To understand the everyday culture of a city, one has to look at its games as much as at its tables and markets. The streets, courtyards and village squares of Amasya have rung with the voices of children and young people for generations. Most of these games need no costly equipment; a handful of stones, a handkerchief, a sack, or simply hands, feet and voices will do. Johan Huizinga defined play as "a free action." Researchers writing on the Simsim of Taşova, a district of Amasya, likewise recall that every game is a school, one that teaches life, accepting the rules, congratulating others, seeing one's mistakes and being part of a team. In Amasya this school has had many classrooms. While children busied themselves with knucklebones, stones and sacks, adults played Sim Sim and the spectacle games around the fire on wedding nights, and chess, backgammon and draughts boards were set up in mansions and neighborhoods. The festivals and seasons of the city's different communities also brought their own games, rhymes and customs.

Sim Sim: A Wedding Game around the Fire

One of Amasya's most distinctive traditional games is Sim Sim. Known across Turkey as sinsin, simsim or the "punch game," as çındır in Urfa and as zamah or zamak in Çorum, the game takes its Amasya form as one branch of this wide family. The Derleme Sözlüğü of the Turkish Language Association records simsim as a game name in the Merzifon area of Amasya, in Tokat, and in the Pınarbaşı district of Kayseri. The game was entered in Turkey's National Inventory of Intangible Cultural Heritage in 2013 under number 01.0054, with Amasya, Ankara, Çorum, Kayseri, Sivas, Tokat and Yozgat listed as its area of distribution. Although the inventory names only seven provinces, researchers note that the game is also known in eastern, southern and southeastern Anatolia.

The game has three elements. The first is the large fire lit at night in front of the wedding house or in an open space. The second is the drum and zurna. The third is the gathering of people, mostly men, around the fire. According to the description in Amasya's cultural inventory, Sim Sim is played circling the fire with one hand behind the back and the other raised in the air, to the accompaniment of drum and zurna. Another player, without showing himself, approaches the one in the middle, shouts a cry as he quickly joins the game, and tries to strike him and drive him off. What matters is the speed of the player's movements and the elegance of his performance. Two players who have an understanding sometimes also perform together, face to face.

The most decisive rule is that the attack must come from within the player's field of vision. The player at the fire shades his forehead with his hand and scans the crowd, letting his eyes roam as if looking for an enemy, constantly changing position as he hops to the tempo of the drum. His opponent cannot seize him from behind unawares; if he is to land a punch on the back or arm, he must do so from a place the player can see. Some accounts add that the player leaps over the fire. The game goes on as a chase at times and as a feint at others until the fire dies down, and at the end players and spectators dance a halay together. In some regions Sim Sim is played at the close of the wedding, so it also signals that the ceremony is over.

The game has a marked rule of courtesy. A person who is caught is not really struck, only pretended to be; according to a record collected in Tokat, the opponent is never hit from behind, and the game expresses love, friendship and tolerance. Another account says that the groom is in fact forbidden to enter the game, but that if he does, the others will deliberately try to catch him, and being caught would shame him before the guests. This detail shows that the game is not merely a display of strength but is played within a framework of etiquette that the community has accepted.

Music sets the tempo of the game. The melody played by the drummer and the zurna player is called the sinsin tune. In Ankara, Yozgat, Çorum, Kahramanmaraş, Gaziantep, Malatya and Çankırı, jereed tunes also accompany it; since sinsin, like jereed, involves a chase, the rhythm of the melodies reflects excitement and fear. The Köroğlu Tune, which evokes bravery and manliness, is also favored during play. One account from the Kahramankazan area of Ankara relates that the sinsin fire is lit and stoked while the meal is being eaten, that after the meal the drum and zurna ensemble performs around the fire, and that the players then form a ring. One of the elders starts the game, then the young men play; it lasts about an hour and ends when the fire is put out. These details belong to the Ankara region rather than to Amasya, but they serve as an example of the game's place in the flow of a wedding.

A neighbor of this game among wedding games is tura. In some parts of Anatolia it is played with a twisted rope or a belt, the players taking turns to strike one another with all their might. Yıldırım notes that roughness is accepted in games such as sinsin and tura because, for villagers, weddings and festivals are the chief occasions for enjoying oneself together and showing one's strength.

The spectator, too, is never outside the game. A scholarly study on the Simsim of Taşova, published in 2025, records that the game motivates not only the two players facing each other, but that the whole audience keeps the tempo with applause and the next pair of players is encouraged before the music ends. According to the same study, Simsim is played at every wedding in Taşova and is known to people of almost every age. It is a rhythm game for two, using hands, arms, feet and body; the figures that some players improvise add color to the game but do not alter its basic structure. The authors point out that, although many images have been shared on the internet, the game has lacked a broad academic study, and they say they aim to promote its spread, its recognition and its registration.

There are also views on the name and origin of the game. Fikret Yıldırım reports that the word sinsin survives in Gagauz as an adverb meaning "secretly," and that the Derleme Sözlüğü gives it, besides the game, the senses "insidiously," "numb," a part of the women's garment called üçetek, and a kind of tree that burns for a long time. Some researchers have linked the name to Sin, the moon god of ancient Mesopotamia. Others, noting the fire lit at night, the drum and the player circling the fire with special figures, interpret the game as a remnant bearing traces of early Turkic beliefs. In old Turkic custom, leaping over a fire expressed purification from sins and evils. These interpretations are views about the game's origin; they cannot be counted as a firm conclusion resting on documents.

Sim Sim is not Amasya's only wedding game. The provincial cultural inventory states that local folk dances are generally played at weddings, henna nights, special evenings and when young men are sent off to military service. Yelleme is a game played mostly by young men going off to the army, one that carries at its core a sense of valor. Mahir Çavuş is dedicated to the love of a brave man who lived in Göynücek for a girl in a village of the district, and the local people still play it today. To these are added dozens of other halays and dances such as Narilli, Topal Kız, Noktalı, Karlıdağlar, Kasap Oyunu, Köroğlu Halayı, Amasya Ağırlaması, Düz Ağırlama, Hoşbilezik, Sarıkız, Tamzara and Candarma.

Knucklebones, Stones and Physical Strength

One of the oldest children's games is the knucklebone game, aşık. The aşık is a small, flat bone taken from the foot of small livestock such as sheep and goats. Kaşgarlı Mahmud, in the Dîvânu Lugâti't-Türk written between 1072 and 1074, mentions aşık among children's games together with çelik çomak, walnuts and the spinning top. In the first of the Dede Korkut stories, thought to have been written down in the second half of the fifteenth century, in the section on Boğaç Han, son of Dirse Han, children are described playing aşık in the square. The Manas Epic also describes targets struck with a knucklebone. In Anatolia the idiom "to throw aşık against someone" still means to compete, to measure oneself against another, while "the aşık sits cuk" means that a matter turns out as one wished.

The knucklebone has six faces, and each has a name that varies by region. The hollow face is called aç or çiğ, the protruding face opposite it çöl or tok; the face with an S-shaped hollow is called kelali, and the flat face opposite it mire or şek. In the game, the knucklebone each player throws with, which he colors as he wishes, is called enek. Knucklebones are dyed red, yellow or green; the red ones are called kınalı aşık, "henna-dyed" knucklebones. The game consists of throwing from a set distance at knucklebones lined up on a line or in a circle drawn on the ground, trying to knock them out, and it demands both manual skill and a little strategy. Together with the spinning top and mangala, aşık is one of the three Anatolian children's games listed in the National Inventory of Intangible Cultural Heritage.

On iki taş, "twelve stones," is a game of wit in which two players try to defeat the opponent by setting out their stones in a certain arrangement. Mangala belongs to the same family. Two players sit facing each other at a board with six small pits on each side, four stones are put in each pit, and on either end is a large store in which stones are collected. The starting player takes the stones from one pit and distributes them one by one; if the last stone falls into his own store he earns another turn, and if he brings the stones in the opponent's pit to an even number he collects that pit. The player who finishes his stones first takes the opponent's remaining stones as well, and whoever has the most stones in his store wins. Because it requires anticipating the opponent's next move, mangala also teaches children arithmetic without their noticing.

Games such as the sack race, tug of war and snatch-the-handkerchief keep the body nimble. In the sack race the players pull an empty sack up from their feet to their waists, line up side by side, and at the signal hop or walk inside the sack to the finish line. In these games laughing together matters as much as winning. The hacıyatmaz, by contrast, is less a game than a toy: a doll with lead in its base that, however it is set down, rocks once or twice and stands up again.

Neighborhood Squares, Mansions and Board Games

In old Amasya, children's play was usually set up in the shared spaces of the neighborhood. Describing the Sofuzâde quarter where he was born and raised, Osman Fevzi Olcay writes in his Amasya Hâtıraları (Memories of Amasya) that the open ground in front of the Bîmarhâne, the Mustafa Bey Bath and the Çevikçe School was his generation's "chief playground," and that the courtyard of the Mehmet Paşa Mosque lay on the edge of this area. Olcay also attaches particular importance to the fact that his quarter lay in the center of the city, close to the market and bazaar. These lines show that a city child's games were played in everyday places such as a mosque courtyard, the front of a bath or a school square, under the eyes of the elders. There was no separation between the playground and the historic buildings of the city; the forecourt of a centuries-old hospital was the square where the children of a neighborhood set up their games.

The same memoirs also make room for the games of adults. Olcay recalls his Armenian neighbor across the street, Arucuoğlu Karabit Usta, as a man so precious that the debt of neighborliness to him could never be repaid, a pleasant talker with a ready wit, and notes that he was "the master of the game of draughts." These pages, which relate how Karabit Usta joked with his neighbors over the dividing wall, suggest that draughts was an ordinary pastime that brought people of different communities together at the same board. In Olcay's account play appears as a natural part of neighborliness and daily conversation; a neighbor known for his skill becomes a figure everyone in the quarter knows.

The biographies in Hüsameddin's Amasya Tarihi (History of Amasya) show how highly chess and backgammon were valued among the city's educated and notable circles. Alaybeyizâde Sâlim Ali Bey had pursued learning while holding a zeamet fief, took part in the Russian wars as the alaybey (district cavalry commander) of Amasya, and, unable to get along with the Caniklizâde family, withdrew into retirement and devoted himself to literature. A poet, a fine conversationalist and a sought-after companion at gatherings, Sâlim Bey was so skilled at the saz, chess and backgammon that people called him "Tavlacı Sâlim Bey," Sâlim Bey the Backgammon Player. He died in 1221 (1806-1807); according to Hüsameddin, his small divan of poems, which survived in part, was unfortunately lost in a fire. That an alaybey should be remembered less for his service in war than for his mastery at the backgammon board says much about the place of play in city life.

The same work also counts among the masters of chess Şirvânîzâde Ahmed Hulûsî Efendi, who rose to the post of judge of Istanbul, the honorary rank of chief judge of Anatolia and the embassy in Kabul. Having fallen from favor under Sultan Abdülhamid II, Ahmed Hulûsî Efendi was ordered in 1298 to reside in Amasya, lived in his mansion in the Eski Kethüdâ quarter, and died suddenly in 1306 (1889). Hüsameddin describes him as learned, cheerful, generous, influential and "skilled at the game of chess." Another record concerns Tâhir Mehmed Efendi of Artvin. Educated in Istanbul and appointed a public lecturer in Amasya, this teacher taught the neighborhood children for a time as master of the Üçler School, preached during Ramadan, and died in 1318 (1900-1901). Hüsameddin calls him one of the ulema, of a wrestler's temperament, and says that "he played fine sword games." That a teacher who instructed children at a neighborhood school should be remembered for his skill at the sword game shows that physical games too were respected in learned circles.

Spectacle Games

The imitation shows performed at weddings in Amasya villages, such as the Eagle, Tortoise, Arab and Camel games, both amuse and give a taste of a small theater shared by the community. These games turn the village square into a stage and bring old and young together in a common joy. We have no detailed inventory of which game is played in which village, so nothing firm can be said about their regional variants. The theatrical elements seen in games like Sim Sim, however, have drawn the attention of researchers. The way the player shades his brow and scans the crowd as if watching for an enemy gives the game a dramatic air.

The Festival Games of the Armenians of Amasya

The play culture of the city's recent past did not belong to its Muslim quarters alone. The festival customs of the Armenian community that lived in Amasya until the early twentieth century were recorded in detail in Kapriel H. Simonian's Houshamadyan Bondagan Amasyo (Memory Book of Pontic Amasya), published in Venice in 1966. The compilation Lory Tashjian prepared from this book in 2021 shows that a large part of these festivals revolved around games, masked performances and lot-drawing amusements. In this community, which lived in a patriarchal order and counted respect for elders, hospitality and piety as virtues, daily life was intertwined with the church, and religious holidays were therefore celebrated with great enthusiasm.

Masked Performances at Paregentan

Paregentan, the week of merrymaking before Great Lent, was known in Amasya as "Mendz Bargentank." The main celebrations lasted from Friday until midnight on Sunday and reached their height with the masked gatherings in the Savayid quarter, which only Armenians inhabited. In the mornings men and women of all ages would gather on a flat field that the local Armenians called "Khoz Verdin," probably the ruins of an ancient temple, and many of them, masked, would sing and dance to the music of the players. At night masked groups would descend on homes unannounced, and wealthy families sometimes hosted more than a hundred guests. The favorite performance of these nights was the game of the wolf and the sheep. The sound of a tambourine and a shepherd's song would be heard from behind the door, and then about twenty children and youths wrapped in sheepskins would burst into the hall. They were followed by the shepherd, playing the tambourine and singing shepherds' tunes, and a few minutes later a young man in a wolf's hide would leap in and attack the sheep, turning the hall into instant chaos.

In another performance the host's servant would announce that two beggars, half frozen in the storm, were at the door and wished to warm themselves, and the host, moved by pity, would have them let in. The beggars in their rags would sit by the heater placed before them, talk in a foreign language, then begin picking lice from their bodies and throwing them into the fire, and the crackling disgusted the guests and the host. Driven out, the beggars, instead of giving thanks, left the hall with rude gestures. The most elaborate game, however, was that of the jealous old man called "songhour." The leader of the group wore white cloth shalvar trousers, a long shirt and an old man's mask, pretended to be lame, tied a belt hung with bells around his waist, and carried a snake-shaped roll of cloth ending in knotted balls at both ends. In the source this object is called a "toura." A youth wearing the mask of a beautiful girl walked arm in arm with the old man and played his wife, and ahead of them walked a servant with blackened face and hands, sweeping the way with a long-handled broom.

The songhour's banter with the guests brought roars of laughter to the hall. The host would suggest that the old man dance, the music would begin, and when the tired old man slumped onto a chair the guests would in turn invite his wife to dance. As soon as she began, the jealous husband would leap up in fury and beat those dancing with his wife with the cloth toura in his hand. At the end of the performance the lady of the house and the servants offered the guests a jug of spirits and a turkey cooked in wine. Masked guests handing their hosts slips of paper with teasing, humorous verses was also among the customs of this week. The name of the rolled cloth recalls the tura game mentioned above, in which players strike each other with a rope or belt; the sources, however, draw no link between the two traditions, and the resemblance lies only in the name and the striking motion.

The Lenten Counter and Easter Eggs

The Armenians of Amasya fasted for seven weeks until Easter. To count the days, children hung from the ceiling an onion stuck with turkey feathers and pulled out one feather at the end of each week. In this way the fast was measured before the children's eyes by an onion on the ceiling that steadily lost its feathers. On Good Friday every family dyed eggs red for Easter. On the evening the fast ended, children and young people ate the red eggs they had kept in their pockets. During the three-day Easter holiday, the open spaces that served as squares in the Armenian quarters filled with people holding egg-tapping contests. The Easter cheoreg baked for the holiday was also shared with Turkish and Greek neighbors.

Vidjag in the Cherry Season

The feast celebrated forty days after Easter, which the Armenians of Amasya called "Vidjag," was a public holiday, and the market and schools closed. It coincided with the harvest of the cherry, the first fruit of spring; many families spent the day in their orchards, and these orchards were the best place to watch the famous game of lots. Hüsameddin too writes in his Amasya Tarihi that the cherry season was a time of general liveliness for the whole population, and that the cocoon season following it gave occasion to many amusements. For the Vidjag the hosts prepared a bucket. It was filled with water from seven different springs and with flowers gathered from seven different hills, and was left in the open overnight so that its contents would become "mayalanmış," leavened.

The next day the bucket was set in the shade of a tree, and each participant, old or young, dropped into it an object of their own unlike anyone else's: a ring, an earring, a razor, a key or a bracelet. A young girl chosen from among those present had her face veiled, the bucket was set before her, and an elderly woman handed her a hand mirror. While the girl stirred the water with the mirror, the old woman recited a half-Armenian, half-Turkish chant, after which the other women in the circle recited rhymes in Turkish and in the local Armenian dialect. The subjects of the rhymes were good wishes, praise, satire, mockery, love and fortune. After each rhyme the girl drew an object from the bucket; if the rhyme was auspicious its owner rejoiced and was congratulated, if not the others consoled her. One of the Turkish quatrains recorded runs: "Baca baca gezerim, / Kuş dilinden sezerim, / Nerde devlet var ise, / Ben alnıma yazarım" (I wander from chimney to chimney, / I read the language of the birds, / Wherever fortune may be, / I write it on my brow). In another, the speaker tells how he sent seven camels to the treasury of Egypt and had a golden pillar raised in the middle of his house. The length of the game depended on the number of participants, and it passed from beginning to end in conversation, jokes and excitement.

At another feast celebrated in midsummer, in July, families ate together after the morning service, and many went to the orchards on the riverbank. Men and boys bathed in the river and drenched one another; those who had a pool or fountain carried on the same water game at home. These records show that the orchards along the Yeşilırmak were also a playground for the city's children and young people.

Basket Swinging on Ramadan Nights

Ramadan nights, too, are the setting for customs belonging to children in the villages of Amasya. "Sepet sallama," basket swinging, kept alive in the village of Alpaslan in the Taşova district, is an example that has survived to the present. In the middle of the month of Ramadan the village children gather after the fast-breaking meal, go from house to house with baskets and bags in hand, and the villagers give them various gifts. In 2023 Behiye Torun, one of the village's residents, aged 80, welcomed the children at her door with rhymes and described the old days: when the houses had a single story, the basket was let down the chimney on a rope and the children were given flour, sugar and oil; the elders cooked with the food collected and set the table, and everyone ate together in good company.

The village headman, Huzeyfe Çetin, says the custom has continued for about one hundred and fifty years and that the children come, receive their gifts, are made much of and sent on their way. The following year Rıdvan Torun of the village again greeted the children with rhymes and related that in the past the baskets were filled with foods such as apples, pears and walnuts, while today mostly products bought from the grocer are given alongside them. The figures given for the custom's age, one hundred and fifty, one hundred and fifty-one and one hundred and fifty-two years, rest on the village's own account; no written document confirming them is known.

What Play Teaches

Another side of traditional games is that they give children a social order nobody explains to them openly. Children learned in these games to wait their turn, to follow rules, to be modest when they won and composed when they lost. Team games fostered solidarity, rhyming games language and memory, physical games agility and balance. The older child's looking after the younger and the strong one's protecting the weak were the unwritten etiquette of play. The order established in the street or courtyard was the first field of experience preparing the child to live within a community.

A similar function can be seen in the games of adults. Yıldırım writes that during these games the differences of rank and wealth among villagers disappear. Players get a chance to show their strength within the group. Hitting one another in jest has also been interpreted in rural life as a form of communication and contact. Group dances such as the halay are another means of this contact and increase the self-confidence of the group's members.

Forgotten Games Return

Today, when time in front of screens has grown, rapid urbanization has narrowed play areas and generations rarely meet, passing on traditional children's games has become harder. This danger is voiced in work on intangible cultural heritage as well.

In recent years festivals organized by public bodies to bring these games back to the streets and gardens of Amasya have become more frequent. At a festival announced in 2019 by the Provincial Directorate of Family and Social Services, held under the auspices of the governorship with the support of the provincial directorates of National Education and of Youth and Sports, some 750 children gathered at the 12 Haziran City Stadium. Alongside sports such as basketball and table tennis they played aç kapıyı bezirgânbaşı, tug of war, rope jumping, istop, uzun eşek (long donkey), snatch-the-handkerchief, yağ satarım bal satarım, dodgeball, the sack race, matrak and blind man's buff. The governor of the time, Osman Varol, stressed that these were games "that perhaps many of us grew up playing in our neighborhoods," and spoke of the importance of protecting them against the wearing effects of the modern world and handing them on to future generations. A parent who attended with his child said that the new generation did not know these games and knew only virtual ones, and that spaces where children could play them should also be created. In June 2024 the same directorate had children aged 12 to 14 living in its institutions play these half-forgotten games in the garden of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences of Amasya University.

One nationwide effort to remind people of these games is the Traditional Games Truck project carried out by the Turkish Traditional Sports Federation. The truck set out from Ankara on 2 May, took its first step in the earthquake zone, and aimed to visit all 81 provinces. It was announced that its last stop would be the Balkan countries.

In July 2025 Amasya became the truck's 18th stop. In the activity area set up in front of the Indoor Sports Hall, children met games such as sack race, tug of war, koca ayak, ring game, mangala, knucklebones, mas wrestling, hacıyatmaz and on iki taş. For many of them mas wrestling, hacıyatmaz and on iki taş were a first encounter; the face-painting activity also drew the interest of the youngest especially. Project coordinator Meryem Özdemir said their aim was both to teach and to make the children smile. Ten-year-old İbrahim Öksüz said he loved the games very much, and eight-year-old Elif Zümra Güdek spoke of her delight in on iki taş, mangala and rope jumping and wished that the truck would come again. The truck's next stop was Tokat.

In June 2026 another Traditional Children's Games Festival was held within the framework of the Amasya International Atatürk, Culture and Art Festival and the Decade of Family and Population. Games such as knucklebones, mangala and the sack race, which once lived of their own accord in neighborhood squares and village threshing floors, have thus become a heritage that finds a place in the city's festival calendar. The Simsim of Taşova and the basket swinging of Alpaslan, meanwhile, continue as the community's own wedding and Ramadan traditions, kept up by the villagers of their own will.

Chronology

1072-1074: Kaşgarlı Mahmud mentions the knucklebone game among children's games in the Dîvânu Lugâti't-Türk.

Second half of the 15th century: In the period when the Dede Korkut stories are thought to have been written down, children are recorded playing knucklebones in the story of Boğaç Han.

1221 (1806-1807): Alaybeyizâde Sâlim Ali Bey, known as "Tavlacı Sâlim Bey" for his mastery of the saz, chess and backgammon, dies.

1306 (1889): Şirvânîzâde Ahmed Hulûsî Efendi, whom Hüsameddin calls "skilled at the game of chess," dies in Amasya.

1318 (1900-1901): Tâhir Mehmed Efendi, master of the Üçler School and known for his sword games, dies.

1966: Kapriel H. Simonian's Houshamadyan Bondagan Amasyo, which also records the festival games of the Armenians of Amasya, is published in Venice.

2013: Sinsin (Simsim, the punch game) is entered in the National Inventory of Intangible Cultural Heritage under number 01.0054.

2019: A Traditional Children's Games Festival attended by some 750 children is held at the 12 Haziran City Stadium in Amasya.

2023-2024: The press reports that sepet sallama, the Ramadan custom of the village of Alpaslan in Taşova, is still kept alive.

2025: An academic study on the Simsim of Taşova is published; in July the Traditional Games Truck stops in Amasya.

2026: In June a Traditional Children's Games Festival is held as part of the Amasya International Atatürk, Culture and Art Festival.

Bibliography

Primary sources

  • Hüsameddin (Hüseyin Hüsâmeddîn Yasar). Amasya Tarihi, vol. 1, p. 106; vol. 6, p. 237; vol. 10, p. 248; vol. 11, p. 457. Amasya Municipality e-book edition.
  • Olcay, Osman Fevzi. Amasya Hâtıraları: Bildiklerim-Gördüklerim-İşittiklerim ile Amasya. Amasya Municipality Cultural Publications (chapter on the Sofuzâde quarter).

Academic studies

  • Erdal, Gültekin and Kelime Erdal. "Amasya'nın Geleneksel Halk Oyunu: Taşova Simsimi." Hikmet - Akademik Edebiyat Dergisi, no. 22, 2025, pp. 372-386. dergipark.org.tr
  • Yıldırım, Fikret. "Sinsin Oyunu ve Bu Oyunun Eski Türk Kültüründeki Yansımaları." Türk Dili ve Edebiyatı Dergisi 59/1, 2019, pp. 221-231.

Official sources

  • Ministry of Culture and Tourism, Amasya Provincial Directorate of Culture and Tourism, "Yöresel Halk Oyunları."
  • Ministry of National Education, Anadolu Çocuk Oyunları (sections on Aşık Games, Mangala and Sack Race).

Other sources

  • Turkey Culture Portal, Culture Atlas, "Simsim" (Tokat).
  • Local news report on the Amasya stop of the Traditional Games Truck, July-August 2025.
  • Tashjian, Lory. "Amasya: Festivals." Houshamadyan, 2021, trans. Simon Beugekian (based on Kapriel H. Simonian, Houshamadyan Bondagan Amasyo, Venice, 1966, pp. 905-917). houshamadyan.org
  • "Amasya'da çocuklar 150 yıllık geleneği sürdürdü." TRT Haber (source: Anadolu Agency), 8 April 2023. trthaber.com
  • "Amasya'da 151 yıllık ramazan geleneği 'sepet sallama' sürdürülüyor." Habertürk (Anadolu Agency), 25 March 2024.
  • Amasya Provincial Directorate of Family and Social Services, announcements on Traditional Children's Games, October 2019, 3 June 2024 and 22 June 2026.

Online sources