Barber and beard culture, Turkey
Istanbul
A city of barbers, where the hot-towel shave, the trimmed beard and the moustache carry centuries of Ottoman and Turkish custom.
Istanbul has barbers on almost every street, from old shops in the Grand Bazaar area to the barbers of Kadıköy and Beşiktaş. The Turkish shave, with hot towels, foam lather, a straight razor, a flame flicked across the ears and a splash of lemon cologne, has become known worldwide. Moustaches and beards have long carried meaning in Turkish life.
The Turkish barber
Under the Ottomans, barbers were respected tradesmen organised in guilds, and many also pulled teeth and let blood. The barber shop was a meeting place for news and talk. Today a full Turkish shave takes half an hour or more: a hot towel, a long lather with a brush, two passes of the razor, threading or a flame to remove stray hairs, and a finish of kolonya, the lemon cologne offered across Turkey.
Moustache and meaning
Ottoman portraits show sultans and officials with full beards and moustaches, and in the twentieth century the moustache became nearly universal among Turkish men. Writers have long noted that its shape was once read as a signal of politics or background, with drooping, trimmed and full styles linked to different groups. Younger men now follow world barbering fashions, and Istanbul's barbers have spread their craft across Europe.
Guides of Istanbul
Photo credits on this page
The small pictures above come from Wikimedia Commons under free licences. Some are cropped to fit.
- Moustache: VAZHAR, CC BY-SA 4.0, source
- Beard: @nazanin, CC0, source
- Goatee: Harris & Ewing, Public domain, source