A long path, a quarter-century of effort

June 7 was a big day for Turkish Chef Ebru Baybara Demir who has won this year’s Basque Culinary World Prize. When she had a zoom call with the jury, she was with her team, and she thought she was to be scrutinized on the documents she had previously presented for review. Instead, the call was to declare that she had won this year’s prize. She was ecstatic, jumping like a child, with all her close supporters around her breaking into tears. It had been a long journey for her and all the ones who had been participating in the several projects she led. The prize was the celebration of her humanitarian efforts over the past 25 years, most notably her efforts for the displaced persons of the February 2023 Syrian-Turkish earthquakes, where she was present from day one to aid the disaster zone delivering over 10 million meals to vulnerable people through the “Gönül Mutfağı-Soul Kitchen” network she founded.

Being one of the most important gastronomy awards in the world, Basque Culinary World Prize is given to chefs who create projects for the benefit of society. I might be biased, but this is perhaps one of the most important prizes ever awarded by BCWP, as it is not given only for her activities during the recent earthquake, but also for what she has done over a 25-year period. Although her recent project Soul Kitchen (Gönül Mutfağı), which supported disaster victims after the earthquake and distributed meals to thousands of people, stands out, this is not her only project. She was previously nominated in 2017 for her project on migration integration, and in 2018 she was a finalist for her project reviving heirloom Sorgül wheat with migrant Syrian women. These are only exemplary projects that had been nominated to the Basque prize, but there are several other projects she initiated, and this year she had presented to the jury five different project reports. For the first time, the jury evaluated all five files of a finalist and gave this important award to the sum of all of them. In this context, we can say that Demir received the prize of prizes for all her projects. In fact, this prize is so timely coinciding with the 25th anniversary of the Basque Culinary Center, which gives the award.

I had the chance to witness every step of Demir’s journey to the award. I can say that I have known Demir since the last century, watching every single step she took. I first got to know her in the late 1990s as a tourist guide organizing incredible tours to southeastern part of Türkiye. She was doing off-the-line tours in the region, all food-oriented, I recall especially what she did in Mardin and Hasankeyf. In Hasankeyf, she would set a table right in the river, guests would feast with their feet in the cool waters enjoying the local food cooked by local women. In Mardin, she created truly memorable experiences in historical places like the museum courtyard or the Kasımiye Medrese; she would set low-tables with huge copper trays where guests would take a seat on huge pillows and carpets, tasting home-cooked dishes delivered by Mardin housewives. She always had a theatrical drama in the way she presented the food, giving an emphasis in the rituals attached to food. At that time, she was not a chef, she did not yet have a restaurant, and I was not a food journalist, but what bonded us was our mutual interest in local culture and regional cuisines. I had not yet started writing about culinary matters, on the contrary, I was a restorer architect and the manager of the World Bank’s Cultural Heritage Project in Türkiye. At that time, Zeugma had just been discovered and was the center of great attention, but we were trying to choose a community-oriented project as the main project component, and that’s when Demir came to our rescue. Whenever there were international organizations and protocol visits to the region, such as the World Bank, the European Union, the U.N. or UNDP, she was on-board creating the most memorable feasting experience ever. Probably every country’s ambassador who served in Türkiye in those years will remember the unforgettable meals organized by her. Naturally, we started to show her as an ideal model of a woman entrepreneur to the World Bank mission, trying to persuade them to have Mardin as a Project component, claiming that there can be a true potential in the region through mobilizing women. What a vision we had as the project team! She has succeeded beyond my wildest dreams.

She was encouraged by the support she received from these organizations and swiftly opened her first restaurant Mardin Cercis Murat Konağı in a historic mansion. Again, she worked with local women, this time she presented local dishes in their original form in her own place, keeping them alive with all their traditions and rituals, eventually putting Mardin on the gastronomy map. When I called her to congratulate her after the Basque award, we rewound the movie backwards from today, and as I talked to Demir, I saw the traces of her early days in every single project she realized. Since day one, she has stubbornly maintained her principles and what she knows to be true, and reinforced her first line in every project empowering women in society. She is also keen on preserving our traditional dishes in their original form. “The gastronomy students who came to help during the earthquake cooked food in a huge community cauldron for the first time, they learned how to make a perfect rice pilaf on such a big scale for thousands of people, this is a great achievement!”

All her projects deserve mentioning in future articles, but the comment of Joan Roca, President of the Jury of the Basque Culinary World Prize, sums it all: “Demir is an extraordinary example of humanity, commitment and strength. In addition, her connection with the different realities involved in gastronomy highlights the importance of the soil as how our ingredients are nourished, as well as the importance of biodiversity as a defense against the advance of climate change. Her work highlights how food can be used to integrate refugees and displaced people, and its ability to generate development opportunities. Her efforts also demonstrate the role of food in creating space for dialogue between different, and even contentious, cultures. For the past twenty years, Demir’s work has been answering questions on these matters, and consistently and persistently showing how central connection, collaboration, and synergy are in addressing collective problems”

Demir has demonstrated the perseverance and determination of an Anatolian woman on this long and narrow path. She never wavered from working and doing what she knew was right. In each of her projects, there is an intensive labor woven like the handwoven Turkish carpets and kilims by Anatolian women. She set out with women, she added men to her side, especially her husband Fatih Demir, who has always been supporting her, and they demonstrated the power of solidarity together. She will never stray from her path, she has already donated the award to the aid work, The Basque prize money will directly go to Soul Kitchen. She will organize a condolence dinner in the earthquake zone on the first day of Kurban Bayramı, she will touch people’s hearts again. It was a long walk for her, a quarter-century of dedication, but I know that she will never stop, and keep walking in her path to support communities.