Queen Tunku of Malaysia has travelled to the Turkish capital, Ankara, where she met with the country’s First Lady, Ermine Erdogan, for a busy day of engagements while their husbands held bi-lateral meetings.
The first event was the opening of the ‘History of Turkish Music’ exhibition, which is currently being held in the National Library.
In that same building, the two ladies also visited the Rare Books section of the library, and were shown some of the Ottoman gastronomy books that are kept there. First Lady Ermine Erdogan is very much a lover of recipe books, so much so that she wrote one herself, titled ‘Turkish Cuisine with Timeless Recipes‘, a copy of which was gifted to Queen Tunku, together with a Malay translation of Mesnevi, an ancient Turkish poem.
Recipe books are a passion the two ladies share, as their next event highlighted. Queen Tunku and First Lady Erdogan moved to the newly build Malaysia section of the Turkish National Library, which was opened by the duo. This section also contains recipe books of traditional cuisine written by Her Majesty.
It was then time to move to the Presidential complex for the rest of the events, which were all focussed on fashion.
On arrival, they visited the ‘Fabric Atlas of Türkiye’ exhibition, which showcases some of the fabrics that are part of the homonym project, aimed at launching the Turkish textile industry on the global market. The project is headed by Ayşe Dizman, who managed to collect more than 140 different types of fabrics from various regions of the country, as well as fabrics dating as far back as the Ottoman empire.
Their final event for the day was a caftan fashion show, with the pieces being made of fabrics imported from all areas of the country. The show was also attended by Princess Afzan Aminah and Princess Jihan Azizah, who flew from Malaysia with the King and Queen.
These events were a part of the official visit that the Malaysian Royals are paying to Türkiye, in a moment when the latter is playing a crucial role in the Ukrainian grain crisis, by positioning themselves as a neutral third party that managed to negotiate a deal to allow grain shipments to resume from the occupied country.
