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00:00It's famous the world over, but where does it really come from?
00:04Berlin, where doner is served as a sandwich with salad, tomatoes and cabbage?
00:08Or from Turkey, where it is cooked with specific quantities of onions, thyme and peppers?
00:14In this Istanbul cafe, the customers are pretty sure.
00:18I prefer the Turkish one for sure. It's not in debate for me.
00:25I find the Turkish has more flavour.
00:28The meat is better.
00:31Here, the beef, mutton or chicken is sliced very thin, no more than 5 mm.
00:37It takes 24 hours to prepare.
00:41The quality of the meat is paramount, as is the absence of sinews, the marinade, the salt.
00:47These are the elements that determine the taste of this traditional dish.
00:51But the quality of the meat is the most important thing.
00:55It is a traditional recipe that Ankara is seeking to have protected by the European Commission,
01:00with the status of traditional speciality guaranteed.
01:04It is also a way of reclaiming the name doner, which many in Europe now associate with Germany.
01:13It's sad for us that doner is seen as a European dish, because there is no basis for that and no reality to it.
01:19Nobody is saying that sushi is not Japanese.
01:23Nobody claims that spaghetti isn't Italian.
01:25So why should we defend the fact that doner, one of the most popular dishes in the world,
01:29has such deep roots in our country?
01:35But the Turkish initiative is causing a stir in Berlin.
01:39Invented in 1972 by an immigrant worker, the German doner can be eaten with all sorts of meats,
01:45or even as a vegetarian version, or topped with a variety of sauces.
01:50Doner is the country's number one fast food and Germany's favorite dish.
01:54For me it's a spicy garlic sauce. With veal or chicken, both are good.
01:59The doner is so good, especially here. The meat is top quality.
02:03A symbol of post-war German-Turkish culture, the country has 18,000 kebab makers.
02:09For Nuri Sertdemir, losing the doner label is a non-starter.
02:14It's simply unimaginable. The doner is meat grilled on a spit.
02:18And that's it. They can change the name if they like,
02:21but the doner is part of Berlin's identity no matter what.
02:25Especially as the German doner is a huge economic success.
02:29The doner market is worth 2.5 billion euros a year,
02:33employs 100,000 and is a recipe that is exported all over the world.
02:38The doner war is also about big money, according to this sociologist who has written a book about it.
02:44The Turkish Doner Federation comes from the nationalist camp
02:49and is trying to appropriate, or rather recover, a market that Turkey has lost
02:54since it was German kebabs made by former immigrant workers
02:59that gave the doner its worldwide success.
03:07It is a culinary tug-of-war that should be resolved in the coming months.
03:11In the absence of an agreement between the two capitals,
03:14the European Commission will decide whether Doner is German or Turkish.