(Image source: https://lokmaciankara.com/)

As in many international cities, food features heavily in Istanbul. Every year there’s a new taste sensation, but custom-built trucks serving up lokma—soft, little balls of yeasted dough deep fried and dunked in a light syrup—are no passing fad. As soon as the truck flap opens, people quickly form lines that last as long as the scent of frying oil permeates the air. Unlike conventional food trucks that sell their products, these distribute theirs for free.

The act of distributing lokma in this manner, sometimes carried out directly by individuals or families, and at other times by paying a private company to do so on one’s behalf, is known as hayrına lokma dökmek. The phrase translates as “to pour morsels for charity,” and derives from the Arabic word luqma, meaning bite or mouthful. Traditionally, servings of lokma are handed out for free as a ritual to remember a departed loved one. People who did not know the deceased are welcome to join the queue and receive the sweet, doughy balls. Like many others in Turkey, even though I am not Muslim, I too await my turn to receive lokma when the opportunity arises.

Despite appearances, this practice is not solely about death nor is it only linked to religion. “When we look at it culturally,” Sedat Taş, manager of the lokma distribution company Hayır Lokması says, the reasons for distributing lokma for free are both secular and sacred, such as giving thanks to Allah when opening a new business or asking for prayers to grant a newborn child a long life. As such, lokma, and the motivations for giving it away for free, provide enlightening insights into the way religion, tradition, and modernity intersect in 21^st century Turkey.

The Act of Mourning and Consuming Sweets in Islam 

In Islam, mourners come together to perform ritual prayers 7, 40, and 52 days after a person has died, usually in their homes. Immediate family members, distant relatives, and friends recite mevlit, a series of prayers, and consume something sweet, often halva, to bring relief and mercy to the deceased. While research suggests that around 94% of the Turkish population, currently just over 85.5 million, believes in Allah, this does not mean every individual lives strictly according to Islamic tenets. However, most Turks do participate in religious observances to mark significant moments in the life cycle, such as birth and death, both of which involve the consumption of food.

The structured nature of the mourning period comes from pre-Islamic Turkic beliefs concerning the stages the bodies and souls of the dead pass through after a person takes their last breath. One of the most widely held is that the flesh detaches from the bone on the 40th or 52nd day after death so commemorations on those days are said to ease their suffering. In addition, the dead were thought to haunt their homes for up to forty days so the more prayers that are said, the less likely they would do any harm to the family.

According to Taş, “in general people mostly prefer the 40^th day,” to distribute lokma on behalf of the deceased. “Or if there is someone who passed away in previous years, they want to distribute lokma on the anniversary of the death.” The company does their best to accommodate the mourners’ wishes, particularly when it comes to sharing lokma in the neighborhood where the person lived.

Taş’s mother, Figen Taş, is a devout Muslim and came up with the idea of distributing lokma from trucks in Istanbul in 2005. Today their fleet numbers 100 trucks, and they employ 600 workers in total. People wanting to mark the passing of a loved one pay 5000TL, around $130 USD at the current exchange rate, for a minimum order of 750 portions of lokma. But there’s no upper limit to how many portions the company can supply. At the moment they use around 20 tons of hamur, a little over 44,000 pounds of dough, a month.

(Image source: Lokma Diyari Istanbul)

At public hayrına lokma dökmek offerings, praying for the deceased is not mandatory. Nonetheless people will often recite the words, “Alhamdulillahi rabbil Alamin,” to themselves as they eat the lokma. It’s from the second verse of Surah Fatiha, the first chapter of the Koran and literally translates to “Praise be to Allah, the Lord of the Universe.” According to Islamic experts, Surah Fatiha was the first complete surah revealed to the Prophet Muhammad. Saying the words “Alhamdulillahi rabbil Alamin” while helping to commemorate the deceased effectively commends them to Allah while also acting as a statement of gratitude and submission.

Often, Taş notes, “people want to farewell the deceased person from the mosque where they had the most friends, or to distribute lokma in the mosque where friends, spouses, comrades and people knew the deceased. They want to reach out to them because they will offer better wishes for them.”

Food as Charity in Islam

Many of the practices pertaining to the ways Muslims behave are prescribed by sunnah, the actions of the Prophet Muhammed that, along with his words and the things he approved, are collectively known as hadith. However, hayrına lokma dökmek is a custom rather than a religious obligation. It is predominantly associated with Turkey and not universal to Islam.

Feeding the hungry is mentioned in the hadith. It is one of the many acts a Muslim can perform in order to ensure their passage to heaven. There are different ways to provide food, such as during Kurban Bayramı, also known as Eid al-Adha. In this religious event, an animal is slaughtered, and the meat is distributed to close family and relatives with a third of the meat donated to the needy. Kurban means “sacrifice” in Turkish and this act commemorates the story of Ibrahim, known as Abrahim/Abraham in the Bible. Ibrahim was put to the test when Allah asked him to give up his son Ismail/Ishmael in order to prove the strength of his faith. Just as Ibrahim was about to draw his knife, Allah stopped him and gave him a ram to sacrifice instead.

There are two types of sacrificial practices amongst the Turks, both of which denote gratitude, devotion, and the individual’s submission to a higher power. Kurban is categorised as a bloody sacrifice for obvious reasons. The second type of sacrifices are bloodless.

Bloodless sacrifices are called saçılga, which literally means “scatter,” and include showering a new bride with wheat and sugar. “In all these sacrificial food traditions,” Aylin Tan, a food history researcher and columnist says, “you sacrifice something valuable, given for a good cause.” Distributing lokma is another form of bloodless sacrifice. Families spend their hard- earned money, putting the needs of the beloved in heaven above their own on Earth.

Taş says his mother believes those who “contribute to the work of distributing lokma and make it happen receive as much reward as the people who ask for this work to be done.”

“At the same time,” Taş adds, “it’s something we do so we can earn religious merit. In fact, the name of our shop is Hayır Lokması, but our company name is Sevap Gıda, meaning ‘food of merit or reward.’”

The History of Hayrına Lokma Dökmek in Turkey

Taş says hayrına lokma dökmek “is a very old tradition that comes from the Ottomans” and attributes its origins to Izmir, in the Aegean region of Turkey.

There is no doubt lokma was popular with the Ottoman court. Official records from 1841 list lokma tabağı, special lokma plates, on the inventory of the imperial kitchens in Topkapı Palace, the administrative centre of the Ottoman Empire and home to the Ottoman sultans in Istanbul until 1856. Whether it was served to commemorate a death is less certain. Mary Işın, a food historian says, “Lokma for funerals in Istanbul is a new phenomenon, although it seems to have been known in the 19th century because in his Ottoman dictionary published in Istanbul in 1901, Şemseddin Sami says lokma is ‘usually distributed for the soul of the dead.’” Işın also notes that Lucy Garnett, author of The Women of Turkey and their Folklore, published in 1893, wrote that three days after a death, the family of the deceased sent plates of loukmas, “a kind of dough-nut,” around to the houses of their friends. They also distributed some to the poor with the request that they pray for the soul of the departed.

Distributing lokma was also common in Greece, as Tan points out, where they are called loukoumades. Prior to 1923, large sections of the Aegean coast, including Izmir, were populated by Rum, Greeks born in Turkey. When Greece and Turkey signed the Convention Concerning the Exchange of Greek and Turkish Populations, known as the Greek-Turkish population exchange, in 1923, around 1.5 million Greek Orthodox Christians living in Turkey and between 350-400,000 Muslims from Greece were forcibly returned to their “homelands.”

It’s conceivable the hayrına lokma dökmek tradition began with the Rum, but as with many cultural practices handed down through the generations, the passing of time and lack of documentation means it is not possible to definitively state its origins.

Shamanism and Lokma

Tan says, “I think people in Izmir had the habit from Anatolia,” but also believes the creation and consumption of lokma as a sweet delicacy associated with death rituals “goes back to pre-Islam shamanistic beliefs from Central Asia.” Shamanism refers to a belief system based on shamans, individuals thought to be able to heal the sick and escort the souls of the dead to the afterlife. In the Turkish version, Kök Tangri, the Sky God, is the ultimate ruler. Tangri is often linked to Tian, a Chinese philosophical concept meaning heaven.

Tan compares frying dough to make lokma for the deceased with an old Chinese tradition where, she says, “the chimney has to continue to smoke or the kitchen needs to survive to send a message to the lost one as he or she is up in the sky already. So the lost one’s soul will know the house is still surviving and fine and everybody is in good condition.” Cooking something sweet is the means of releasing the smell of the oil into the air to reassure the dead.

However, “Nobody knows that or perceives this as such in today’s Turkey,” Tan continues. People don’t know the reason or the root of it; they just do it “because it’s tradition.” Yet as she herself acknowledges, “many traditions in Turkey are not really completely religious,” and the distribution of hayrına lokma dökmek is a case in point.

Prayers for a Bird, an Artist and a Hollywood Visionary

Large scale commercial distribution of lokma via fleets of trucks has only been occurring in Istanbul over the last twenty years, but locals have been quick to adopt the practice. Initially, aside from deaths, it was mainly done, Taş explains, for “weddings, engagements, and circumcisions.” Now, he says, they get orders for all sorts of reasons. Some “people distribute lokma if their son passed an exam” and when one of their customers “lost their parrot they said, ‘If I find my parrot I’ll distribute lokma to people, I’ll sweeten people’s mouths.’ A week later the bird entered his house through the window and the customer had lokma distributed.”

People even order lokma to be distributed to the public to observe international losses, such as what occurred on January 21, 2024, when a group of art lovers paid for lokma to be distributed on the 35^th anniversary of Salvador Dali’s death. More recently David Lynch fans in Istanbul did the same.

The Sweet Taste of Prayer

Despite its popularity in Turkey, the practice of handing out lokma is largely unknown outside the country. Taş explains how, “People, foreigners, when they come up to our trucks during the distribution of lokma, they can’t understand what we’re doing. Even though we say it’s free, no charge, they ask ‘How is it free? Why are you distributing it then?’”

This has certainly been my personal experience as someone who moved to Turkey more than 15 years ago. The first time I saw a hayrına lokma dökmek truck I had to ask a woman in the queue what it was. Once I understood, I was still a little taken aback when I saw waitstaff from nearby restaurants dash over with stacks of empty plates and stand patiently in line waiting to pick up portions for their diners too. However, it is the act of eating the lokma that is paramount, not the particulars of who consumes them or how many they take. Handing out lokma for free brings people from different segments of society together and strengthens social ties. In that moment, although all of us are strangers to one another, including me, we’re united.

In a Turkey struggling not to fragment under high inflation and a currency weakening by the day, getting something for nothing is a treat. “People are happy,” says Taş, “when we distribute sweets for free because life is very expensive in our country these days.” And after all, as the Hayır Lokması company slogan reminds us, “Mutluluk paylaştıkça çoğalır”: “Happiness increases when shared.”

Lisa Morrow is an Australian-born author and travel writer who has lived in Istanbul and other parts of Turkey for more than 15 years. She has a Masters’ Degree in Sociology, has written five books on Turkey, and her work has appeared in the New York Times, Hyperallergic, BBC Travel, Meanjin, CNN Travel, and elsewhere.