The deq tattooist

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Diyarbakır, Turkey – When she was 20 years old, Fatê Temel grabbed a surgical needle, balancing it between her index finger and thumb, and dipped its point in a mixture of lampblack and breast milk.

She lifted the needle point to her face. Turning to a mirror hanging on a wall in her family’s home in the village of Derik in Turkey’s southeastern province of Mardin, she began poking the skin on her chin. It was the very first time she gave deq – traditional tattoos that had once been common among Kurds.

This was in 2018. Temel, now 24, has since inked hundreds of customers with deq motifs and symbols from the small one-room studio she opened in November 2021 in the Sur district in Diyarbakır’s Old City, considered a historic centre for Kurdish culture.

She is one of the only artists left in Turkey preserving this ancient tattooing culture.

“Every tattoo has a meaning,” Temel says. She stabs a spoon into a container of frozen breast milk she obtained from her friends who recently gave birth, scraping it out and hurriedly blending it into a jar of lampblack – preparing the traditional ink concoction for her customers.

“For the Kurds, we had our own particular meanings and associations with all of these symbols and motifs – which connect us to a past that is being forgotten,” she adds. “Deq represents to me another aspect of our disappearing culture. And it is my duty to ensure this tradition is preserved.”

Deq was once very popular among Kurds, along with Turkmen, Arabs and the Doms – often referred to as “gypsies”– all of whom lived side by side as neighbours in the eastern region.

Similar tattoos can be found among Amazigh women in North Africa. And it is not hard to find elderly women and some men in Kurdish and Arab villages in the eastern part of Turkey with deq still inked on their skin.

Beginnings

When Temel was young, seeing some elders in Derik decked out in tattoos was normal and she never thought much about it. But a few years ago, “I became very interested in this practice,” she says. “I started to ask myself why some people have them and others don’t. And how come none of the youths practice this anymore?”

“I began to spend all my time with the women, learning about what the symbols mean and how they administered the deq,” she says. “At first, the women said they were young when they did it and it was a mistake. They didn’t want to talk about it. But I kept asking again and again until they opened up to me.”

She then began hand-poking deq on her cousins in the village. “I must have given 20 of my cousins deq,” she says, throwing her head back and chuckling. This all unfolded as her family watched in horror; they strongly oppose the tattoos.

“I saw that a lot of young Kurdish people were interested in this traditional tattooing,” she says. “Most would come to me and ask for deq merely for decoration. But then throughout the process, I would educate them on the meanings behind the symbols.”

Temel’s first deq, which she applied on her chin, is a symbolic motif of the sun.

Each deq motif has a rich meaning behind it, which can change depending on communities and the complex ways they contextualised the designs into their own cultures and localities.

Her sun motif represents “the search for wisdom,” she says. “I chose this because when I returned to the village I decided I would be in constant search for more knowledge. I put it on my face so every time I look in the mirror I can be reminded of my path in life.”

‘Form of worship’

Deq is a “form of worship”, explains Ahmet Yavuklu, a Kurdish anthropologist who has done extensive research and published a book on the subject. “The deq motifs are often inspired by beings, designs, and patterns seen in nature – like the sun, moon, stars, and even wheat. They all have important and symbolic meanings.”

Deq differs greatly from modern conceptions of tattooing. While today individuals often get tattoos for decoration or to memorialise events, people, or beliefs, deq is traditionally done to request abundance, protection, blessings, or fertility from God. Some women receive specific deq motifs that request protection from stillbirths during pregnancy. Deq was also used medicinally by inking dots onto the temple to assist in relieving migraines.

“Tattoo culture is much older than written language,” Yavuklu tells Al Jazeera. “The tattoos reveal how cultural identity is closely tied to one’s sense of self and how individuals relate to other beings – both humans and animals – or the environment.”

While women also simply applied deq to decorate their skin for beautification purposes, oftentimes their deq was deeply intertwined with their spirituality. “It is believed that while the body is embroidered in tattoos, the soul is also engraved,” Yavuklu explains.

The traditional ink used in deq varies across communities. The mixture can include green herbs, soot from lamps, and animal intestines – most commonly sheep’s gallbladder, along with breast milk. The milk is typically taken from a woman who is breastfeeding a daughter, as elders claim that ink made from the breast milk of a mother nursing a male infant does not produce as vibrant a colour and heals more slowly.

In her studio, Temel uses a mixture of lampblack and breast milk from women who are nursing a daughter. “Tattoos are one of the oldest artistic expressions of humanity,” she says, noting that tattoos have been used as a technique to communicate to others and nature for thousands of years. “But it is not just the symbols or motifs, it is also about the knowledge of the process.”

“The process of creating the ink contains so much wisdom within itself,” she continues. “For example, why did the women use these specific herbs? Or why did they use the breast milk from the mother of a girl? I don’t want to give modern tattoos, I want to create deq like it was done in the past so this knowledge can truly be preserved in all of its integrity.”

The studio

In Sur’s narrow Old City, Temel’s tattooed face stands out as she winds her way through the streets; her dress flows behind her as a rare gush of wind struggles through the city’s dry heat. She skips over the cobblestoned pathways, passing a restaurant from where the voices of Kurdish singers and the soothing strings of the bağlama, a traditional instrument, emanate across the air.

She slips into her adjacent deq studio and takes a seat at a table. Just last year, this small space was a disordered storage unit. But Temel received permission from the owner to clear it and use it as a studio. She decorated the walls with photos of elderly Kurdish women and men with deq on their faces, legs, and hands.

This tattooing tradition that had once been endangered has seen a resurgence among Kurdish youths, who are embracing it to express their identities.

Temel receives at least two or three customers per day, most of whom are young Kurds. Each deq costs about 200 Turkish lira ($11). Not surprisingly, the most popular deq motif among her customers is the sun.

Ali Ozmen, 28, travelled from Cizre, a city and district in Şırnak Province located about 230km from Sur, specifically to visit Temel’s studio. He chose the sun symbol because “it is the most important symbol for Kurdish people”, he says. His fresh deq tattooed on his wrist has turned red, glistening with Vaseline. He also requested a dot on his hand, emulating a similar one tattooed on his father.

“I don’t want us to lose these important traditions,” he says. “I feel like when I get these symbols tattooed on my body, I am physically ensuring that this tradition will continue.” After leaving, Ozmen returned about 20 minutes later to request another sun motif on his shoulder.

Rozerin Soysal, 21, is receiving her second deq from Temel, also of the sun motif. Her first tattoo, on the inside of her wrist, is a symbol of loyalty and was traditionally used by women who were worried about their husbands getting another wife. Soysal’s former boyfriend had cheated on her, leaving her heartbroken. “So I got this to try and prevent it from happening to me again in the future,” she says.

‘Beautiful’

Temel, who has dedicated her life to researching and documenting deq symbols and motifs from various communities, at times visits with tattooed elders in the eastern villages, learning the history of the art form before she returns to her studio to once again apply the symbols onto her mostly younger customers – ensuring the culture’s survival among the next generation.

In the village of Hayırlı in Mardin, Idi Ayaz, 75, has a faded sun motif inked in the centre of her forehead. Her face transforms into a wide smile as Temel saunters into her home. She pulls Temel’s face close to hers and peers at her deq – the same motif symbolically binding together two women generations apart.

“It’s beautiful,” she tells Temel, gently touching the younger woman’s chin and tracing the deq motif with her fingers.

Ayaz speaks in the Kurmanji dialect of Kurdish; she has no knowledge of Turkish. She shows Temel the deq covering her hands: one is of the comb motif, which represents beauty.

On her leg is a motif symbolising the rebab, a traditional stringed instrument that spread across the Middle East, Africa, Asia, and some parts of Europe through Islamic trading routes.

“Only the most beautiful women would get this deq,” Ayaz says, proudly. Temel snaps photos on her mobile phone of each motif to recreate them later back in her studio.

“When I was young we used to love these tattoos,” says Ayaz, who got her first deq when she was 15 years old. Temel sits quietly, intently listening. “They were a huge part of our lives. We were always wanting more and more. I can’t choose a favourite. I love all my deq equally.”

Temel stands up and takes a seat next to Ayaz on the cushion. Ayaz pauses, staring for a few moments into Temel’s eyes. “I’ve never seen a young person with these tattoos before,” Ayaz finally says. “And I think it’s beautiful.”

Responsibility to document and preserve

In the town of Viranşehir in the Şanlıurfa province, in a modest concrete home, a group of Arab women sit in an expansive living area crowded around a single fan, attempting to escape from the unbearable heat. Behind them is a painting of Shahmaran, a mythical creature who is half woman and half snake – found in the folklore of the Kurds, as well as in cultures throughout Iran, Anatolia, the Armenian Highlands and Iraq.

They jump up in excitement upon Temel’s arrival.

All the women have sun motifs inked onto their foreheads. Immediately upon seeing Temel’s tattooed face, the women pull up their dress sleeves, lift their pants, and pull down their tops to show off the many deq motifs adorning their bodies. Temel barrages them with questions about the meanings and stories behind the designs.

One of the women brings up Fatima, the Prophet Muhammad’s daughter. Women in Turkey’s eastern villages, along with those in communities across North Africa, have long tattooed their lips in honour of Fatima, who remains one of the most important female figures in Islam.

Saliha Özşavlı, 80, has 10 tattoos in total.

She says that she learned about deq from the Doms, a nomadic people whose origins are in the Indian subcontinent, and who through ancient migrations became scattered across the Middle East, North Africa, eastern Turkey, Hungary, and the Balkans. Many elders who live from Turkey to Palestine and who have traditional tattoos source them to the nomadic Dom people.

“We saw the gypsies with these tattoos and we really liked them,” Özşavlı says. “So the women in my village learned from them and began applying them to the women here.”

While Temel’s sun motif symbolises her search for wisdom, Özşavlı’s is a request for protection, she says; it is believed the sun can protect from the evil eye. Özşavlı also applied three dots on her hand to request that her husband stay loyal to her after marriage, fearing he may get another wife.

“But he got another wife anyway,” she says with a shrug as the other women erupt into laughter.

“When I see my reflection, I think all of them are beautiful because I love myself and I value my whole journey in life,” Özşavlı says.

Glancing at Temel, she adds: “I love seeing this deq on young people. And her tattoo looks even more beautiful than ours.”

Back in her small studio, Temel traces the photos she had taken of newly discovered motifs in a notebook. “It is our generation’s responsibility to document and preserve this culture,” she says, her eyes fixed on the pages as she furrows her brows and carefully draws the lines.

“These symbols connect communities across continents, language, and identities – in ways we still don’t fully understand. There is a mystical, otherworldly quality to these tattoos.

“This is knowledge that we cannot allow to disappear. These elders will not be around much longer,” she continues. “We are the last generation who can preserve this culture and ensure that the knowledge of our elders does not die with them.”