The Marmara Hotel bombing is recalled as an act of Islamist political violence against a New Year celebration in Istanbul. The attack struck a patisserie inside the Marmara Hotel on Taksim Square, where an enormous pine tree had been put up for the holiday; in Kemal’s account, it marked the point at which conservative anger over the festivities erupted into violence.

Background: New Year Under Scrutiny

Conservative newspapers including Milli Gazete, Tercüman, and Hergün condemned New Year’s Eve as a growing celebration of drinking and gambling. Tombala, the National Lottery, card games, and promotions for restaurants and nightclubs all figured in their denunciations. Even some affluent Muslim families’ practice of displaying Christmas-style pine trees unsettled Kemal’s mother, though she called acquaintances who did so harebrained rather than adopting the religious press’s harsher labels.

The Attack

Kemal places the bombing a few years after an incident he remembered from December 1980, when lycée students mocked Haydar Efendi, an apartment janitor selling lottery tickets dressed as Santa Claus. He does not give a precise date for the attack or describe casualties. Instead, he identifies its setting and the charged symbolism of the target: Islamists bombed the patisserie in the Marmara Hotel, on Taksim Square, while it was decorated for New Year with an enormous pine tree.

Recollection and Public Reaction

At the Keskin family dinner table, the bombing was an urgent subject. Kemal sets that discussion beside another public dispute over festive television: in 1981, the appearance of the celebrated belly dancer Sertap on TRT provoked surprise, while the broadcaster’s management had covered her so thoroughly that even her legs were concealed. The juxtaposition shows how New Year celebrations and their public representation were contested in different ways, from newspaper denunciation and a bombing to television censorship. The account does not claim that the bombing ended the celebrations; it preserves the attack as a violent expression of the anger surrounding them.