The “Didn’t We Spend a Lot of Time Together?” Project, which was launched in Turkey and is devoted to the similar cultures and culinary traditions of the historic Kars city in modern-day Turkey and the city of Gyumri of Armenia, was recently presented in the form of a film and a book at the “Food and Cooking” symposium hosted by the University of Oxford.

Correspondent of Istanbul’s Agos Armenian Weekly talked to one of the creators of the project Ihsan Karayazi, who is the director of the project along with Armine Avetisyan.

The group also collaborated with well-known Turkish-Armenian writer Taguhi Tovmasyan, who is the author of the book “May Your Table Never Break”.

“I lived in Kars for about a decade. After participating in a UN regional travel program, I started showing interest in the local culture. The then authorities of Kars were in a great mood to cooperate with the people on the other side of the border, and festivals were organized every year. People from Armenia would visit, and that was when I started visiting Armenia,” Karayazi said.

The Turkish folklorist and his team have also examined the dishes made by the women of Kars and Gyumri, the stories about those dishes and the generalities. Later, these people, who live on both sides of the border and don’t have any bonds, had the opportunity to meet around a table in Kars, writes tert.am.