International Bursa Karagöz Festival
18 September 2026 · movable holiday — Karagöz and Hacivat are bickering again – and the Moon is laughing!
Karagöz and Hacivat are the two main characters of traditional Turkish shadow theatre. Flat puppets cut from treated hide are lit from behind against a white screen, while a single puppeteer voices every character. Karagöz is a plain-spoken, quick-witted man of the people, and the more educated Hacivat prizes refined speech; their misunderstandings drive the humour. According to a popular legend, the two were workers on a construction site in Bursa in the time of the Ottoman ruler Orhan, and their jokes entertained their fellow workers. Historians do not agree on this story, so we present it as folklore. The art of Karagöz is inscribed on UNESCO's Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity (2009, nominated by Türkiye). Bursa hosts an annual international festival whose dates are set by the municipality, usually in autumn. Shadow theatre is all about the play of light and darkness, so it felt natural to let the two heroes squabble against the Moon.
Flying across the sky: Two ethereal, bluish-silver star figures made of luminous dots and thin connecting lines, shaped like flat Ottoman shadow-puppet silhouettes, Karagöz with a round hat and Hacivat with a tall turban, gesturing at each other like a moving constellation
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