Commemoration Week for the Legendary Chefs of Turkish Cuisine

A craft survives in the people who carry it. Technique, vocabulary and the standard of a day's work pass from master to apprentice, and when no one writes the masters down, the chain becomes impossible to reconstruct a generation later. This week exists to write them down.

Why the week opens on 7 January

Chef Zeki Gülyiyen passed away on 7 January 2009. The commemoration begins on the anniversary of his passing and continues through 15 January. The Turkish Cuisine Movement was publicly announced on 7 January 2020.

The chefs commemorated

Eight names are commemorated during the week. Where a particular biographical detail can be checked against a published source it is given below with that source; where it cannot, the name is recorded on the authority of the institutional register and nothing further is asserted. For four of the eight, full biographical reference verification is still in progress; those entries are marked accordingly and no dates or particulars are supplied for them.

Mehmet Yücel

Born 1890 (Rumi 1305), died 2 June 1965. From Düzağaç, Mengen. Entered service at the Çankaya Residence in 1924 and cooked for Mustafa Kemal Atatürk for fourteen years.¹

Kemal Erten

From the Cazlar quarter of Konak village, Mengen. Began service at the Çankaya Residence in 1929.¹

Halit Atay

From Düzköy, Mengen. Served at the Çankaya Residence and Dolmabahçe Palace between 1931 and 1935.¹ Cited in the press as the source for Atatürk's preference for kuru fasulye.²

Zeki Gülyiyen

Zeki Gülyiyen, who passed away on 7 January 2009, is remembered in the profession as the “Master of Masters.” WTCA institutional records identify him as the founder of ZG Restaurants. In an İhlas Haber Ajansı (İHA) report dated 13 February 2007, Gülyiyen stated that he had served for a period as private chef to former Prime Minister Tansu Çiller. See Founding President.

Aydın Yılmaz

Commemorated in the institutional register of the week. Full biographical reference verification is in progress.

Cemal Erdoğan

Commemorated in the institutional register of the week. Full biographical reference verification is in progress.

Cemal Türkan

Commemorated in the institutional register of the week. Full biographical reference verification is in progress.

Ümit Ömer Sevinç

Commemorated in the institutional register of the week. Full biographical reference verification is in progress.

Three of the eight served in the kitchens of the Çankaya Residence and Dolmabahçe Palace, and all three came from Mengen in Bolu, a district long associated with the training of cooks for the palace and then for the Republic. Within the sources examined here, that concentration is a significant documented example of how the craft was transmitted in Türkiye, from a single district into the kitchens of the state.

The observance

The week is kept as a commemoration, not a festival. It is marked by a lokma hayratı, the distribution of lokma in memory of the dead, which is the customary Anatolian form of remembrance rather than a culinary display. According to TMDH–WTCA institutional records, in the 2025 observance lokma was distributed for 1,200 people.

Contributors to the observance are recorded separately from those commemorated. In his written message for 2025 the Founding President thanked Hülya Erol, teacher and author, whose work is entered in the institutional heritage inventory; Niyazi Dumlu, whose published work on lokma culture is likewise entered there; and Salih Güneş, Director of the Başakşehir Vocational Training Centre.

This week, which we have kept as a tradition for many years, has once again given us occasion to honour the pioneering chefs who gave so much to our cuisine and to our cooks.Tolgahan Gülyiyen · Founding President, written message, 2025

References