Bodrum Bodrum

”When you reach the hill, you will see Bodrum. Don’t think you’ll leave as you came. Others before you thought the same, as they departed they left their soul behind in Bodrum” wrote Cevat Şakir Kabaağaçlı (1886-1973) The Fisherman of Halicarnassus, poet, writer of novels and short stories and essays, ethnographer and travel writer. 

In 1945, Cevat Şakir wrote a letter to his artist, writer and poet friends and asked them to be in Izmir on the date he determined. If they came, he  promised to sail them to heaven - at the time there was no access to Bodrum by land. 

Sabahattin Eyüboğlu, Bedri Rahmi, Erol Güney, Sabahattin Ali, Samim Kocagöz, Fuat Erol Keskinoğlu and Necati Cumalı answered his call and met in Izmir on the same day. 

They sailed to the Aegean Sea by taking bread, cheese, water, Kos rusk, tobacco and lots of rakı on a boat. They agreed they will not read newspapers, they will not listen to the radio, they will not go ashore unless they have to, they will be cut off from the whole world, and they will be lost in the blue paradise called Bodrum, where no one has gone until then.

They did not know, the boat trip they made to Bodrum changed the fate of a once sleepy fishing and sponge diving village profoundly. 

Bodrum was a quintessential bohemian holiday town in early 70’s. If you are a baby-boomer who lived in Turkey then, it is likely that you had worn flare jeans, owned a Cat Stevens vinyl, protested 6th US Flotilla, and visited Bodrum in the summer with a Beetle or a Renault 12. 

Bodrum was much smaller then, it had not sprawled its satellite towns yet, Gümüşlük among others was a sleepy village with cow dung smell in the air, hippies sleeping outdoors, with no trace of gold rush that would soon bring the tourism monster and destroy the peace that boomers had given a chance. 

Today you may wonder what went wrong, but what happened to Bodrum is not unique - other places had similar chance encounters that started the decay, eventually turning the paradise into something unrecognisable. 

In Saint Tropez, Brigitte Bardot was photographed by Willy Rizzo, in July 1958. She had a leading role in Roger Vadim’s debut movie “And God Created Woman.”  BB wasn’t a hippie (this was nearly a decade before counterculture hippiedom was invented), but she was one of many alternative culture influencers who rebelled against popular norms of 50’s. What followed was a boom. 

Life is short and can be cruel. Everyone, rich, poor, famous, or ordinary seeks their paradise on earth.  

Soon after BB posed alongside fish stands and fishing nets, the wealthy, yearning to productise bohemian lifestyle without being bohemian, and the poor, who would drive, wipe, feed or serve wealthy, both types of outsiders rushed into the sleepy village like flies on a cow dung. 

Overnight, the sleepy village is no longer a sleepy village but a place where annoyingly poor guitar performers wake up everybody else into a cheap wine hangover. Before you knew, hotels and villas popped up like mushrooms. The invasion had begun. 

People on vacation are loaded with cash, but short in time, they demand comfort and convenience to maximise their return on investment. The result is fast vacation economics. 

Tourists don’t care about sustainability, they drink water in plastic bottles, use plastic bags, use plastic packaging, turn on air conditioning units, overuse water for personal needs, use cars even for short distances, shop in shopping malls, look for fast food stalls. 

It is nighttime. We are waiting in a car at a red light - traffic lights are mere suggestions here, sometimes drivers ignore the red light. 

A motorcycle with a rider and a passenger, no helmets, swooshed in from the refuge and stopped in front of us with dust swirling in spotlight. The young passenger sitting at the back, a cigarette in his left hand, was scrolling his cell phone screen with his right hand - his smile was visible under the screen’s light, it’s an Instagram share from a girl he was looking at. The lights turned green, the rider released the bike like a longbow arrow. The passenger, legs in air, almost fell, barely held the rider’s shirt, before both vanished into the darkness. 

As our vacation nears its end, eternal quest for paradise continues. Paradise is where we move and live slowly and thoughtfully, in harmony with nature, not in spite of it. The idea of  vacation is to vacate our hectic work lifestyle. With more people working  remotely, there is now a good chance to move to the paradise for good, connect with nature, live slowly while respecting the environment, favour local commerce and economic sustainability, and involve with community work to protect the paradise.