Nanê Tirî: The Kurdish Nomadic Bread and the Morning Fire of Hakkari

Mehmet Özdemir
May 30
6 min read

Nanê Tirî: The Kurdish Nomadic Bread and the Morning Fire of Hakkari

Before dawn in the highlands of Hakkari — Colemêrg, the most Kurdish and most mountainous region of Bakur, where the Zagros peaks press against the Iraqi border and the Tigris headwaters run cold through limestone gorges — the Koçer women begin the morning. Koçer means nomad in Kurdish, and the Koçer of Hakkari and Şırnak are the last transhumant herding communities of the Kurdish mountains: people who move with their flocks between low winter pastures and the high summer zozan, carrying their culture with them as they have for centuries. The morning begins the same way it always has: the goats and sheep are milked, the milk goes into the pot over the fire, and when the pot is done, the fire is still hot. The same fire that boiled the milk bakes the morning’s bread. That bread is nanê tirî, also called sheet bread — a thin, flat, unleavened round baked directly over the open fire, the dough rolled thin by hand and laid over the heat until it blisters and chars in small spots and fills with the smell of a mountain morning. It is the bread of the Koçer camp: not the bread of the clay tenûr in the settled village, which requires a built oven and a community to maintain it, but the bread of the nomadic fire, which requires nothing but a flat piece of dough and the heat that is already there. Koçer families in Hakkari and Şırnak eat nanê tirî with fresh cheese and fresh butter, both made that same morning from that same milking, around a fire that has been burning since before the sun came up. This is the one-hundred-and-thirty-fourth article in the series. Hakkari — Colemêrg — has not appeared before in this series. It enters now through its bread and its nomads.

Key Takeaways

• Nanê tirî is the thin flatbread of the Koçer — the nomadic Kurdish herders of Hakkari (Colemêrg) and Şırnak

• Baked on the same fire used to boil the morning’s milk — the most direct bread tradition in the Kurdish world

• Eaten with fresh cottage cheese and fresh butter made that same morning in the Koçer highland camp

• The nomadic bread completes the Kurdish bread picture — tenûr for the settled village, nanê tirî for the mountain camp

Quick Facts

Name: Nanê tirî — sheet bread; thin flatbread baked over an open fire (nan = bread; tirî = thin/sheet)

People: Koçer — the transhumant nomadic Kurdish herders of Hakkari (Colemêrg) and Şırnak

Made From: Flour and water; thin unleavened dough rolled by hand, baked directly over the open fire

Eaten With: Fresh cottage cheese (lor/çökelek), fresh butter, sometimes honey or molasses; the morning meal of the highland camp

The Same Fire

In the Koçer camp, nothing is wasted — not the animal, not the milk, and not the fire. The morning fire that heats the milk for the day’s yogurt and cheese is still burning when the milking pot comes down. The women roll the dough thin on a cloth stretched over the ground — flour and water, nothing else, mixed and worked quickly to a smooth sheet — and lay it over the heat. Nanê tirî bakes fast: a minute, perhaps less, and the surface blisters and browns in spots where it touches the fire, and the bread is done. It is pulled off the heat and eaten immediately, still hot, with the fresh cheese made from that morning’s milk and the fresh butter that the Koçer women churn in the mashk from the cream that rises overnight. The bread, the cheese, the butter: all made from the same morning’s work, all ready before the sun has fully risen above the Hakkari peaks. This is the most direct food production in the Kurdish world. Between the animal, the fire, and the bread on the cloth, there is no intermediate step: no stored grain, no preserved dairy, no market. Everything comes from what is here, now, this morning. The tenûr bread of the settled village — the nan baked against the hot clay wall of the communal oven, the women gathering before dawn to take turns at the oven — is a bread that requires infrastructure: a built oven, a community that shares it, a settled life organized around it. Nanê tirî requires only a fire and hands. It is the bread of a people who move.

The Koçer and the Mountain Kitchen

The Koçer are among the last nomadic pastoral communities in the Middle East. In summer, they move with their flocks to the high-altitude zozan — the same seasonal pastures where this series has set the churning of rûn, the gathering of wild honey, and the making of herbed cheese — and in winter they descend to lower land. Their food culture is shaped by what the animal gives, what the mountain provides, and what a camp on the move can produce without a kitchen. Hakkari / Colemêrg, the most southeasterly and mountainous province of Bakur, is where Koçer culture remains most intact: the province borders Iraq, its peaks rise to over four thousand metres, and the valleys are too steep and cold for settled farming at the higher elevations. Here, the Koçer diet is the dairy diet — milk, yogurt, fresh cheese, clarified butter — and the bread diet — nanê tirî in the morning, sometimes stored sheet bread kept for days between cloth. The GoTürkiye documentation of Hakkari’s traditional foods describes a cuisine shaped by altitude and effort: soups of cracked wheat and red meat to sustain people working in difficult mountain conditions; a rich morning meal of dairy and bread; doghaba, the complex wheat-and-yogurt stew that takes hours to prepare; and lalapet, a fried dough sweet for celebration. At the centre of all of it is the fire, and on the fire in the morning is nanê tirî: the bread that asks nothing of the land except a handful of flour, and nothing of the cook except a little time before the sun comes up.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is nanê tirî?

Nanê tirî (sheet bread) is the thin unleavened flatbread of the Koçer — the nomadic Kurdish herders of Hakkari (Colemêrg) and Şırnak. Made from flour and water, rolled thin by hand, and baked directly over an open fire, it is the morning bread of the highland camp, baked on the same fire used to boil the morning’s milk and eaten immediately with fresh cheese and butter.

Who are the Koçer?

The Koçer are the transhumant nomadic Kurdish herders who practise seasonal migration between lowland winter pastures and high-altitude summer zozan. They are concentrated in the Hakkari (Colemêrg) and Şırnak regions of Bakur, where nomadic herding remains most actively practised. Koçer culture is organised around the animal: the goats, sheep, and cows that provide milk, dairy, meat, and wool, and whose movement dictates the Koçer’s own movement across the mountain calendar.

How is nanê tirî different from the tenûr bread of the settled village?

Tenûr bread (nanû tenûr) requires a clay oven built into the ground, maintained by a settled community who share it and gather before dawn to take turns baking. It is the bread of the village: communal, infrastructural, tied to a fixed place. Nanê tirî requires nothing but an open fire and a piece of dough. It is the bread of movement: portable, immediate, needing no oven and no community, baked the moment the fire is hot enough. These are the two Kurdish breads, one for the settled life and one for the nomadic life.

Conclusion

Nanê tirî is the one-hundred-and-thirty-fourth article in the series, and the one that comes from Colemêrg. Hakkari is the harshest and most remote Kurdish region: the highest peaks, the steepest gorges, the coldest winters, the most intact nomadic culture. Its food is the food of that difficulty: dense, nourishing, made from what the animal gives and the fire provides. The nanê tirî is the simplest bread in the Kurdish world, and perhaps the oldest: flour and water and heat, in that order, before the sun is fully up. One hundred and thirty-four articles in, the Kurdish bread picture is complete. There are two Kurdish breads: the tenûr bread of the settled village — the clay oven, the communal fire, the women who gather before dawn — and the nanê tirî of the Koçer camp — the open fire, the rolling cloth, the same flame that warmed the milk. Between them, they describe a whole people: those who stayed, and those who kept moving.