Bodrum

The island of Kos is only a few miles from the Anatolian coast. Across from it, an hour by ferry, much less by jetfoil, is the town of Bodrum. This was known as Harnicanassus in ancient times when it was a Greek city. It was the home of Herodotus, the father of history, and at an earlier time was ruled over by King Mausos, who had built for himself the very first mausoleum. Not much remains of this edifice, which was one of the wonders of the ancient world – it was mined by the Knights of St. John to build the massive fortress of St. Peter which guards the entrance to the harbor.

My first experience of Turkey was not very pleasant and happily not typical at all. This was at Kos harbor when I went to pick up our boat tickets, which I had booked online, from the agent of the Turkish boat. He looked very different from the local Greeks, with a roundish face, long eyelashes and a slightly feminine appearance, good looking nonetheless. But he used the usual bureaucrats’ tricks to keep me waiting - fiddling with his papers, checking numbers in his phone book, going off to talk to a colleague on the ship. Meanwhile a line was building up behind me and they were waiting in the hot sun and so were getting restless. Eventually he deigned to issue two boarding passes, and asked for 6 euros port tax. I duly paid him, but thought “You, bugger. That will go straight into your pocket.” So I asked for a receipt, which he duly issued with bad grace.

But eventually we got onto the boat, and thankfully every Turk we have encountered since then has been gracious and hospitable.

The boat trip was very enjoyable. It takes about an hour, across beautiful blue water, with Bodrum and other towns on the Anatolian coast becoming clearer as we approached. The wheelhouse of the boat was accessible, and the captain had invited people inside. He spent a long time chatting with one youngish woman, while he steered the boat with his knee.

As we approached Bodrum, it became clear that it was a stopping off point for some very wealthy boat owners. At the entrance to the harbor a large white yacht with two funnels was anchored. It was flying a large Turkish flag – a white crescent and star on a red field. It looked like a vessel from a Poirot movie – we called it the Captain Hastings Yacht. One can imagine Hastings on board and saying to Poirot, “I say, Poirot. You don’t fancy a game of deck quoits or a spot of clay pigeon shooting do you?”

In the marina there were lots more very expensive boats. Most were Turkish. Kemal, the proprietor of our pension, informed us that most belonged to rich Turks from Istanbul. Also there were many large yachts – 50 feet or more – with varnished wooden hulls. Apparently these are boats unique to the region. Some were taking tourists out for cruises to islands and beaches, but many seemed to be kept for their owners own use.

The Pansiyon Gulec where we stayed was a most interesting place. It was run by a man named Kemal Gulec. Somehow he had learned that I was professor, and he introduced himself and said that he had been a mechanical engineer, and he had learned that we were “people with qualifications”. He was a very interesting man. The name of the pension means “smiley” or “smiling” in Turkish. Apparently his great grandfather had been a warrior. He told us that he had fought in Macedonia (presumably during the first or second Balkan war, just prior to WWI) and in the Dardenelles, Palestine and then in what Turks call the War of Independence i.e the war against the Allies – mostly Greek – who were occupying large parts of what today is modern Turkey (the British were occupying Istanbul) at the end of WWI. It was the war that ended in 1922, with the destruction of Smyrna (now Izmir), which was then a Greek city, and the death or flight of thousands of Greeks. Anyway, after Attaturk had established the new Turkish Republic, he took many steps to limit the power of Islam in politics and daily life. He banned the fez, and changed the way Turkish was written, using Roman script in place of Arabic, at the same time simplifying and regularizing the language. Also he insisted that anyone with a religious family name had to change it to a non-religious one. The great grandfather’s family got together to decide on the new family name. Being a warrior and having no doubt seen much death and atrocity he was a man of fierce complexion, not given to smiling readily. So with a fine sense of irony the family chose Gulec or “smiley”.

There were interesting people staying at the Gulec. I had chosen it on the Web mainly because of its central location, its price and the fact that it said it was set in a tangerine garden. The garden was indeed very pleasant and it was there that we had our breakfasts of tomatoes, cucumbers, olives, hard cooked egg and delicious fresh-baked bread, with tulip glasses of Turkish tea. On our first morning a couple introduced themselves. They were from Ghent in Belgium and we soon learned that the man, Jan, a small wiry fellow in his fifties or sixties, was a stone mason. He had fairly fresh scabs on his elbows and on his wrists and he had some sort of nervous tick or ailment which made him move all of the time he was talking. He was like a man who has drunk too much coffee. His wife was much larger than him and looked very Flemish. We started talking in French but they soon said that they were Flamand and that “English was better”. We learned that he had studied eight years to become a stone mason and that he had worked in various places in France, Germany and Belgium, repairing old buildings and making memorial sculptures and tombstones. He told us that as a child he had lived in various countries, moving around with his parents, and that in the seventies he spent much time travelling in India, Iran and Afghanistan. He was in Afghanistan when the Soviets invaded and had to make a dash down the Khyber to Jallalabad and Peshawar to avoid the advancing Soviet troops.

They told us that they had been coming back to the Pansiyon Gulec for each of the last five years. But this was to be their last visit. They had come to relax and for his wife to recover from broken ribs which she had sustained in a car accident in Belgium. But they had rented a scooter in Bodrum, and coming down a hill with Jan driving and she on the back they had come off. It aggravated her rib injuries and caused the cuts and grazes on Jan’s arms. Riding a scooter together seemed rather a reckless thing to do given her injuries and the fact that she probably weighed twice what he did! I guess that as they sat around convalescing they had decided that as much as they like Bodrum and Turkey, there were other places in the world to visit.

I am sure it was Jan who told Kemal that I was a professor. On our third morning, when we came down to the garden for breakfast he seemed even more excited and agitated than usual. He jumped up and said “There is another Mathematics professor staying here!” and he took me over to a table where another couple sat. We introduced ourselves and he told me he was a professor at a university in Istanbul, and that he had been at a conference in Izmir. He was a great talker and I soon learned that he was Hungarian and was married to a Turkish woman. He told me his field was OR and optimization, and that he had spent time in Canada. I asked him if that was where he got his PhD, but he said no he had earned that at Moscow State University. This rang some bells and I got the feeling that we had met before. And indeed when he asked if I knew somebody in Chemical Engineering at UVic, it dawned on me. He had come to our Department and given a seminar talk some fifteen years or so ago. I recall he had contacted me several times offering to speak and I had set it up for him. I remember at the time I thought he was a bit of an operator. I believe he didn’t have a regular position and was trying to make as many academic contacts as possible. No harm in that, more power to him. But I think perhaps he is a bit of a chancer – he said he and his wife were in Bodrum to buy some property. Also he kept talking about ways to avoid paying taxes on a company he had in Canada. We exchanged cards and he invited me to Istanbul. He is enjoyable company for half an hour or more. But I wouldn’t want to get involved with his business or lend him any money for a sure-fire venture!

They say that if you stand on a street in Oxford, within an hour or two you will meet somebody you know. Apparently the Turks have a similar saying about Bodrum.

There was another couple staying at the pension who were on their twelfth visit there. They loved Turkey and were now using Bodrum as a base for their peregrinations. They were English, from near Kingston-on-Thames and a bit older than us. He looked like Anthony Eden, and I thought perhaps he was ex-military. But it turned out he had been in advertising. His wife had been a ballet dancer and then ballet teacher. They told is how that day they had been on a boat, and a young Turkish girl, seeing the Turkish-English dictionary in his pocket had started talking to him and soon they were teaching each other Turkish and English words. Meanwhile the girl’s sister had started talking to the wife and she was demonstrating ballet steps on the moving boat. The girls had invited the couple to their village the next day to meet their family. That sort of simple friendliness seems quite typical of Turkey. Men will typically touch each other on the shoulder while talking and even gently stroke one another. At a beautiful fish restaurant on the beach on the first night we were there a waiter started giving me a shoulder massage as we waited for our food. At less up-market places we found the staff loved to chat, and often would briefly sit down at the table with you if you seemed interested in talking.

Bodrum is an extremely photogenic white city. It has narrow lanes near the castle and the waterfront. Most are lined with shops selling stuff for tourists, Turkish as well as foreign. Some of the stuff is very expensive – jewelry, carpets etc., but also a lot of cheaper tourist tat. For real bargains the place to go is the market. But we were not interested in buying running shoes or tee-shirts or leather purses. The atmosphere was fun, and I bought some leather sandals, Judy some silver jewelry for gifts, and a nice hand-made round table cloth for Jenny & Scott. We also had a nice lunch at a donner/pide place run by a Kurdish family. We had donner, pide (Turkish pizza on pita) and durum, a sort of wrap with very tasty lamb inside.

We only had four nights in Bodrum and wanted to make the most of the short time we had, so looked at what tours where on offer. We were quite excited to find that there was one to Ephesus, only about two hours away. But it only went on Saturdays and Wednesdays, and we arrived on a Saturday and left on a Wednesday, so that was out. We settled for a half-day village tour, where one was taken to a village and shown various village activities etc. It sounded a bit contrived but it turned out to be quite interesting. It was a small group, nine or ten in a minibus plus a guide. The guide introduced himself and the driver and asked where everybody was from. There were a middle-aged couple from Liverpool (beautiful scouse accents), three old ladies from Manchester, showing more flesh and bling than was decorous at their age, and a young couple, the man who said in a timorous voice “I am afraid we are from Germany”. This was the day following England’s ignominious exit from the World Cup. As expected there was hooting and barracking but it was all very good-natured. The German was diplomatic and said that England have the better players but Germany the better team. I think it is true. None of the German team are really stars on the European scene, yet every World Cup they do exceptionally well. Michael Ballack doesn’t look especially good for Chelsea, but at the previous World Cup he looked great for Germany.

When we arrived at the village we were offered tea at the tea house (a bit like a Greek taverna). Most of the ladies opted for apple tea. I had Turkish black tea, which is a bit like English tea without the milk. But they make it in a different way. They divide the boiling water into two pots, one with loose tea in it which gets about one fourth of the water, and the other which gets the remaining three fourths. Then after steeping a small amount of the strong brew is poured into a tulip glass (about one quarter of a glass) and topped up with hot water from the other pot. Lightly sugared it makes a very pleasant drink.
As soon as we sat down the Manchester biddies lit up their fags. But it was outside and they were careful to blow smoke away from the others. We were introduced to the mayor of the village while the guide explained that we would visit the mosque, the cemetery and a couple of houses where women were weaving carpets and killams. An interesting non-traditional distraction was the two camels which they had tied up. The mayor gave them each a bottle of soft drink. He removed the cap and stuck the bottle in the camel’s mouth. The camel then tilted his head back and glugged down the sugary contents, getting a lot of pink foam around its mouth.

The minaret of the mosque was more elaborate than the mosque itself, which was a simple rectangular building with carpets on the floor. Inside were four or five girls aged perhaps from 7 to 10, playing around and making quite a bit of noise. The guide explained how Muslims pray, and how the imman nowadays makes the call to prayer, five times a day, without climbing up the minaret but rather using a microphone in the mosque and speakers high up the minaret. The first call is at daybreak, so on our first morning in Pansyion Gulec we were woken at about 5:00 am by the muzzein’s call to prayer. We were then kept awake by the crowing of the roosters. On the next day I awoke with the call but then quickly went back to sleep. On subsequent morning we didn’t even wake at all. Thus we habituate . But the guide told us, when I asked him how many people would actually come and pray, that although there were probably very few, the idea of the call was to remind people of Allah and of the sacred nature of life. So, even if you are working in the fields to make your daily bread, you are reminded that this isn’t the only life, and that you should be storing up spiritual provisions for the life to come. In a similar way, at the cemetery on many of the gravestones was the opening stanza of a well-known verse from the Koran, which invited people passing by to say a prayer for the departed’s eternal soul, as well as for that of the passer-by. The guide offered us a rough translation and even with his less than perfect English it sounded quite poetic. But habit and custom have a way of flattening everything, so I imagine that for most people these things simply become noise in the background and like us they don’t even notice them. But we do need ritual and symbols to help us escape from the quotidian filtering of things outside of our immediate concern.
We saw two women weaving carpets and tying the Gordian knot (a double knot used in Turkish carpets, but not apparently in carpets from Iran, Afghanistan etc.). The Turkish government pays subsidies to villages to help keep the weaving traditions alive. Apparently now that most village girls are getting an education, not many women want to stay in their villages and pursue, full-time, the old crafts. Interestingly the Turkish government also employs and pays the immans at the mosques – presumably another of Attaturk’s measures to limit the power of the second estate.

We were served a simple but very tasty lunch by some of the village women. It was vegetarian, but made from very fresh local ingredients and was very enjoyable. After lunch we were offered a display of locally made carpets by the mayor and his younger assistants (his daughters perhaps?). They were rolled out one on top of the other, with the guide explaining the provenance of the patterns and the material with which they were made. Top of the line is silk on silk (silk knots on silk weft). Wool and cotton are also used. We had heard from the punters at Pansyion Gulec that villages such as these were the best place to buy carpets, so we ended up with two. The larger one (about 8 x10 ft.) is all sheep’s wool, and is in a pattern which originates in the Kurdish region of southeast Turkey. The other is a runner (about 6 x 2 ft) and is silk on cotton. The pattern for this one is from around Kars in northeast Turkey. After some haggling we agreed on a price of 1050 euros for the two, with air shipping included.
We left Turkey after our short visit with a strong wish to return. Superficially so like Greece, it is in many ways different. The degree of mistrust and misunderstanding between the two peoples is stark and somewhat amazing. A Greek guide in Kos had pooh-poohed the idea of going to Bodrum – the only reason to do that is to buy things cheaply, he had said. But beware there are many people there who will try to cheat you. Similarly on the morning we were leaving Bodrum, I asked Kemal the pension patron, if he had heard whether there had been more strikes in Athens or in the Greek islands. He said not, but that one could never trust the Greek officials in Kos. He said he had friends with a business in Kos, and that if we ran into any difficulty we should contact them. They are all Turkish, he assured me, and so could be trusted. The Greeks he assured me were all cry babies who always went running to the French or Germans when things didn’t go their way!

Fortunately we were not cheated by Turks nor suffered extortion by Greek officials, and I doubt very much whether it happens very often on either side. But it does point up the degree of mistrust between the two peoples. The towns are so similar in appearance, the food is so similar, and also in many respects the lifestyle. But the peoples are very different. The Greeks by and large are like friendly hospitable peasants or villagers. They are open and warm. With the Turks I sense a more refined way of interacting. They tend to be a little less extrovert, with more complex rules for social intercourse, especially with women. But they are equally generous and one has the sense that once accepted you would be a friend for life. Another sense I got in Turkey was that there were very distinct class differences. The hair style worn by men almost seemed like a class signifier. There were lots of young men in the more menial jobs who had brush or crew cuts. I could imagine them as cannon fodder in the Ottoman army, fresh from the villages. The shop owners, restaurant patrons etc. mostly had longer styled hair. They might have been the officer class. Although there were some women wearing the hijab, there were others wearing very stylish and even daring western clothes. The latter were more common. Often one would see groups with women of both types. I certainly got no sense of a tension between the hijab wearers and the others of the type one reads about in Orhan Pamuk’s novel “Snow” (a much overrated work in my opinion – I can’t see why he got the Nobel prize). But Bodrtum is a holiday resort and perhaps these conflicts get left behind when people go to the seaside.
We left Bodrum by boat, then flew from Kos to Athens. After a night spent in a not very nice large hotel “near” the airport (in fact a 25 euro taxi ride away, but listed as 7 kms. from airport on web) full of French “all inclusive” holiday makers, we flew to Montreal, Toronto the Victoria to resume our real lives.