Sometimes it was impossible to get any information let alone definitive information. That was the case in Southeast Turkey. I’d see a man in baggy pants, ask Oz and he’d say, “Kurdish.” “What is the woman wearing?” “Kurdish” Maybe…and then again, maybe not. The further southeast the Explore group traveled in Turkey, the more unusual traditional dress became.

Googling and the ‘net helped very little so please take whatever is written here with a grain of salt. The Mardin Bazaar was the first place I noticed the extremely baggy pants worn by men…View image. A glance, followed by a double-take, and I went on the prowl to find more men wearing the flowing salvar pants. With Turkey’s borders abutting Iraq, Iran, Armenia and Syria in the southeast (Syria was a hop, skip and jump away from Mardin), the traditional outfits may have been adapted, modified and even assimilated over time. I’m already prepared to receive comments along the line of, “What the heck do you know. That is Persian. Iraqi, etc.”

Kurds are Turkey’s largest non-Turkish ethnic group, concentrated in the southeast. Did you know that the Kurds are part of Iranian-speaking ethnolinguistic group and are also grouped as part of the Iranian peoples? The Kurds were first mentioned in 5th century B.C. Baggy pants (salvars)…View image, long-sleeved shirts, and newsboy-type hats were the norm among the men I saw.

I spotted only one woman dressed colorfully….while others wore more subdued outfits with strange-looking cylindrical hats, a triangular white scarf underneath.

However, whether I’m right or wrong to refer to them as “Kurds,” very few women were dressed like this and just to see anyone wearing this fashion was a thrill.