On the Flying Carpet

A night at the annual festival that brings music, circus, light and truth to children in socially neglected regions of Turkey

By Eleni Papadopoulou / Photography Eleni Papadopoulou, Pinar Demiral

Ten kilometers from the Syrian border, the driver cautiously makes headway along the narrow path between rows of corn as high as the bus. Two hours and a few wrong turns later, we reach the rural village of Kaşıklı in the Kurdish province of Mardin, in the southeast of Turkey. In the scorching August sun, thirty five musicians and artists from Turkey, Iran, Iraq, Italy, Serbia, Syria, France, the United Kingdom, the US and Brazil, along with local teenagers, get off the bus and begin setting up outside the village’s minaret for the third night in the tour of the second annual Flying Carpet Festival.