At the beginning of the year Hocam Merve gave us all little evil eye "talismans" (if you want to call them that. They're little glass evil eyes on safety pins). They are supposed to be to keep evil out of your life so I put mine on my backpack to give me good luck in school! Anyway, I wanted to look into the evil eye tradition a little more.
I learned it is also used in other cultures and is sometimes called the nazar bead although they are not entirely the same thing. I found that the curse of the evil eye stems from a simple concept: "someone who achieves great success or recognition also attracts the envy of those around them. That envy in turn manifests itself as a curse that will undo their good fortune." (http://www.bbc.com/culture/story/20180216-the-strange-power-of-the-evil-eye)
There's so much to the tradition of the evil eye, but that would take a while to explain. I jut enjoyed interacting with this specific part of Turkish and Middle Eastern culture and seeing how far the idea goes back in history. It's just a reminder of how old humanity is (maybe not in the grand scheme of things but history surely didn't start when Europeans came to America) and how some traditions and beliefs are timeless.
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