Datça - the last frontier to Eden

I am at a modern coffee shop in Datça, sitting inside, behind a large, stylish ventilator. The shop’s name sounds promising, “The Coffee Grinder”. 

I am reading a Turkish book written by Özgül Tuzcu and Ezgi Kurt New Life in a Seaside Town, interviews with 60 individuals who settled in Datça.

I order a small cup of Americano. The coffee is not freshly ground and it is served boiling hot, leaving a veneer of plastic-cardboard flavour in my mouth. They serve coffee in disposable cups here.

Last time I visited Datça, it was in 2018, five years ago. 

Since then the town has grown. There are more townhouses built outside the town centre. Locals are concerned with environmental impact of new building projects. Builders leave not enough space between buildings. Diminishing air corridors and climate change are suffocating Datça.

Datça locals are worried about their town is in the footsteps of  Bodrum. Once a small fishing village, Bodrum lost its charm long time ago. It turned into an overpopulated, overdeveloped, congested and polluted mega town, a familiar tale for many coastal towns all around the world.

In the last half a century, increased global wealth, the rise of Internet and cheaper air travel ramped up tourism by 56 times (https://ourworldindata.org/tourism.) Before the pandemic nearly 4 million tourists travelled the world everyday.

Datça needs growth to sustain itself whole year around. 

Is it possible to grow a seaside town’s economy in a sustainable fashion, by avoiding over-tourism? 

How would you engage with a partisan government who would pour money into an opposition town to improve its roads and infrastructure, without expecting a hefty return for itself?

On the upside Datça has a well educated population of Young Turks, entrepreneurs who share a strong ambition to maintain what Datça is known for, a lovely, clean, secluded, eco-friendly town. 

Streets are wide and clean. Recycling bins are available, though not consistently. Plastic poles are cleverly used to separate lanes. This works better than painted lane markers that are sometimes disregarded in Türkiye. 

On the downside, current economic hardship Türkiye is going through had an impact. It is August, but our hotel is operating at one third of its peak capacity. Recent mega price increases (e.g. petrol) caused all prices to spiral out of control, cutting back tourists, local and foreign alike. This is a recession and it is hurting both locals and tourists. People who visit Greek islands say “everything is cheaper and better quality over there”.

Other problems Datça is facing are long standing ones; bad roads, stray dogs, drivers disregarding pedestrians at crossings. 

The heat is unbearable. I think cossy Parisian coffee shops, small tables and small chairs are misfits here. 

I now move to a large breezy tea garden, protected by shades of thick tree canopies overlooking to an open plaza. 

Datça is breathing again.

Turkish References 

Sahil Kasabasında Yeni Bir Hayat, Datça’ya yerleşen 60 kişiyle söyleşi, Özgül Tuzcu, Ezgi Kurt 

• sayfa 30: paragraf: Datça nasıl değişiyor sence?
• sayfa 125: paragraf: Peki sorunlar yok mu?