Tag: Turkey

One Step Forward, Two Steps Back

One Step Forward, Two Steps Back

gaydarI hear the Turkish authorities have finally lifted the bar on You Tube now that the offending article about Atatürk has been removed. Good. I’m not generally in favour of banning things as it tends to drive activities underground. In any case, website bans are a blunt tool and easy to circumvent. At the same time, I hear that Gaydar, the social networking and contact site for gay people, has been added to the list of prohibited sites, presumably on spurious moral grounds. Gaydar is one of those rare British success stories, a social networking site with a global reach. The ban doesn’t affect us personally, but I am saddened by it. It will only add to the sense of loneliness, isolation and alienation that young gay people here must feel.

A Biblical Plague

We’ve been little troubled by mozzies thus far though I expect this not to last. However, the apartment has been infested by a plague of flies of biblical proportions. Liam and I lay in our bed like great white hunters armed with cans of ‘Raid’ taking pot shots at the swarming pestilence. By morning, the floor was carpeted with the wreckage like a scene from the Battle of Britain.

My Shattered Chassis

Driving in Turkey is not for the faint hearted, best only tried by the foolish or the suicidal. Though much improved in recent years, many roads are still perilous with lunar potholes, boulder-sized loose chippings and chassis-shattering unmarked concrete speed bumps. All these hazards, however, pale into insignificance when compared to the insane driving of the locals. The basic rules of the unofficial Turkish Highway Code are straightforward enough – drive fast, jump lights, never indicate, overtake on blind bends, tailgate dangerously and sound the car horn loudly and often. It is also the ‘law’ to ignore pedestrian crossings (purely for street decoration and EU compliance inspectors), bounce a new born baby on your lap when weaving in and out of the traffic and yell down the mobile phone that has been surgically grafted to your ear. The rules are observed religiously. Obligingly, local municipalities even provide traffic lights that count down to green to encourage boy racers to champ at the bit to be first out of the traps. Unsuspecting foreigners need to keep their wits about them to preserve life and limb, particularly those like me who are genetically programmed to look the wrong way.

Conversely, it all adds to the wonderfully anarchic nature of the Turkish psyche and a healthy disrespect for authority which I have long admired. It’s also a welcome relief from health and safety obsessed Blighty.

Old Scrubbers

Our house had been redecorated by our landlord and there was white paint splattered everywhere, literally. Turkish workmen don’t make good apparently. Our site manager, Hussein, a jovial man of seemingly industrial strength idleness, offered to arrange a spring clean. We declined. We’ll be scraping and scrubbing for days. Clement kindly lent us an old vacuum cleaner and a kettle.

Corridors of Power

Our first encounter with Turkish bureaucracy was a salutary lesson for people like us living in the internet age where everything can be arranged from the comfort of an armchair. Alahan guided us through various corridors of power to collect the nod from an assortment of petty officials in cheap suits sitting behind excessively large desks framed by the flags of all nations. Alahan was a marvel, dispensing charm liberally to get us to the front of various queues. However, I suspect he’s burdened us with the most expensive Turkcell tariff imaginable judging by the number of units we’re using for even the shortest calls.

King Cnut

We popped by the house to measure up. We had the misfortune of bumping into crinkly Cnut from Denmark. He and his wife Ragnild own the house on the level immediately beneath us. He greeted us with assorted tales of despair about the site as he puffed continuously on his over-long pipe. However, his catalogue of grievances failed to burst our bubble. Our cheeriness only irritated him. We’ve dubbed them the Vile Vikings. What a miserable cnut.

Grinning Like Cheshire Cats

We are the Cheshire cats that got all the cream and can’t stop grinning. We are renting a holiday apartment from Lorraine while we sort the house out. The flat is nice – comfortable and conveniently positioned behind the marina. Yalıkavak is quiet. The season is in its death throes, though not yet expired, but the weather is glorious. We are wandering around in shorts and flip-flops to explore our new home town.