Smoking like a Turk is a very widespread expression in the Italian language, with some similar equivalents in other foreign languages. The image it transmits is very clear: it indicates a person who smokes a lotalmost compulsively, and is so rooted in common use that few dwell on its meaning and really ask themselves its origins. And in fact, why a Turk? Like many sayings linked to foreign peoples, it too was born from a set of history and cultural stereotypes, starting from the prohibitionism of Sultan Murad IV and the Ottoman hookah culture.
The meaning of the idiomatic expression and its origins
First of all, it must be clarified that this is aidiomatic expressionthat is, a sentence whose overall meaning does not coincide with the literal meaning of the individual words. Saying that someone “smokes like a Turk”, in fact, does not mean that he smokes “in the Turkish way”, complete with hookah, but simply that he smokes a lot, exactly as if one were to say “smoke like a chimney”. What is intriguing, however, is associating this activity with Turkish nationality.
The origin of this relatively ancient saying is not documented with certainty, but a very widespread explanation links it to the era ofOttoman Empire, between the 17th and 19th centurieswhen the idea spread in Europe that Turks smoked excessively. Some sources link this fame to the period following the death of Ottoman sultan Murad IVwhich had imposed an absolute ban on coffee, alcohol and tobacco, punishing violators with death. After his death, however, consumption quickly resumed and became very visible to the eyes of the European travellers.
This historical coincidence was important, thus creating for centuries a very specific idea of ”Turkish” inEuropean imagination like a character exotic and excessive. Over the centuries, many European countries had complex relationships with the Ottoman Empire, made up of wars, trade, fears and mutual fascination. Also for this reason, expressions and some figurative uses of the term “Turkish” in a hyperbolic sense easily arose which associated Turks with behaviors deemed extreme or out of the normor even to actions considered negative and harmful; just think, for example, of the expression “swear like a Turk” to describe someone inclined to use colorful expletives. This is because the term “Turk” in many European expressions often had a generically hyperbolic value or was associated with the idea of ”non-Christian”, “foreign”, “excessive”, “barbarian”, etc.
But there is also one well-founded reason underlying the spread of this expression given that the link between tobacco and the Ottoman Empire was never completely invented. Smoking really spread enormously in the Ottoman area as early as the seventeenth century and tobacco consumption became integral part of social lifeespecially in cafes and public places in big cities. The hookah itself, an iconic symbol of the Near East, was soon associated with the Ottoman world and with recreational activities where smoking was king.
Smoking like a Turk in English and other languages
Since this stereotype was not exclusive to the Italian peninsula, the idea of the smoking Turk does not only exist in the Italian language:
- In French you can say ‘smoker like a Turk‘, practically identical in both structure and meaning given that it indicates someone who smokes a lot and testifies to how widespread this stereotype was in Western Europe;
- similarly also in Slovenian saying ‘kaditi kot Turk‘ we make ourselves understood anyway.
The literal correspondences end here. Other languages and cultures use different expressions to describe someone who smokes a lot:
- In English there is no identical ethnic equivalent, but expressions such as ‘to smoke like a chimney’ (“to smoke like a chimney”), which corresponds almost perfectly to the Italian “to smoke like a chimney”.
- The same is true in German with ‘rauchen wie ein Schlot’ (“to smoke like an industrial chimney”), which is a curious expression as in a colloquial or derogatory sense it can also indicate a very tall and thin person (“lanky”) or a rude person in some regionalisms;
- The image of chimneys and chimneys has certainly left a mark, because in Portuguese it’s also widespread’smoke like a fireplace‘ (“smoke like a chimney”);
- The Spanish comes closer saying ‘smoke like a carretero (“smoking like a carter”), but is also scarcely present ‘smoke like a Turk‘, probably influenced by French and Italian;
These differences are interesting because they show how each language constructs its own hyperbolic images using different cultural references by associating them with stereotyped social figures or objects.
