The courting and engagement process in Turkey is pretty similar to the one we have here in the US. In Turkey, as in the US, boy meets girl. Boy and girl fall in love. Boy asks girl to marry him. Boy gets family’s blessing. Boy and girl get married and live happily ever after.
There are some nuances in the fine print though, steps unique to Turkey that cannot be bypassed if the couple wants to do it right, steps like the soz (meaning “promise”).
The soz comes well before the engagement. It’s like going steady, except it’s going steady on steroids because it’s a formal step involving both families.
For the soz both families get dressed up in their Sunday best. Everyone takes part – mothers and fathers, older and younger siblings, sometimes even grandparents and aunts and uncles and cousins. Men wear suits and ties, vests even, and if they have pocket watches and ascots, they wear those too.
The young man and his family go over to the young woman’s house, where the young woman’s family receives them like they are the most important guests who have ever crossed the family’s threshold. Both families sit down in the living room and make nervous small talk for a while, and then the young man’s father gets down to business. He talks on and on about how great both families are, on and on about how perfect a match the young man and the young woman would make, and then he asks the young woman’s father for his consent to a union.
These days no dowry is offered. No one offers anyone any cattle, and no sheep are slaughtered. The two families just sit in the living room and interview each other. The young woman’s parents ask themselves, “Will this young man be good for our daughter?” Similarly, the young man’s parents ask themselves, “Will this girl be good for our son?” And most important of all, both families ask themselves, “Will we be good for each other?” The soz is not just about deciding whether the young man and the young woman will fit together well, it is about the two families deciding whether they will fit together well, too.
While the two families are talking, the young woman is sent out of the room to make Turkish coffee. At a soz everyone’s social skills are on display, even the young woman’s skill at making Turkish coffee for guests. Well-made Turkish coffee has a creamy foam on top, and the young woman knows that everyone in the living room will be inspecting his or her cup to see if the coffee meets expectations. The young woman could be a world-famous brain surgeon or a Nobel Peace Prize winner, but what matters most at that particular moment is the foam on those cups of coffee.
The other family members monopolize the conversation, but the young lovers have a way of communicating with each other too. If the young woman does not like the young man, she can put salt in his coffee to signal to him, “Don’t do this, I don’t want to be with you.” When I heard about this little tradition, my first thought was that if you’re a young man going out on a limb like this, you should be pretty sure ahead of time that your girl isn’t going to salt your coffee.
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[This is an excerpt from the chapter “Going steady” in A Tight Wide-open Space.]