The pieces are part of the collections of the Romanian Peasant Museum and the Museum of Folk Art Constanța. They are pieces of material and spiritual culture representative of the traditional way of life of Turks and Tatars: clothing, jewelry, ritual clothing worn during ceremonies, textiles and household items, tools or instruments related to the traditional occupations of Turks and Tartars.
The pieces of the Museum of Folk Art Constanța were collected during successive ethnographic researches in the communities of Turks and Tatars from Dobruja that started in the years of 1972-1973. These continued during 1976-1980, in the context of the construction of the Danube-Black Sea Canal, on the Carasu Valley by the communist regime.
The pieces of the Romanian Peasant Museum began to be acquired at the beginning of the 20th century, continuing in the period between the ‘50s and’ 80s, through the research campaigns carried out in Dobruja. Along with the pieces of the Turks and Dobrujan Tatars, objects belonging to the Turks from the island of Ada Kaleh are exhibited. Ada Kaleh, the island sunk by the communist regime in order to build the Iron Gates dam in 1970. The pieces of the inhabitants of Ada Kaleh were recovered in the same period, of the ‘50s and ’80s, when MȚR carried out campaigns to recover the pieces from the Turkish inhabitants of the island.
Most of the exhibited pieces show the beauty of Turkish and Tatar culture in Dobruja, while a smaller part of them are the material memory of a Turkish-Islamic space that physically disappeared during the communist years. They tell us about the way the Turks and Tartars lived during the 19th and 20th centuries, revealing the dynamics of their community and family life, taking us, through their homes and households, to their tables, and to the most important moments of their lives.
