OBITUARY: Man behind the counter at Turk's Corner dies

People called him Turk, or the Turk, because Ugur Hanhan was the only person from Turkey they had ever met.

Or they called him Turk because they didn't dare try to pronounce Ugur.

And he was, after all, the man behind the counter at Turk's Corner, the brass and copper import shop he ran in the South Forks Plaza.

Hanhan, 67, died Nov. 2 at a Fargo hospital after suffering a heart attack at his lakeside retirement home near Laporte, Minn.

Friends will gather at 2 p.m. Saturday in the Empire Arts Center in Grand Forks to remember a proud, passionate man of Turkey who called Grand Forks home for 23 years.

"He humanized our perceptions of Turkey, a place that most of us either didn't know anything about or had horrible stereotypes about," said longtime friend Gail Hand, who is helping to organize the memorial celebration of Ugur's life.

He was a Muslim, a man who had lived and worked in a city of many millions in a country so distant, geographically and culturally, from Grand Forks.

"He probably couldn't have done a better job of letting people here know that people in that part of the world are very much like us," said David Sande, another longtime friend. "We have the same loves. We face the same problems.

"Except that we had different genes, he was my brother," Sande said. "I'll love him forever."

Sara Hanhan, a Grand Forks native who met her future husband while she served with the Peace Corps in Turkey, said that Ugur advanced diversity through pride.

"He was so proud of being a Turk," she said, "and rather than completely conform, he had people try out other customs - his customs. He had everybody kiss and hug when they met. That was not always easy for Scandinavians. But they did it when they were with Ugur."

Ugur Hanhan was treated for cancer two years ago, treatment that included a stem cell transplant from a brother who came over from Turkey.

"He had hoped for a year or two," Hand said, "and he got that."

Differences

Sara Fritzell was working in a Peace Corps tuberculosis control program in 1966 when she and some friends arranged to go on a picnic on an island off the Turkish coast.

A Turkish woman recommended that a male chaperone come along. Several of the woman's male friends volunteered, including Ugur.

"We started spending a lot of time with this group, and after a while, Ugur and I started dating - but with the idea we would not become serious," Sara said. "We thought there were too many differences."

A little more than a year later, they were engaged. A year after that, they were married. They continued to live in Turkey, with Ugur working for the government's tax office. Their sons, Kenan and Tolga, were born there.

They came to the United States when their sons had reached school age. Ugur studied English in Pennsylvania while Sara continued her own schooling, and when he arrived in Grand Forks he got a job hauling potatoes.

Hand remembers Ugur "hanging around with people around Ardoch and developing an affinity for country music" - as well as a talent for swearing in English.

"He returned the favor and taught those guys some Turkish swear words," Hand said.

He fed and counseled people who missed Turkey, from Turkish students at UND to airmen at Grand Forks Air Force Base who had been stationed in the country and hungered for some authentic Turkish cuisine and the charm and graciousness of a Turkish host.

"What I remember best is that everyone was 'my sweetheart' to Ugur," said Ann Sande.

Ugur Hanhan had hoped to open a Mediterranean deli, but the start-up costs proved prohibitive and he opened the import shop instead. He added decorative stamps later.

"People would come in and sit with him for hours," Sara Hanhan said. "They might not buy a thing, but they'd spend time with him, and he liked that."

A sign in his store proclaimed, "Everybody smiles in the same language." Ugur often added an impish aside, that everybody passes gas in the same language, too.

"I've been touched by the warmth people remember him with," Sara Hanhan said. "They remember him as a person who had no qualms about expressing his love for people."