Turkish Community Events in Evanston, IL

Step into a world of color, creativity, and culture in our Turkish Mosaic Hanging Lantern Workshop! In this hands-on experience! Create Your Own Glowing Work of Art Step into a world of color, creativity, and culture in our Turkish Mosaic Hanging Lantern Workshop! In this hands-on experience, you’ll design and decorate a beautiful glass lantern using vibrant mosaic tiles and traditional patterns inspired by Turkish artistry. Perfect for beginners and creatives of all levels, this relaxing and social class guides you step-by-step as you transform a clear hanging jar into a stunning lantern masterpiece. Choose from a wide variety of colorful glass pieces to create your own unique design—no two lanterns are ever the same! ✨ What You’ll Experience: Learn the basics of Turkish mosaic design Create your own hanging glass lantern Work with colorful tiles, beads, and adhesive Enjoy a cozy, creative atmosphere Take home a functional piece of art 🕯️ Each lantern includes space for a tea light candle, making it perfect for bedrooms, closets, patios, or cozy corners. 🎨 All materials are included. Just bring your creativity! Whether you’re planning a date night, girls’ night, family outing, or solo creative escape, this workshop is the perfect way to unwind and make something beautiful. For more tickets please visit our website www.colorcocktailfactory.com 📍 Location: Color Cocktail Factory – Chicago ⏳ Duration: Approximately 2 hours 👥 All skill levels welcome Come relax, create, and leave with a glowing piece you’ll treasure! 🎨 Color Cocktail Factory – Class Guidelines We’re excited to welcome you to our studio! Please review the following information carefully before your visit: 📍 Location & Parking Address: 1142 W 18th St, Chicago (next to Bobijoa Korean Kitchen, across from Chicago Tattoo). Parking: Street parking only (paid and limited). We recommend public transit, Uber/Lyft, or arriving early to allow time to park and walk a couple blocks. 🕒 Class Times Classes begin promptly 10 minutes after the scheduled time. Late arrivals: 30+ minutes late will not be admitted. A $15 reschedule fee per ticket applies if you need to transfer. Please respect the end time — staying past your session may result in a $50 per person, per hour late fee. ⚖️ Studio Philosophy We believe art should be accessible to everyone, which is why we keep our classes affordable while maintaining a busy, lively studio environment. Please check our Instagram for photos to get a feel for the experience. 📌 Important Policies Registration is a firm commitment — no refunds, no reschedules after registration. Weekends can be very full; if you’d prefer a quieter session, contact us to move your booking to a different time. We look forward to creating with you! 💫

Famous Rafet El Roman, Turkish singer coming to New York and Chicago, April 24 and 26.

Join KMTS for "From 'Byzantine Intrigues' to Civil Byzantium: The Making of Byzantium in Contemporary Turkey" with Koray Durak on April 20. Join the Keyman Modern Turkish Studies Program for "From 'Byzantine Intrigues' to Civil Byzantium: The Making of Byzantium in Contemporary Turkey" with Koray Durak, Boğaziçi University, on Monday, April 20 at 12:30pm in Kresge Hall, Room 1515. “Byzantium” is imagined, circulated, and contested in contemporary Turkey through the interaction of state-managed memory politics, popular culture, and civil and academic initiatives. Approaching Byzantium as a cultural object—whose meanings are constantly produced and reproduced in public discourse, from school textbooks and political rhetoric to museums, exhibitions, the cultural industries (film and television), and digital media—reveals a field of diverse and often competing representations. These representations are shaped by unequal access to cultural authority, shifting ideological agendas, and logics of the media through which Byzantium is represented, in a country that is heir to Constantinople/Istanbul, the former imperial capital. Combining discourse analysis with an institutional history of Byzantine studies in Turkey, and using the state/civil society divide as a heuristic tool, I argue that modern state ideology has alternately constrained, instrumentalized, or ignoredByzantium, while more plural academic and civic environments have enabled alternative interpretations and new communities of interest to emerge. In this sense, the perception of Byzantium in modern Turkey is not merely a matter of historical knowledge; it is also a mirror of Turkey’s own political and social transformations. KORAY DURAK is an associate professor in the Department of History at Boğaziçi University (Istanbul) and also the vice-director of the Byzantine Studies Research Center at the same institution. He has been teaching courses on the history of the medieval Mediterranean region, Byzantine history, and Byzantine medicine since 2008. His main areas of research interest include Byzantine-Islamic relations (with a particular focus on their economic dimensions), the commercial history of Byzantine Constantinople, and Byzantine pharmacology. His publications in these fields include “The Commercial History of Trebizond and the Region of Pontos from the Seventh to the Eleventh Centuries: An International Emporium,” (Mediterranean Historical Review, 2021), and “Commercial Constantinople,” in Cambridge Companion to Constantinople (Cambridge University Press, 2022). He has also co-edited several collected volumes, including Mobility and Materiality in Byzantine-Islamic Relations, 7th-12th Centuries (Routledge). In addition to these research areas, Durak has developed a sustained and widely recognized scholarly engagement with the history of Byzantine studies in modern Turkey, publishing on both the institutional formation of the field and Byzantium’s changing place in public discourse and popular culture. He curated the exhibition “Odyssey of Byzantine Studies in Turkey” at ANAMED (Koç University Research Center for Anatolian Civilizations) in Istanbul in 2024, accompanied by the homonymous book he authored. He also co-organized the workshop Rethinking Byzantine Studies in Turkey: Concepts, Terms, and Methods I, held at the Pera Museum in Istanbul in December 2024.