Fast-breaking News: A Tale of Two Towns

türkçe links to original Turkish article

(HaberTürk Newspaper, 3 July 2015)


Yerköy'ers can chow down 1 minute before Çiçekdağ'ers.

Yozgat Yerköy and Kırşehir Çiçekdağı...their geographic
position and social structure make them two districts
very much within each other...and this togetherness has
increased as they both have expanded.

But this situation has created some oddities for both
towns and it has them both living in 'araf'' (a place
separating heaven from hell).  For example, neighbors
live close to one another but they have to dial either
the Yozgat area code or the Kırşehir one in order to
phone each other.


    Yerköy and Çiçekdağ located at center left.

The oddities have increased during the holy month of
Ramazan. Those living between the two mosques of
the two districts have a difficult time at 'iftar' (evening
fast-breaking time) because the iftar times for each
mosque are one minute apart.

If a neighbor gets confused and breaks his fast
according to the time of the 'wrong' mosque, then
they he might sin by eating too soon. Mehmet Doğan,
who has lived in Çakmak neighborhood of Çiçekdağ
for 40 years, explained that "the call to prayer happens
at 20:20 in Yozgat's Yerköy district and at 20:21 in
Kırşehir's Çiçekdağ district. So people in Çiçekdağ
may break their fast too early by mistake. We're in
Çiçekdağ but physically closer to Yerköy, so we
have to be careful."