give it to newborns to offer them protection. This is how you keep history alive.”

When the then 24-year-old Demir, who had studied tourism management, arrived in Mardin, the city had little to offer by way of hospitality: one three-star hotel and a run-of-the-mill esnaf lokantası (neighbourhood lunch spot). Just 33km from Turkey's border with Syria, Mardin had seen plenty of upheaval throughout its history. At the end of the 1990s the city was haunted by the Kurdish conflict and regional tensions heightened by the Gulf War. “When I arrived, the idea of tourism in Mardin was a fantasy,” says Demir. “Sure, it had always been a gateway for the region's cultures, religions and languages. But at the same time it was impossible to convince people to invest their money in Mardin.”

The only way out of this predicament, Demir realised, was for residents to transform the city themselves. Her business is rooted in this sense of community and collective action. When a group of 28 German tourists refused to eat yet another meal at the esnaf lokantası, Demir invited them back to her home. With her aunt in the kitchen and almost all of the women from her neighbourhood lending a hand, the tourists dined and delighted at the delicacies on offer.

Demir saw a business opportunity and the in-house dining continued. The area's children started to get involved too, acting as tour guides and helping visitors to navigate the maze-like streets. Almost everyone in the neighbourhood came on board. At one point, even the Mardin Museum allowed the fledgling collective to use its cafeteria – until, Demir says, “the governor got word of it and shut the operation down”. Eventually she decided that it was time to “invest in themselves”. In 2001 she and 21 local women set up shop in the then crumbling mansion building in which we are now standing.

“It was tough at first,” she says as she strolls into the inner courtyard of the restaurant, which is decorated with brass artefacts, and takes a seat at a table covered with a crisp, white cloth. “We were a business that was founded by a woman, run by women and serving alcoholic beverages to tourists. All of this was against the customs and way of life in Mardin. Don't get me wrong, women are, of course, considered to be very precious here. But they are thought of as private entities: they are valued in their homes but not in the public domain, as men are. I remember that there were times when I had to let my cooks in via a secret door to avoid gossip in the city.” Now the same people come to her seeking advice.

From the outset, Demir drew many of her staff members from some of Mardin's most disadvantaged groups. Today, among her most trusted employees are those who are illiterate and had poor job prospects. When the civil war in Syria broke out in 2011, she was one of the first people in her city to reach out to the refugees who began to arrive from across the border.

Demir estimates that there are more than 100,000 refugees living in Mardin province, making up almost 12 per cent of its total population. “Their status is uncertain – most of them are in the temporary protection programme,” she says with a sigh, explaining that it is hard for Syrians to get work permits and even more difficult for them to find jobs. “In this region it is important to manage crises well because they are part of the fabric of life here,” she says resignedly.

In 2016 Demir set up the Harran Gastronomy School project with the help of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). “My goal has always been the same: to help people to help themselves,” says Demir. The women enrolled in the Harran school were Turkish and Syrian; they were taught to cook regional recipes with local produce, using a model honed at Cercis Murat Konağı. “After their training, all of the women found employment,” says Demir with a hint of pride. “For example, the Syrian women we trained were employed by AFAD [Turkey's Disaster and Emergency Management Presidency] and work in the refugee camp kitchens. They have new lives.”

Impressed by the success of the gastronomy school, the UN asked Demir what she was planning to do next. Soon she started a project inspired by Mardin's history: geographically, the city marks the beginning of what is known as “the Fertile Crescent”, the land between the rivers Tigris and Euphrates that is considered by scholars to be the birthplace of farming and methods such as irrigation. It was also a place where modern, industrial agriculture and the use of hybrid seeds had drained the soil and diminished the nutritional value of its crops.

“As a restaurateur and chef, it was very worrying not to have access to quality food,” says Demir. With this in mind, in 2018 she established an agricultural development co-operative called Topraktan Tabağa, Yaşayan Toprak Yerel Tohum (which translates as “From soil to plate, living soil, local seed”), with support from the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization. Its first undertaking was to revive the most ancient hard grain in Anatolia, sorgül wheat, which can be used to make pasta and flour.

“This is a one-of-a-kind crop,” says Demir, picking up the jar that the head waiter has brought to her. It is filled with sorgül seeds. She dips her hand in and takes a handful. “Its protein level is 17 per cent and gluten is almost nonexistent.”

She knew from the outset that if she was going to have a transformative effect, she needed to work at a bigger scale. So Demir enlisted 360 women, half of whom were from the area and the other half Syrian refugees, and trained them in sustainable agriculture practices. Five years later they are collectively cultivating 4,300 hectares of land on which sorgül wheat is grown.

It's just before the lunchtime rush on a Monday and Demir proceeds to her office at Cercis Murat Konağı, where she introduces Konfekt to her four head chefs: Nurcan Eyiol, Şükran Akakata, Fatma Merkit and Hanse Demir, who were all born and raised in Mardin. “I didn't do much; I just turned what they knew best, cooking, into something we could all earn money from,” says Demir as she beams at the cooks, who are sitting on a divan. She rises from behind her desk and takes a seat among them, asking how things have been and enquiring about the wellbeing of their families. Chitchating away, they appear more like a family than a group of colleagues. “We learned everything together,” says Demir. “They are my partners. They believed in me more than I did. I wasn't a chef. These women made me.”

Hanse Demir has been working at Cercis for more than 20 years. “At first it was hard for many people in Mardin to accept different ideas,” she says. “Everything is always a 'no' until someone proves otherwise. But I have learned so much in these kitchens and I've enjoyed tasting different flavours as we brought back to life indigenous recipes that once existed in Mardin.”

Coming to work every day at Cercis, surrounded by supportive women, has given Hanse greater self-confidence. “Not only has Demir helped us to make a living but she is also someone we can rely on in every aspect of our lives,” she says as the others nod in agreement. “She [Demir] has even got us dancing as part of a show that we do for the guests. Who would have ever thought that I would be doing that?” She laughs, nudging Demir on the shoulder.

Cooking might appear to be its strongest suit but what has helped Cercis Murat Konağı to thrive is its sense of abundant hospitality, a trait that draws on the city's long tradition as a trading city and melting pot. Word of mouth brought Mardin-born Nurcan Eyiol to Cercis about 12 years ago. Since then she has become the head cook responsible for the içli köfte (bulgur balls filled with minced meat) dishes at Cercis. When Konfekt visits her house for lunch, her sister Fatma, who is also part of Cercis's kitchen crew, helps to demonstrate how the region's içli köftes are made. For Eyiol, this recipe represents the generosity and abundance of the region. “No dinner is ever served to our guests without içli köfte,” she says, dipping her index finger into the water used to shape the dough before she and her sister swiftly roll out 50 bulgur balls with near-mechanical precision.

The table is set on the rooftop by Eyiol's eldest daughter, Kubra. She is studying to become a police officer but in the meantime earns her pocket money working at the shop of Topraktan Tabağa. All of the houses in Mardin are layered on top of each other, facing south to overlook what the residents refer to as the Mezopotamya denizi, or the “Mesopotamian sea”. This vast view of upper Mesopotamia is filled with endless golden wheat plains that stretch out to the horizon as far as the Syrian border. The rest of the family, which includes Eyiol's mother-in-law, Hikmet Eyiol, joins the lunch, as does a neighbour; they chat among themselves in Arabic. (It is typical in Mardin for families to speak in a mix of Turkish, Arabic and Kurdish.)

Fatma carries the hot içli köftes up the stairs. “The key ingredient that makes this dish taste as good as it does the wheat,” says Eyiol's mother-in-law, looking over her shoulder at the vast fields of the ingredient stretching out towards the horizon. “Never mix the wheat with semolina like they do in Istanbul and always eat it with your hands,” she adds, before picking up a freshly made içli köfte from the platter.

Walking the streets of Mardin's old town with Demir, it is clear what a profound effect this social entrepreneur has had on the city. What could be a five-minute stroll down the city's only main road to the shop takes us nearly half an hour as she stops to greet her fellow residents. She excuses herself to chat to the shopkeeper of Kervan, where she buys her spices and local delicacies.

The smell of dibek coffee – a bigger-grained coffee than ordinary Turkish coffee, containing herbs such as cardamom – fills the air. Sacks of dried berries, fruits and nuts bedeck the shopfront. The shopkeeper offers roasted almonds that are almost neon blue. “Don't worry, the blue is not food colouring,” he says reassuringly. “It is made out of the roots of the menengiç [wild pistachio] tree.” Demir orders 2kg of ceviz sucuğu (walnuts wrapped in grape molasses) to send as a gift to the Fethiye municipality. “Başım gözüm üstüne,” replies the shopkeeper, a daily but traditional term of endearment and respect that is also used colloquially to mean “with great pleasure”.

Demir's latest endeavour is her most ambitious yet. She is now attempting to repair the soil in Turkey. The journey of reviving and harvesting sorgül wheat made her realise how damaged and depleted the land had become. She is now campaigning to mobilise volunteers to collect food and waste scraps from markets, restaurants and cafés to turn into fertiliser. With the nearby Diyarbakir municipality's backing, a pilot programme has already begun; 15 additional cities have since pledged to co-operate with Demir to make compost.

After this summer's wildfires, which burned 1,700 sq km of forest in Turkey, the urgent need to act on climate change has made their project even more of a priority. “It is crucial to go back to the soil to solve our problems and there is nothing more essential than to heal it,” says Demir as we stride along the street, heavy with our purchases. “We need to protect the richness of our biodiversity at all costs. Otherwise in 10 years we will not be able to grow tomatoes.”

Not far from Mardin's old bazaar we reach Demir's production station, office and home. The shop, where goods are sold under the brand From Soil to Plate, lies further ahead. Upon entering, orders are given out and to-do lists are checked. Inside, staff members are busily at work. Some are kneading dough at the kitchen counter; some are outside on the balcony cooking tomato sauce in a cauldron against the mesmerising backdrop of the Mezopotamya denizi. Upstairs on the roof, several women are preparing to turn red peppers into paste. Her food engineers, all women, hover around, checking the quality of the products. “Those who know us know us,” she says of her clientele. Demir is well known and is in no need of advertisement. Her customers are in search of a reliable source of food from the region. “We ship our goods all around the country,” she adds.

The online operations selling From Soil to Plate's tomato sauce, red pepper paste and tarhana (a soup base made using yoghurt, tomato and flour) have been a lifeline to the women working for Demir during the coronavirus pandemic. “It was a warning and maybe even a preview of what is to come,” says Demir as she stops to taste the tomato sauce and asks for more salt to be added. For Demir, social gastronomy means healing society through food. “I am not only responsible for the food that I serve,” she says. “I am responsible for the journey it takes, the people it touches. I take that responsibility seriously.”