“May no malice come your way and may all your cares and sorrows melt away.” The little girl lit up at her mother’s words.

WOODCUTTER TURKMENS
What that little girl didn’t know but her mother did is that Anatolia is a land of migratory nomads. Consequently the village’s story begins back in Central Asia. Fleeing Mongol pressure in the 13th century, one of the Oghuz tribes, the ‘Men of the Tree’, migrated to north of the Caspian Sea. The story of their migration, which led them first into Khorasan and then Iraq, culminated in the Taurus Mountains. Master woodcutters by profession, they were called the ‘Woodcutter Turkmens’ or ‘Tahtacilar’ for short. When Mehmed the Conqueror got it into his head to take Istanbul, he ordered lumber from the trees on Mt Ida to be cut and worked into the ships and runners he would use for the conquest.